Daniel Barenboin and Renée Fleming Will Return To Wigmore Hall This Spring
Igor Levit begins a complete Beethoven sonata cycle as Imogen Cooper gives her final Wigmore Hall performance.
Ahead of the opening of its 2026/27 Season this evening, Wigmore Hall has announced the full programme for spring 2027. Running from 2 January to 31 March, the series comprises 170 concerts spanning chamber music, song, piano, early and Baroque music, jazz, and choral programmes.
On 24 March, Daniel Barenboim returns to Wigmore Hall for the first time since 2011 to conduct the Boulez Ensemble in Mozart's 'Gran Partita' Serenade and Boulez's Dérive 1. The performance launches a major new partnership between Wigmore Hall, Berlin's Pierre Boulez Saal and the Daniel Barenboim Stiftung. Barenboim first performed at Wigmore Hall, aged 13, in 1956, making his UK solo recital debut.
Renée Fleming returns to Wigmore Hall on 5 March, performing Strauss's 4 Last Songs, her first performance at the Hall for ten years. James Ledger's chamber arrangement of the work is conducted by Alan Gilbert and features oboist Nicholas Daniel and soloists of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The programme also includes Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps, with Gilbert on violin, Inon Barnatan (piano), Martin Fröst (clarinet) and Jonathan Swensen (cello).
Igor Levit begins a complete cycle of Beethoven piano sonatas in the bicentenary year of the composer's death, while Wigmore Hall's series marking half a century since Benjamin Britten's death reaches its conclusion. Morton Feldman's centenary is marked in concerts by Explore Ensemble. World and UK premières by leading contemporary composers feature throughout the spring. Scottish music comes into focus with the Hebrides Ensemble, while the African Concert Series explores Nigerian art music.
Other spring highlights include Korean piano sensation Yunchan Lim, who gives two performances of an all-Mozart programme on 10 and 12 March; Jordi Savall directing Hespèrion XXI; William Christie and Les Arts Florissants; and the return of Grammy Award-winning jazz pianist Brad Mehldau.
John Gilhooly CBE, Director of Wigmore Hall, said, "The launch of our partnership with the Pierre Boulez Saal is an important moment for Wigmore Hall, and I'm delighted that Daniel Barenboim and the Boulez Ensemble will inaugurate it here in March. Alongside that, the programme reflects the range of music we want to champion: Morton Feldman's centenary, Igor Levit's Beethoven sonata cycle, Strauss's 4 Last Songs with Renée Fleming, Nigerian art music, Renaissance and Baroque programmes, and a strong body of new commissions. It brings together internationally celebrated artists, landmark repertoire and fresh opportunities for discovery."
Piano
Dame Imogen Cooper gives her final Wigmore Hall performance before retiring from the concert stage, joining baritone Henk Neven for Schubert's Winterreise on 16 February. Igor Levit begins a complete cycle of Beethoven's piano sonatas marking the bicentenary of the composer's death, spanning four recitals on consecutive evenings from 20 to 23 February. This first instalment includes the 'Waldstein', 'Appassionata' and 'Pathétique' Sonatas. The cycle concludes in the autumn.
Tamara Stefanovich appears on 9 January with Hartmann's profoundly moving piano sonata 27 April 1945, written after the composer witnessed prisoners at Dachau concentration camp being marched to their deaths just days before the camp was liberated by Allied forces. Yeol Eum Son performs Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier' Sonata on 5 March, while Angela Hewitt plays Scarlatti, Bach and Chopin on 27 February, and Louis Lortie performs an all-Skryabin programme on 25 March. Wigmore Hall Associate Artist Boris Giltburg appears on 19 March with Prokofiev's Visions fugitives, Schumann's Carnaval and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.
Chamber Music
Pianist Steven Osborne joins Wigmore Hall Associate Artists the Takács Quartet for Franck's Piano Quintet on 13 and 15 March. The Belcea Quartet continues its Beethoven string quartet cycle on 23 and 25 January as part of the Hall's Beethoven bicentenary focus.
Mandolinist Avi Avital appears with members of the Basel Chamber Orchestra on 18 January, while Thomas Adès performs with members of the Hallé Orchestra, guitarist Sean Shibe and soprano Anna Dennis on 4 March, with a programme of his own music, as well as Gerald Barry and Francisco Coll, Berg, Falla, Ravel and Stravinsky. Violist Tabea Zimmermann, cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and pianist Javier Perianes perform music by Schumann, Brahms and Kurtág on 28 February, and pianist Jonathan Biss and violinist Mark Steinberg explore Mozart's mature violin sonatas across two concerts on 27 January.
