There Is Sweet Music Here

Wigmore Hall certainly pulled out all the stops for its 125th birthday last month, with artists including Jordi Savall, Yunchan Lim, Angela Hewitt, Abel Selaocoe, Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber heading to London for a two-week festival to mark the occasion - the big day itself fell on 31st May, with Igor Levit and the Leonkoro Quartet taking the stage at lunchtime and a Schubert recital from Lise Davidsen and James Baillieu topping things off that evening. But an equally joyful and enriching element of the celebrations took place offstage – namely the publication of Julia Boyd’s There Is Sweet Music: The World of Wigmore Hall, an affectionate and insightful biography of the beloved venue which will prove compelling reading for anyone with even a passing interest in London’s cultural life throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

An historian rather than a musicologist (her bibliography includes books on the Third Reich, Anglo-American physician Elizabeth Blackwell and the history of furniture), Boyd offers a compelling portrait of how the Hall’s identity evolved against the backdrop of two World Wars and the ensuing social and economic challenges, advances in technology, and increasing emphasis on diversity and inclusion (though she argues convincingly that Wigmore had been committed to these ideals more or less since it opened its doors).

Boyd is obviously a passionate and well-informed music-lover who wears her learning lightly, deftly glossing specialist terminology along the way and drawing on a fascinating array of primary sources to bring the story to life. As well as a wide selection of contemporary reviews which may or may not have aged well (Fauré and the young Joan Sutherland apparently got short shrift from certain quarters at the time), she weaves in excerpts from letters by Hall patrons such as Virginia Woolf, Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw and TS Eliot, and from performers who appeared there in their early years before achieving near-legendary status.

One entertaining example occurs very early on in the form of Ferruccio Busoni’s Ogden Nash-ish poem ‘Career of a Virtuoso’, dashed off in a letter to his wife a couple of years before he performed in the inaugural concert at Bechstein Hall (as it was until 1917, when anti-German sentiment prompted a location-based rebrand). Busoni shared the stage that evening with the Belgian violinist-composer Eugène Ysaÿe (Boyd gives a wry picture of their rather changeable relationship), and with two artists whose fame has not endured to the same extent: English concert soprano Helen Trust (who enjoyed huge popularity at the turn of the century) and tenor Raimund von zur-Mühlen, a protégé of Clara Schumann. Boyd’s research flags up many such names which the reader might be inspired to explore further under their own steam, including numerous artists whose work is documented on YouTube if not through commercial recordings.

Boyd’s opening account of that inaugural concert is followed by one of the most fascinating chapters in the book, where she outlines why the time was ripe for a new London recital hall by the turn of the twentieth century: in the process, she whisks the reader on a whistle-stop tour of the history of concert venues in London since the days of the English Civil War, taking in the Clerkenwell loft-space opened by prosperous charcoal merchant Thomas Britton in 1678, the various pleasure gardens of the eighteenth century, Hickford’s (which hosted the Mozart siblings in 1765), the Pantheon, the Argyll Rooms, and latterly Crystal Palace. It provides some intriguing insights into how music was funded, marketed and consumed in the capital across the centuries, with colourful anecdotes involving Handel, Fanny Burney, CPE Bach and Beethoven along the way.

The four chapters devoted to Bechstein Hall’s early days are nicely weighted, with plenty of focus on the venue’s blossoming relationships with big names such as Joseph Joachim, Artur Schnabel, Pablo Casals, Myra Hess and Frank Bridge as well as some welcome spotlighting of artists whose stars have since been eclipsed. Boyd devotes much care and attention to the many female pianists who appeared at the Hall in the pre-War years, including Hull-born Ethel Leginska (née Liggins), Katherine Goodson, and Evelyn Suart. And it certainly came as a surprise to this reader that the Hall hosted novelty acts such as whistlers and musical comedians as well as non-musical events including poetry evenings, magic shows, tarot readings and even a Sex Reform conference until well into the twentieth century!

These chapters also underline how much the Hall’s approach to artists and repertoire has altered over the past 125 years. Whilst visits from bona fide stars played a key role in putting the venue on the map, there seems to have been an element of ‘first come, first served’ in the early days, with the Hall available for hire to anyone who could pull together the requisite ‘12 to 15 guineas’ (plus extras for marketing and printed programmes). Quality-control, therefore, was decidedly less tight than it is today, and there appear to have been quite a few damp squibs in amongst the talented young debutantes who would go on to become regular visitors.

Programming, too, was rather more scattergun, with some recitals featuring up to two dozen composers in the hope of providing ‘something for everyone’ and a strong focus on new music (particularly by composer-performers showcasing their own work). Here again, Boyd turns up some interesting names which have only recently begun to swim back into focus: the Hall programmed a great deal of music by women in its early days, including the likes of Liza Lehmann and Maude Valérie White who are now enjoying something of a renaissance.

Perhaps more surprising is the relative scarcity of the Austro-German titans during the Edwardian years, with Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Schubert not getting much of a look-in until significantly later on. This was compounded by the prohibition on performing Lieder in its original language during World War One, when music by living German composers was also boycotted (partly to avoid paying them royalties).

Boyd recounts that the Hall thrived during both Wars, partly through keeping calm and carrying on even as Queen’s Hall (its main rival) was destroyed by bombing in 1941. Among the many significant events which Boyd describes during this period was an insight evening in advance of the premiere of Britten’s Peter Grimes, with the composer and Peter Pears (by then firm friends of the venue) performing and discussing excerpts from the opera. The influx of Jewish refugee musicians (many of whom settled within close distance of the Hall) also proved a source of cultural enrichment, and the venue’s Sunday Coffee Concerts were originally introduced to cater for patrons who observed the Jewish Sabbath.

Boyd lucidly outlines the challenges which the Hall faced in the post-War years – not least the fierce competition presented by the opening of the Royal Festival Hall and the Purcell Room in 1951 – and the creative strategies which allowed the venue to maintain its own niche within the city’s musical life. She devotes an insightful chapter to the Hall’s response to the lockdowns of 2020/21, before going on to celebrate the many innovations introduced under John Gilhooly’s directorship including competitions, education programmes, and a renewed commitment to profiling BAME composers and artists. Perhaps things veer a little close to hagiography in these later stretches, but that’s a minor quibble – Boyd is always excellent company, and this entertaining and illuminating book makes for a superb birthday-present to ‘The Wig’. Here’s to the next 125 years!