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The Bostridge Project: 'Ancient and Modern'

Since first appearing at Wigmore Hall in the mid 1990s, Ian Bostridge has pursued an extraordinary and varied career in recital, opera and concert all over the world. Whether singing Britten's Aschenbach at the ENO, Schubert songs in Vienna or Monteverdi's Nero in Munich, he has brought his trademark qualities of fierce intelligence and passionate commitment to the singing of the music of four centuries. Now John Gilhooly has invited him to return home to the Wigmore and plan a special season-long residency, which includes notable colleagues from a singing career of almost two decades.

'When I was a choirboy in deepest South London (St Leonard's, Streatham) we alternated two hymnbooks, one green (the English Hymnal), one red (Hymns Ancient and Modern). That last phrase, Ancient and Modern, part of the bric-a-brac of childhood, forced its way to the front of my mind when asked to plan a series for Wigmore Hall, a cherished musical home to me for the past fifteen years. The idea has been to gather together period instruments and modern instruments in a single concert; to show voices operating in both modes (the better to demonstrate that there’s really no difference); to take a look at musical visions of the past (the historian in me dies hard); and, occasionally to show the influence that old music had upon modern composers. The rubric covers a multitude of pieces, and in the end it is as broad as it is long. It allows us to play and sing a lot of very beautiful music, to have the pieces reflect upon each other, and have the performers and audiences in turn reflect upon the ways in which we all colonise and remodel the past in our own image.' Ian Bostridge