Name: Tenebrae; Nigel Short conductor
Start: 2026-12-11T19:30:00
Location: Wigmore Hall

Nigel Short

Wigmore Hall

A special showcase celebrating Samling Institute’s 30th anniversary. This recital brings together all the strands of Samling’s internationally recognised expertise in training young voices and pianists and features a glittering line-up of alumni from across the decades in an evening of song.

Samling Showcase

Yellow Barn’s Showcase continues with a compelling double bill. Ligeti’s 3 Pieces for 2 pianos, composed in 1978, opens with the thunderous chords of ‘Monument’ and includes the pulsating rhythmic energy of ‘Self-Portrait with Reich and Riley (and Chopin is there, too)’. The concert concludes with the eight movements of the Quatuor pour la fin du temps, composed and first performed in 1940, while Messiaen was a prisoner-of-war.

Yellow Barn Showcase Day

The Sunday Times praised the Jerusalem Quartet’s ‘immaculate, spirited playing’ in its recording of Mozart’s ‘Hunt’ Quartet, while The Times wrote of the ensemble’s ‘gold blend’ of ‘passion, precision, warmth’. It sets Mozart alongside the last of Bartók’s six quartets, completed shortly before its composer found refuge from war-torn Europe in the United States, before turning to Ravel’s ravishingly beautiful String Quartet in F.

Jerusalem Quartet

Vermont’s Yellow Barn, based in the heart of Putney Village Historic District, has become a chamber music haven, where international artists gather to work together with extraordinary rising talents and engage in a lively exchange of ideas. Wigmore Hall trains the spotlight on the Yellow Barn’s adventurous programming with a concert that explores the nature of spiritual transcendence and intercultural dialogue, complete with sounds from The Golden Record, two copies of which began their interstellar journey on the Voyager spacecraft in 1977.

Louise Farrenc’s Nonet raised its composer to celebrity status, propelled by the ovations with which the four-movement work was received at its première in 1850. Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, described by Strings Magazine as being like ‘A big, glorious house party with a long and fabulous guest list’, brings the French composer’s sonorous score to life alongside Mozart’s Quintet in E flat, with its beguiling blend of instrumental sonorities and dazzling array of themes.

Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective

Besides being one of the finest baritones of his generation, a natural successor to his great teacher, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Benjamin Appl is among the most thoughtful of programme builders. He opens his recital with the Jerusalem Quartet with Robert Schumann’s melodramatic Belsatzar, a spine-tingling ballad recalling Belshazzar’s feast from the Book of Daniel, and ventures into the world, past and present, and beyond into the infinite cosmos of dreams.

Benjamin Appl baritone; Jerusalem Quartet

Steven Isserlis’s programme recalls the musical powerhouse of Leipzig in the mid-1800s. Mendelssohn, so impressed by the works of William Sterndale Bennett, invited the young English composer to the German city, where he met and became friends with Robert Schumann. Bennett’s gift for melodic invention shines in his Sonata Duo, written in 1852 for the virtuoso cellist, Antonio Piatti, as does Mendelssohn’s in his Bach-inspired Second Cello Sonata of 1842.

Steven Isserlis cello; Connie Shih piano

Patricia Brennan’s septet brings the vibrant sonic world of Breaking Stretch to the stage, weaving rhythmic invention with taut ensemble interplay. A milestone recording, Breaking Stretch was named the 2025 Downbeat Critics Poll Album of the Year, comprising detailed compositions shaped by Caribbean and Latin inflections, textured horns and dynamic percussion.

Patricia Brennan Septet

Mariam Batsashvili’s interpretations of the great landmarks of the piano repertoire, in the concert hall and on record, have garnered rave reviews, as has her ability to construct revelatory combinations of works. The charismatic Georgian pianist prefaces Liszt’s monumental Sonata in B minor with the exuberance of Haydn’s Piano Sonata in D. Her post-interval programme dives headlong into an alluring stream of free-flowing fantasy pieces.

Mariam Batsashvili piano

Lara Downes is a devoted champion of classical music by women composers and Black Americans, and an equally unequivocal advocate for the cause of democracy and freedom. Her programme today stems from her Pentatone release Love at Last, a collection of works that span generations, continents and cultures, united in a stubborn belief in the possibility of humanity, brotherhood, peace, compassion and the everlasting power of love. The inspiration comes from a poem by the 19th-century Odessa-born poet Shaul Tchernichovsky.

Lara Downes piano

The Renaissance saw Europe regularly convulsed by war, as neighbours and rivals jostled for territory and power, Catholics and Protestants clashed over religious principle, and Christian nations contended with the threat of the Ottoman Turks. But it was also a time of great alliances, when peace treaties were celebrated with lavish diplomatic displays, and hostile nations were bound together through dynastic marriages. This fascinating programme explores the responses of composers to these turbulent times, drawing on almost two centuries of music from Dufay to Schütz. Along the way we experience the sounds of battle in Jannequin’s remarkable chanson La guerre, encounter plangent laments for fallen cities and lost generations, and savour serene motets welcoming longed-for peace.

Stile Antico

Daring virtuosity and a gloriously free spirit are among the attributes with which Chloe Chua has won critical plaudits and audience ovations. The Singaporean violinist, not yet 20, speaks through her instrument with striking maturity and wisdom, whether connecting with listeners in the concert hall or online. Her lunchtime programme frames Beethoven’s gripping A minor Violin Sonata with two mighty showpieces, Tartini’s fiendishly difficult ‘Devil’s Trill’ Sonata and the heart-warming Carmen Fantasie by Franz Waxman, among the greatest composers of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Chloe Chua violin; Julien Quentin piano

Joby Talbot follows his critically acclaimed 2005 commission for Tenebrae, Path of Miracles, with a new a cappella work, a setting of WB Yeats’s The Song of Wandering Aengus. This evening’s concert stands as a celebration of the great British choral tradition and the vast panoply of works written for its finest ensembles. Tenebrae crowns its programme with the transcendent sounds of High Flight, an exquisite evocation of Bob Chilcott’s memories of life as a boy chorister at King’s College, Cambridge.