Name: Tenebrae
Start: 2024-12-04T19:30:00
Location: Wigmore Hall

This December, London’s Wigmore Hall will be resonating with the enchanting sounds of Michael Praetorius' festive compositions. Kickstart the season with Tenebrae’s diverse selection of carols on December 4th. Arcangelo, led by Jonathan Cohen, will mesmerize with early German Baroque pieces on December 15th. Finally, The Gesualdo Six will wrap up the festive celebration on December 20th with a blend of ancient and modern works marking Epiphany.

Celebrate Christmas in London with Michael Praetorius' Timeless Works

Join us in London for a series of captivating musical events featuring the works of Gustav Holst. From the London Symphony Orchestra’s cosmic journey through The Planets to enchanting Christmas carols at Wigmore Hall, this season promises unforgettable experiences. Highlights include Sir Antonio Pappano's debut with the LSO, Elgar’s Violin Concerto performed by Vilde Frang, and festive celebrations with Tenebrae and the Southbank Sinfonia. Don't miss out on these exceptional performances at iconic venues like the Barbican Centre, Smith Square Hall, and more.

Musical Masterpieces in London: Celebrating Gustav Holst and More

London's Wigmore Hall is set to host a series of captivating events showcasing the exceptional works of renowned composer Bob Chilcott. Featuring performances by Fretwork and Tenebrae, ORA Singers, The Gesualdo Six, and The King's Singers, these events promise to immerse audiences in dreams, Shakespearean echoes, festive carols, and more. Join us as we traverse through an array of musical landscapes, all under the masterful composition of Bob Chilcott.

Celebrate the Season with Bob Chilcott at Wigmore Hall, London

Wigmore Hall

If these ratios don’t accommodate your family group, please contact the Box Office and we'll do our very best to ensure you can book the tickets you need.

Chamber Tots

Join musicians from the Royal Academy of Music for a concert experience created especially for parents or carers and babies under 1. Enjoy live music together in an interactive and welcoming environment – move and groove to the music or sit back and unwind. Parents-to-be are also warmly welcomed.

For Crying Out Loud!

Robert Schumann’s life, short by modern measures, mirrored the emotional extremes and poetic refinement respectively cultivated by his alter egos, the impulsive, heart-on-sleeve ‘Florestan’ and the introspective ‘Eusebius’. Ian Bostridge and Vadym Kholodenko, Gold Medallist of the 2014 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, bring the cavernous expressive scope of his music to life in a programme that pairs two masterworks for piano solo with ideally matched song settings.

Ian Bostridge tenor; Vadym Kholodenko piano

Elements of Moravian folksong combine with edgy modernism in the String Quartet No. 3 Op. 15, written six years before Pavel Haas was murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Pavel Haas Quartet, champion of the Czech composer’s music since its formation in 2002, places the work together with the yearning sounds of ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’, by Haas’s teacher, Leoš Janáček. It is joined by two close colleagues in Dvořák’s folk-infused String Sextet for two violins, two violas and two cellos.

Pavel Haas Quartet; Pavel Nikl viola; Ivan Vokáč cello

The Parkhouse Award is pleased to present the Davidoff Trio who won its biennial award in 2025. Its programme today includes one of Haydn’s ‘London’ piano trios written at the height of his powers; Kelly-Marie Murphy is intrigued by the myth of the Phoenix that strives to fly; and Dvořák was held high in the estimation of Prague’s Charles University who awarded him an honorary doctorate just before he left for the United States.

Davidoff Trio

The award-winning ORA Singers celebrates its 10th anniversary year with a choral highlights programme featuring key works from its first decade. Alongside Renaissance polyphony by Tallis, Byrd, Gibbons, Victoria, Palestrina and others sit 10 contemporary pieces from its ground-breaking 100 commissions catalogue, including the world première of its 100th commission – In Manus Tuas by Brett Dean.

ORA Singers; Suzi Digby OBE conductor

Midori’s penetrating artistry, rich in insight and profound musical maturity, and special gifts as teacher and communicator have touched audiences far beyond the world’s leading concert halls, thanks to the reach of her acclaimed Midori and Friends education programme. She is also a firm supporter of music by living composers, reflected in the presence in her latest Wigmore Hall programme of a new work by Thierry Escaich, one of the four titular organists of Notre-Dame de Paris. A diverse trio of sonatas completes the Japanese American violinist’s alluring menu of works.

Midori violin; Özgür Aydin piano

The supremely talented Soloists of the Kronberg Academy present Wigmore Hall audiences with the chance to hear the next generation of world-class chamber musicians. Their choice of repertoire includes two movements from the F-A-E Sonata, a collaborative work by Robert Schumann, the young Brahms and Schumann’s pupil Albert Dietrich. The concert is framed by Debussy’s mature, ravishingly beautiful Cello Sonata and his late Violin Sonata, a luminous and harmonically daring work that crowns his final creative period.

Soloists of the Kronberg Academy; Kirill Gerstein piano

Kirill Gerstein, Principal Professor in the Kronberg Academy study programmes since 2018, once again joins four of the Academy’s exceptional young musicians this evening. They open with Brahms’s mighty Piano Quintet in F minor, a four-movement work of symphonic proportions, and follow it with Dvořák’s comparably great Second Piano Quintet, a richly lyrical staple of the chamber music repertoire since its first performance in 1888.

Avi Avital’s programme spans four centuries of mandolin history to show the art that his instrument has inspired. He opens his Wigmore Hall Residency with an engrossing selection of original works and arrangements, including Paul Ben-Haim’s pulsating Sonata a tre and Death is a Friend of Ours, a surprisingly uplifting work specially written for Avi Avital which celebrates the joy of being alive.

Avi Avital mandolin; Anneleen Lenaerts harp; Lukasz Kuropaczewski guitar; Ophira Zakai theorbo; Alexander von Heißen harpsichord

Flexible in format and strikingly diverse in repertoire, the Orsino Ensemble comprises some of Britain’s finest wind players. ‘This is all-star playing of the highest level’, noted the Guardian in a review of its 2021 debut album. Its latest Wigmore Hall recital includes Nielsen’s delightful Wind Quintet and the UK première of Mark Simpson’s The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, inspired by five of John Koenig’s neologisms for different types of emotion.

Orsino Ensemble

Dame Sarah Connolly’s duo partnership with Joseph Middleton, forged over many years, rises from the telepathic understanding that passes between them whenever they make music. The celebrated mezzo-soprano’s ‘rapport with top Lieder pianist Joseph Middleton’, notes BBC Music Magazine, ‘allows for some very special interchanges’. Their recital includes treasures from Brahms’s Op. 57 collection and the hauntingly beautiful Late Romanticism of Webern’s Early Songs.

Dame Sarah Connolly mezzo-soprano; Joseph Middleton piano

In the run up to Christmas, Wigmore Hall welcomes groups of various kinds, specialists in various repertoires, all intent upon celebrating the festive season in style. Tenebrae launches the season with a wide selection of carols for all tastes.

Tenebrae

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