125th anniversary gala concert review – back to 1901 as Wigmore celebrates birthday playing to its strengths

Wigmore Hall, London
The veteran chamber music venue kicked off a celebratory two-week festival with a starry lineup of performers playing works that had featured on the first ever programme

In May 1901, Wigmore Hall’s inaugural concert began, of course, with God Save the King – the words sounding novel to an audience who, until a few months earlier, had been singing it for Queen Victoria. The programme continued with a starry lineup including the composer and piano virtuoso Ferruccio Busoni performing Beethoven and the violinist Eugène Ysaÿe playing unaccompanied Bach. A partial recreation of that evening kicked off the hall’s fortnight of celebrations of its 125th birthday, and once the national anthem was out of the way - dispatched from the platform by soprano Louise Alder and pianist Joseph Middleton – it felt less like a historical exercise than a celebration of what this venue has always been good at.

The concert was billed as a gala but was less formal, shorter and tighter than that might have suggested, partly thanks to being broadcast live: no indulgent speeches, just short links from Radio 3’s Ian Skelly filling us in on the venue’s history. The hall was originally built in 1901 by Bechstein, the piano manufacturer, whose showrooms were next door on Wigmore Street, and was intended as a place where audiences could hear the finest pianists of the day showcasing the company’s instruments.