Song
Baritone Huw Montague Rendall and pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson present a programme of music by Mahler, Schoenberg, Vaughan Williams and Jonathan Dove on 3 March, including Dove's Three Love Songs, which sets lyrics by Rendall's father, the late tenor David Rendall.
Christian Gerhaher and pianist Gerold Huber mark Schubert's birthday on 31 January with a programme pairing the composer's songs with Manfred Trojahn's cycle Abendröte. On 22 January, Barbara Hannigan and pianist Bertrand Chamayou bring together music by Satie and Cage.
Following the 50th anniversary of Benjamin Britten's death in 2026, Wigmore Hall continues its exploration of the composer's music. Tenor Allan Clayton, pianist James Baillieu and violist Brett Dean perform works by Britten, Maconchy and Vaughan Williams on 17 January. Clayton and Baillieu return on 11 March with harpist Olivia Jageurs for Britten's final song cycle, A Birthday Hansel, composed for Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. The series concludes on 16 March with Ian Bostridge and Xuefei Yang performing Britten's Songs from the Chinese as the final concert in their Songs from our Ancestors series.
New and Contemporary Music
Wigmore Hall begins 2027 with Feldman and After on 2 and 3 January, marking the centenary of Morton Feldman's birth with Explore Ensemble. Programmes feature Feldman's Crippled Symmetry, Three Voices and Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello alongside world premières by Laure M Hiendl, Lisa Illean (in a Wigmore Hall co-commission) and Wigmore Hall Associate Artist Jack Sheen.
The JACK Quartet gives three concerts on 6 March featuring new and recent music, including UK premières by Christopher Otto, Austin Wulliman, Juri Seo, Gabriella Smith and Tristan Perich. On 15 January, James Newby and Apartment House give the première of a new work by Michael Zev Gordon.
The Hebrides Ensemble explores music by three generations of Scottish composers on 30 January, with works by Judith Weir, Thea Musgrave, Stuart MacRae and Helen Grime. On 20 March, the Arditti Quartet gives the world première of Andrzej Kwieciński's Opulenza!, alongside two further UK premières, including Isabel Mundry's Lost Voices, co-commissioned by Wigmore Hall.
Baroque and Early Music
On 6 January, Bach Consort Wien, directed by Rubén Dubrovsky, traces Latin America's musical history from pre-Columbian traditions through European colonisation to cultures shaped by the African diaspora.
Arcangelo continues its English Baroque Journey on 8 January with music by Purcell, Blow and Handel and Vox Luminis performs Purcell's Dido and Aeneas on 4 February. Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI explore Venetian musical influences across Renaissance and early Baroque Europe on 10 and 11 February.
William Christie and Les Arts Florissants open Wigmore Hall's Lent and Easter concerts on 18 March with Holy Week oratorios by Perti and Rossi. The series continues with Bach's Easter Oratorio performed by Florilegium (21 March), sacred music by Charpentier and Couperin with Les Talens Lyriques (23 March), Zelenka's Miserere settings with Solomon's Knot (24 March), and Johann Theile's 1673 St Matthew Passion with Fretwork (26 March). On 27 March, The English Concert marks 300 years since the first performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion on Good Friday 1727, before Stile Antico performs Renaissance music inspired by the Crucifixion and Resurrection on 28 March.
African Concert Series
Nigerian art music is the focus of the African Concert Series on 6 February, with three concerts featuring pianists Glen Inanga and Sodi Braide exploring traditions of African Pianism, chamber works by Fred Onovwerosuoke performed by the NOK Orchestra, and a programme of masquerade and traditional music from the Olátundé Talking Drum Ensemble and an Igbo Traditional Group. The previous day, the RNCM Williams-Howard Prize Recital showcases emerging singers in works by composers of African, Caribbean and wider Black heritage.
Jazz
Brad Mehldau returns to Wigmore Hall on 28 January with a set shaped by his latest musical interests and inspirations. Mehldau was awarded the Wigmore Hall Medal in 2015 in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the Hall's artistic life.
On 30 March, American pianist Emmet Cohen returns with his Trio for the second concert of his Wigmore Hall Residency this season. Drawing on both jazz and classical traditions, Cohen is known for an improvisatory approach that has established him as one of the leading jazz pianists of his generation.
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