73-543: The Wigmore Hall is a concert hall at 36 Wigmore Street , in west London. It was designed by Thomas Edward Collcutt and opened in 1901 as the Bechstein Hall ; it is considered to have particularly good acoustics . It specialises in performances of chamber music , early music, vocal music and song recitals, and hosts over five hundred concerts each year, as well as a weekly concert broadcast on BBC Radio 3 . The Bechstein Hall
146-662: A best-seller. As well as his performing partnership with Britten, Pears established another with Julian Bream , who, as a lutenist , accompanied him in many works, most notably those of English composers of the Tudor period. Pears and Britten maintained an arduous international touring schedule, and made many broadcasts and gramophone recordings. In the 1970s Pears created roles in Britten's last two operas, playing General Wingrave in Owen Wingrave recorded at Aldeburgh for its premiere, which
219-471: A certain whiteness of tone ... a kind of English cathedral sound." In the same year, after Peter Burra was given a long-term loan of a cottage on Bucklebury Common , Berkshire, Pears began to stay with him regularly, and it was through Burra that he got to be friendly with the rising young composer Benjamin Britten , who had become another good friend of Burra's. In 1937 Burra was killed in an air crash. Pears and Britten volunteered to clear his possessions from
292-405: A copy of Crabbe's collection of narrative poems The Borough . He suggested to Britten that the section about the fisherman Peter Grimes would make a good subject for an opera. Britten agreed, and, a Suffolk man himself, was struck with a deep nostalgia by the poem. He later said, "I suddenly realised where I belonged and what I lacked". He and Pears began to plan their return to England. They made
365-430: A happy childhood. He enjoyed his schooldays at his prep school , The Grange, and his public school, Lancing College , which he attended from 1923 to 1928. He showed considerable talent for music, both as a pianist and as a singer, playing leading roles in school productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operas. He was a capable and enthusiastic cricketer, and remembered all his life the pride he felt in scoring 81 not out in
438-537: A lineup of additional singers in further Britten works. Later in the season, Wigmore Hall commemorated both Britten's birthday and the anniversary of his death. Since its inception, the Hall has been a major hub for Lieder and art song performance. The British première of Schubert 's Die schöne Müllerin took place at Wigmore Hall in 1903 as well as the first UK performance of Janáček 's song cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared in 1922. Peter Schreier , Janet Baker and Margaret Price performed regularly at
511-504: A new series of informal performances which showcase emerging talent. Behind the Music is a programme of study events including talks, lecture-recitals, masterclasses, study groups and Come and Sing days. 51°31′00″N 0°08′57″W / 51.516535°N 0.149292°W / 51.516535; -0.149292 Wigmore Street Wigmore Street is a street in the City of Westminster , in
584-509: A number of contemporary public art works; he later became principal of the Edinburgh College of Art . After the completion of the design, the cupola was executed by the sculptor Frank Lynn Jenkins . It was restored in 1991 and 1992 and has often been featured in the Hall's marketing and print material. The Hall is considered to have one of the best acoustics for classical music in Europe. It
657-534: A partnership, the composer wrote many concert and operatic works with Pears's voice in mind, and the singer played roles in more than ten operas by Britten. In the concert hall, Pears and Britten were celebrated recitalists, known in particular for their performances of lieder by Schubert and Schumann . Together they recorded most of the works written for Pears by Britten, as well as a wide range of music by other composers. Working with other musicians, Pears sang an extensive repertoire of music from four centuries, from
730-518: A restaurant on the lower ground floor, below the main auditorium. Wigmore Hall enjoyed a number of long associations with many great artists of the 20th century including Elisabeth Schwarzkopf , Victoria de los Ángeles , Sergey Prokofiev , Shura Cherkassky , Paul Hindemith , Andrés Segovia , Peter Pears , Benjamin Britten and Francis Poulenc . The Hall maintained a particularly fruitful relationship with Benjamin Britten, both as composer and performer. His Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings ,
803-618: A stroke ended his singing career in 1980 shortly after the celebrations marking his seventieth birthday. After that he remained an active director of the Aldeburgh Festival, and taught at the Britten-Pears School which he and his partner had set up in 1972. Pears died in Aldeburgh on 3 April 1986 at the age of 75. He was buried beside Britten in the churchyard of the parish church of St Peter and St Paul , Aldeburgh. Pears's voice
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#1732852122326876-478: A trial match against Surrey at the Oval . Lancing had a strong Christian tradition; while there, Pears felt a sense of vocation for the priesthood, but increasingly found this impossible to reconcile with his growing awareness of his homosexuality. In 1928 Pears went to Keble College, Oxford , to study music. He was not at this stage sure whether his musical future was as a singer or as player; during his brief time at
949-426: A wholly suitable voice coach. In 1938 he had his first professional experience of opera, as an understudy and member of the chorus at Glyndebourne . In April 1939, Pears accompanied Britten as he sailed to North America , going first to Canada and then to New York . Their relationship ceased to be platonic, and from then until Britten's death they were partners in both their professional and personal lives. When
1022-571: The Royal College of Music in London, first as a part-time student and then, having been awarded a scholarship, studying full-time from 1934. He shared an apartment with Trevor Harvey and Basil Douglas . He appeared in student productions of opera, finding himself wholly at home on the stage, and learning from the experience of singing Delius under Sir Thomas Beecham and roles in works by Mozart and Puccini . But, as at Oxford, he failed to complete
1095-619: The Second World War began, Britten and Pears turned for advice to the British embassy in Washington and were told that they should remain in the US as artistic ambassadors. Pears was inclined to disregard the advice and go back to England; Britten also felt the urge to return, but accepted the embassy's counsel and persuaded Pears to do the same. In 1940 Britten composed Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo ,
1168-490: The Takács Quartet , given to mark the beginning of a year-long international celebration of the 100th anniversary of Britten's birth. Wigmore Hall's 2019–20 season featured a series focusing on Britten and his connections with the venue. Allan Clayton and James Baillieu commemorated the first performance of Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo , given by Britten and his partner, the tenor Peter Pears, on 23 September 1942, alongside
1241-511: The West End of London . The street runs for about 600 yards parallel and to the north of Oxford Street between Portman Square to the west and Cavendish Square to the east. It is named after the village of Wigmore and its castle in Herefordshire , a seat of the family of Robert Harley , politician around the time of Queen Anne , who owned land in the area. Numbers 18-22 Wigmore Street,
1314-549: The 1960s was the premiere of Britten's War Requiem in May 1962, marking the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral . Britten composed it with the voices of Pears, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Galina Vishnevskaya in mind. The Soviet authorities prevented Vishnevskaya from taking part ( Heather Harper deputised) but in January 1963 all three intended soloists took part in a Decca recording conducted by Britten, which unexpectedly became
1387-629: The Austrian pianist Helmut Deutsch . Since 1994, Wigmore Hall's Learning programme has been giving people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities opportunities to take part in creative music making, engaging a broad and diverse audience through creative projects, concerts, workshops and online resources. Every year there are around 600 Learning events, with nearly 30,000 visits to the programme. Wigmore Hall Learning collaborates with community, education, arts, health and social care organisations, working in partnership to engage people who might not otherwise have
1460-578: The Brinsmead Galleries, were built in 1892, designed by Leonard V. Hunt for John Brinsmead & Sons piano manufacturers. There are nine showrooms. The well-known Wigmore Hall concert hall (at No 36 Wigmore Street) was also built by a piano manufacturers, the German company C. Bechstein Pianofortefabrik in 1899–1901, with a showroom next door. It is located on the north side, just to the east of
1533-678: The Cardinal Hume Centre, which enable people to gain the skills they need to overcome poverty and homelessness, and activity with Solace Women's Aid, which supports women and children who have experienced domestic violence. Pathways is a range of schemes and events which provides a platform for emerging artists, supporting the next generation of musicians and music leaders. This includes annual Trainee Music Leaders, Royal Academy of Music / Wigmore Hall Fellowship Ensemble and RPS / Wigmore Hall Apprentice Composer schemes, as well as Bechstein Sessions,
