About us
Wigmore Hall, one of the world’s great concert halls, specialises in chamber and instrumental music, early music and song.
With a musical history stretching back to 1901, Wigmore Hall is today livelier than ever, offering music making of outstanding quality and a wide range of events in the community. With its vibrant sense of adventure, the Hall consistently captures the public imagination and broadens its audiences’ horizons.
Wigmore Hall’s focus is on great musical works, best experienced with a powerful sense of immediacy. The repertoire extends from the Renaissance to contemporary jazz and new commissions from today’s most exciting composers.
Bringing this music to life are the world’s most sought-after soloists and chamber musicians. Wigmore Hall also provides a showcase for exceptional young artists — many making their professional London debuts — and remains an essential platform as their careers flourish.
Discreetly nestled in central London, the Hall – renowned for its intimacy, crystalline acoustic and beautiful interior, complete with an Arts and Crafts cupola above the stage – has a capacity of 552 seats, but draws in audiences from far and wide through its enterprising use of digital media and its ambitious Learning programme. Wigmore Hall’s reach goes beyond concert audiences and includes schools, nurseries, hospitals, community centres and care homes.
Since 2005, the Hall has grown attendance across its entire programme by over 60 per cent. All in all, it now presents around 500 concerts every year, selling a total of 200,000 tickets, and stages as many Learning events. Wigmore Hall plays host to a biennial International Song Competition, and a triennial International String Quartet Competition, drawing exceptionally talented young musicians from around the world keen to embark on significant recital careers. Wigmore Hall attracts a diverse range of audiences, with the lowest ticket for every evening concert in its series priced at £18 or less. Its subsidised ticket scheme for people under 35-years-old goes from strength to strength, and free tickets are also offered to young people aged 8–25 through its CAVATINA 25 initiative, in collaboration with the CAVATINA Chamber Music Trust.
Since 1994, Wigmore Hall's renowned learning and participation programme has been giving people of all ages and backgrounds opportunities to take part in creative music making, engaging a broad and diverse range of people through innovative in-person and online creative projects, concerts, workshops and resources. We collaborate with a range of education, arts, health and social care organisations, working in partnership to engage people who have experienced adversity, trauma, isolation and marginalisation, and who face barriers to participating in creative arts activity. We make music with families, schools, young people, and people living with dementia in our world-leading programme Music for Life.
The Hall was refurbished in 2004, and the sympathetic restoration and upgrading of its facilities included new seats in the Auditorium and air cooling throughout. The Wigmore Hall Trust purchased the building’s long-term lease in 2005, securing Wigmore Hall’s future as a leading recital venue, and launched an Endowment Fund appeal in 2013. The backstage areas were renovated in 2015; the revolutionary results, barely visible to the public, now combine the advantages of the famous acoustic and original design with the facilities expected of a world-class modern concert venue. The latest development also hailed a new era of international access to some of its many recitals and events through live streaming, enabling more people than ever to experience some of the variety of its concert programme and Learning events. The Hall also enjoys a fruitful relationship with BBC Radio 3, with regular live broadcasts on the station.