Wigmore Hall Will Host 12-Concert Benjamin Britten Tribute Series

Wigmore Hall will pay tribute to Benjamin Britten 50 years after his death, on 4 December 1976, with a 12-concert series celebrating the composer's enduring relationship with the Hall. Framed by new works from Huw Watkins, Jacqueline Shave and Nico Muhly, the series places Britten alongside the composers who shaped his imagination and those who continue to respond to his legacy today. Across twelve concerts, it also explores Britten's achievement as a songwriter through performances of many of his major song cycles and vocal works.

Britten's music was first heard at Wigmore Hall in 1934, and he made his performing debut there in 1942, accompanying Peter Pears in the world première of Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo. The Hall subsequently hosted the premières of the Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, String Quartet No. 2, The Holy Sonnets of John Donne and Canticle III: Still Falls the Rain. Britten also appeared regularly as pianist, conductor and lecturer, while he and Pears championed the Hall during a period in the 1960s when its future was under threat.

The opening concert on 3 October features Robin Tritschler, Claire Barnett-Jones and James Baillieu in a programme pairing Britten songs with Schumann's Liederkreis, Op. 24. Featuring 6 Hölderlin-Fragmente, A Charm of Lullabies, Cabaret Songs and a selection of other songs, it offers an introduction to the remarkable breadth of Britten's songwriting.

The focus then turns to six concerts across 3-6 December, centred on the exact 50th anniversary of Britten's death. Philip Higham performs the three Cello Suites, while the Leonkoro and Arcadia Quartets perform Britten's three String Quartets. Broadcaster and narrator Zeb Soanes joins the Leonkoro Quartet for readings from Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, while the Britten Oboe Quartet introduces new works by Huw Watkins and Jacqueline Shave. O/Modernt Chamber Orchestra performs the Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, Phaedra and Les Illuminations alongside the UK première of Nico Muhly's An Archive in Three Parts. Programmes from Robin Tritschler and Malcolm Martineau and from Laurence Kilsby, Toby Spence and James Newby explore Britten's artistic partnership with Peter Pears and the central role song played throughout his career.

On 22 December, Allan Clayton, Iestyn Davies, Peter Brathwaite and James Baillieu perform all five of Britten's Canticles. The series then moves into 2027, with concerts on 17 January and 11 March placing Britten alongside composers from Purcell and Vaughan Williams to Berkeley and the Boulanger sisters, before concluding on 16 March with Ian Bostridge and Xuefei Yang's Songs from Our Ancestors, linking music by Dowland, Schubert and Britten with Chinese musical traditions.

A performance of Britten's A Ceremony of Carols by the Choir of Westminster Abbey, conducted by Andrew Nethsingha, Master of the Choristers at Westminster Abbey, with harpist Anne Denholm-Blair, filmed at Wigmore Hall in November 2026, will be released as a free broadcast on the Hall's website on 4 December. The date marks both the 50th anniversary of Britten's death and a notable moment in the Hall's history: on 4 December 1943, exactly 33 years before his death, Britten conducted the first performance of the revised version of A Ceremony of Carols with harp accompaniment at Wigmore Hall, performed by the Morriston Boys' Choir and harpist Marie Korchinska.