Tag: Igor Levit

Friends of Wigmore Hall 30th Anniversary Celebration Concert, 12 July 2023

Igor Levit in 2019 – Bundestagsfraktion Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, CC BY 2.0

You find out who your friends are when you go to this sort of concert…

…or more realistically, The Wigmore Hall management finds out who its friends are.

Frankly, I booked this concert because I fancied hearing the Liszt transcription of Beethoven Seven, which, in the end, Igor Levit decided not to perform. Never mind. This is the concert programme he chose instead.

Anyway, the “Friends Party” aspect was secondary in my mind.

Janie and I didn’t know that the Friends of Wigmore Hall had been going for 30 years. We are mere arrivistes at the place, starting our adventures there a mere 25 years ago, in 1998, with this concert:

..for which we befriended the place and then attended pretty regularly (several times a year, pandemic aside) ever since.

We previously saw Igor Levit at The Wig nearly 10 years ago:

Igor Levit, Wigmore Hall, 27 December 2014

After saying some fine words about how important the Friends of Wigmore Hall is to the hall and how important the hall is to his artistic life, Igor Levit played Schumann and Brahms instead of the Liszt.

After the concert, maintaining the Brahms and Liszt theme (did you see what I did there?) a drinks reception with Champagne for those who like alcoholic fizz and sparking elderflower presse for those who, like me, prefer their fizz non-alcoholic during the day.

On departure, Janie and I decided to thank John Gilhooly, who has been running the place extremely well for years, for the party.

John Gilhooly BIcam123, CC BY-SA 4.0

Janie and I confessed to not having been supporters for all 30 years. John told us that we didn’t look like those who had been supporting for 30 years. Perhaps he underestimated our ages and wouldn’t have guessed that we have supported for 25 of the 30.

We then chatted briefly about John’s campaign to try to introduce a younger audience to the Hall, which Janie and I applaud. John then made a slightly off-colour remark about the reception being a bit of a legacies marketing campaign event…”but not directed at you two, obviously”, he said.

So I suppose we’d better remove The Wigmore Hall from our bequests list, then. 😉

Seriously, a very enjoyable concert and event.

Igor Levit, Wigmore Hall, 27 December 2014

Igor Levit in 2019 – Bundestagsfraktion Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, CC BY 2.0

I got more out of this one than Janie did.

I’d heard so much about Igor Levit as this emerging talent which The Wig was promoting, so when this concert came up in the Twixtmas period, I thought it would be a good one for us.

Here is a link to the programme of the concert we heard.

I thought he was very good, but Janie thought he was showy and our friend Eric Rhode voted with his feet at half time, telling me afterwards that he found Levit’s playing very heavy handed.

He’s certainly getting rave reviews now; perhaps he was still a bit raw in 2014.

Here is a little snatch of Levit playing one of the Bach Partitas a few months earlier than our concert – it’ll give you an idea of his style and you can judge for yourselves: