Name: Christian Gerhaher baritone; Gerold Huber piano
Start: 2024-12-16T19:30:00
Location: Wigmore Hall

London is set to host a series of extraordinary events celebrating Robert Schumann, featuring performances at iconic venues like Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre, and Barbican Centre. With tenors, pianists, and orchestras, these concerts will showcase Schumann's masterpieces, from the romantic Kerner Lieder Op. 35 to the imaginative Fantasiestücke and the lyrical Piano Concerto, alongside other classical gems. Join us for a journey through Schumann's musical brilliance.

Experience the Magic of Schumann Across London: A Series of Unforgettable Concerts

Christian Gerhaher

Wigmore Hall

Timothy Ridout crowns his Viola Day with a programme that celebrates the versatility of his instrument and the breadth of its repertoire. The programme includes York Bowen’s rarely performed Fantasie Quartet, a tour de force for four violas, and a brace of miniatures by Frank Bridge, first published in 1908 in a Viola Library volume edited by Lionel Tertis, then professor of viola at the Royal Academy of Music in London and already a star soloist. The concert ends with Benjamin Dale’s noble Introduction and Andante for six violas, written for Tertis and his RAM class.

Timothy Ridout viola; Hélène Clément viola; Ting-Ru Lai viola; Matthew Lipman viola; Eivind Ringstad viola; Georgy Kovalev viola; James Baillieu piano

Timothy Ridout’s Viola Day opens with the classical refinement of the Duo in F by Alessandro Rolla, best known today as Paganini’s teacher, and continues with a delightful arrangement for three violas of Beethoven’s Trio in C Op. 87 by the legendary violist Lionel Tertis, a work conceived for two oboes and cor anglais. Alan Shulman’s reflective Theme and Variations signals a change of mood as does the arrangement of Dvořák’s Czech Suite by Sancho Egnaño, described by Grove’s Dictionary of Music as the amateur viola-playing son of a Spanish ‘bull maintenance technician’.

The first half of the last century saw a remarkable flowering of new music for viola, inspired in part by the influence of the great violist Lionel Tertis, in part by composer-performers such as Cecil Forsyth and Paul Hindemith. The Passacaglia from the latter’s expressionist Sonata for solo viola Op. 11 No. 5 provides a powerful contrast to the gentle lyricism and sparky energy of York Bowen’s two Duos and radiant beauty of his Romance in A. Timothy Ridout includes the rhapsodic eloquence of Forsyth’s Chanson Celtique and the Lament that Frank Bridge first performed at Wigmore Hall with Tertis in 1912.

Timothy Ridout viola; Hélène Clément viola; Ting-Ru Lai viola; Matthew Lipman viola; Georgy Kovalev viola; James Baillieu piano

First Prize and Commission Prize winner at the 2023 Carl Nielsen International Chamber Music Competition and BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, the Kleio Quartet was described by The Scotsman as ‘surely an ensemble to watch, and one with plenty to say’. Its latest Wigmore Hall recital pairs Haydn’s sonorous Op. 74 No. 1 with the youthful vigour and heart-on-sleeve lyricism of Nielsen’s First String Quartet.

Kleio Quartet

Crystal-clear rhythmic precision and eloquence of expression are among the distinguishing hallmarks of Angela Hewitt’s pianism. She joins the Basel Chamber Orchestra and its charismatic director, Baptiste Lopez, in concertos by Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach. Her 2005 recording of the latter was described as ‘an absolute joy’ by Gramophone, while The Times observed how her ‘sense of phrase is masterful … the statements have regal import under the authoritative hands of this queen of keyboard playing’.

Angela Hewitt director, piano; Basel Chamber Orchestra; Baptiste Lopez director, violin

Carlos Simon creates works that confront many of society’s deepest divisions and injustices. Warmth from Other Suns (2019-20), inspired by Isabel Wilkerson’s eponymous book, evokes the Great Migration, the mass exodus of impoverished African-Americans leaving the rural South in search of homes and better lives in the urban West, Midwest and Northeast. The Takács Quartet, Wigmore Hall Associate Artist, frames Simon’s three-movement score with masterworks by Haydn and Brahms.

Takács Quartet

Former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and winner of the Ferrier Loveday Song Prize at the 2021 Kathleen Ferrier Awards, Helen Charlston has secured a gilt-edged reputation for her interpretations of Baroque and Early Music. The rich-toned mezzo is equally at home in German Lieder, French mélodie and the music of today. ‘She can give life to a line like few others; her diction is marvellous, and marvellously varied; everything flows with incomparable beauty,’ notes Gramophone.

Helen Charlston mezzo-soprano; Sholto Kynoch piano

Joshua Bell was awarded an honorary CBE by King Charles III in 2025 for services to music, in recognition of his work as music director of the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields. The great American violinist, who made his concerto debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra 45 years ago, returns to Wigmore Hall with fascinating pairings of sonatas by Beethoven and John Corigliano, Bach’s peerless Chaconne and Saint-Saëns’s emotionally-charged First Violin Sonata.

Joshua Bell violin; Peter Dugan piano

Inspired by episodes from Miguel de Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote, one of the founding works of western literature, Gabriela Lena Frank’s Quijotadas (2007) reflects upon the hopelessly romantic ideals of the book’s hero. The Takács Quartet prefaces the American pianist and composer’s work with Haydn’s supremely graceful Op. 20 No. 2 and devotes its concert’s second half to Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’, a piece deeply embedded in the life-enhancing ensemble’s artistic DNA.

Cherry Ge performs a programme about colour, texture and the everyday world, with music by three composers who found the extraordinary within the ordinary. Framed by Messiaen’s vivid bird portraits, the recital combines Prokofiev’s ‘fleeting visions’ with Barber’s witty, refined essays in American blues and swing.

Cherry Ge piano

Paul Lewis resumes his Mozart Plus series at Wigmore Hall with a fascinating programme that draws connecting lines between Mozart, Carl Maria von Weber and Chopin. Weber, a cousin to Mozart’s wife, Constanze, was promoted as a ‘second Mozart’ during his years as a child prodigy, as was Chopin, and held a lifelong love for the Austrian composer’s music. Chopin, too, was inspired by Mozart and what he regarded as his devotion to the ‘eternal principles’ of composition.

Paul Lewis piano

Join musicians from the Royal Academy of Music as they present an informal concert for people living with dementia and their friends, family and carers. You are warmly invited to join us for tea and coffee from 2.30pm.

Music for the Moment

One of today’s finest Lieder duos presents two programmes of Robert Schumann. ‘This is an album to treasure and to savour’, wrote Gramophone of their first Schumann disc, ‘and to listen to again and again’; while for the Financial Times, ‘accompanied by his regular partner in song, [Christian Gerhaher] achieves a near-perfect synthesis between words and music, singing his native German poetry with an eloquence that would be hard to surpass today, or at any time’.

Christian Gerhaher baritone; Gerold Huber piano

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