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#17328521223261606-579: The Doric String Quartet, The Elias String Quartet, Ning Feng, Francesco Piemontesi, Alina Ibragimova, Mahan Esfahni, Arcangelo, Hilary Hahn, Thomas Ades, Sir George Benjamin, Julia Fisher, Nicola Benedetti, Isabele Faust, Bretton Brown, and Christian Gerharher have become associated with and connected to Wigmore Hall through concert series and artistic residencies. The Hall is noted for helping young artists launch and develop their international careers. The following chamber works had their UK premières at
1679-697: The Duke in Rigoletto , Alfredo in La traviata , Almaviva in The Barber of Seville , Ferrando in Così fan tutte and Vašek in The Bartered Bride . His growing operatic experience and expertise affected the composition of Britten's opera Peter Grimes . The composer had envisaged the central figure, based on Crabbe's brutal fisherman, as a villainous baritone, but he began to rethink
1752-479: The English Opera Group; the librettist Eric Crozier and the designer John Piper joined Britten as artistic directors. The group's express purpose was to produce and commission new English operas and other works, presenting them throughout the country. Britten wrote the comic opera Albert Herring for the group in 1947. Pears played the title role – one of his fairly rare excursions into comedy. Reviews of
1825-687: The Hall has committed to premièring 13 new works per season. The biennial Wigmore Hall/Independent Opera International Song Competition (formerly the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition) was founded in 1997 and has run at the venue since then. After 20 years of support from The Kohn Foundation, the 2019 Competition was sponsored by Independent Opera at Sadler's Wells. Independent Opera's relationship with Wigmore Hall dates back 10 years to its first Wigmore Hall/Independent Opera Voice Fellowship awarded to bass Matthew Rose . The Preliminary Round,
1898-755: The Hall shares pale terracotta ornamentation. Bechstein Hall opened on 31 May 1901 with a concert featuring pianist and composer Ferruccio Busoni and violinist Eugène Ysaÿe . During its early period the Hall attracted great musicians like Artur Schnabel , Peter Arnold , Pablo Sarasate , Percy Grainger , Myra Hess , Arthur Rubinstein , Vladimir Rosing , Alexander Siloti , Camille Saint-Saëns , Jascha Spivakovsky , Max Reger and Marian Anderson (who performed there in 1933). The Bechstein Company built similar concert halls in Saint Petersburg and Paris, though like its London offices and performing space, these and
1971-588: The Hall's core repertoire of classical song, chamber and early music, as well as introducing new initiatives to attract a more diverse audience. Gilhooly introduced jazz evenings, curated by the American jazz pianist Brad Mehldau . World music is also a regular feature and there is a series of late night concerts, which have attracted new younger listeners. The previous artistic director was Paul Kildea . Before him, William Lyne served as director for 37 years from 1966 to 2003, during which time he introduced themed seasons,
2044-560: The Hall, and in recent years Wigmore has produced recitals featuring Thomas Quasthoff , Ian Bostridge , Susan Graham , Mark Padmore , Sir Thomas Allen , Matthias Goerne , Dame Felicity Lott , Angelika Kirchschlager , Simon Keenlyside , Anne Sofie von Otter , Wolfgang Holzmair , Christopher Maltman , Andreas Scholl , and Soile Isokoski . More recent performers include Christian Gerhaher , Florian Boesch , Roderick Williams , Iestyn Davies , Sandrine Piau , Lucy Crowe and Henk Neven. Instrumentalists and chamber groups performing at
2117-541: The Hall: Janáček 's Sonata for violin and piano; Bartók 's six string quartets; Schoenberg 's String Quartet No. 2; Debussy 's Violin Sonata; Copland 's Contrasts; and Richard Strauss 's Sextet from Capriccio . Wigmore Hall's director is Limerick -born John Gilhooly , OBE, a classical singer. He joined as CEO in 2000 and became artistic director in addition in 2005 at the age of 32. Gilhooly has maintained and expanded
2190-775: The Queen's Jubilee Medal, 1977, Musician of the Year, Incorporated Society of Musicians, 1978, and the Royal Opera House's Long Service Medal, 1979. For Decca, Pears recorded almost all the music written for him by Britten. The major exception is the role of the Earl of Essex in Gloriana , which was not recorded until after Britten and Pears were dead. Pears's other Decca recordings range from early music by Dowland , Schütz and their contemporaries to Walton's Façade , and include such varied repertory as
2263-798: The Second String Quartet, The Holy Sonnets of John Donne and Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo were premièred at the Hall, as were extracts from the opera Peter Grimes (ahead of its world première at the Sadler's Wells Theatre in June 1945). Wigmore Hall commemorated its association with Britten with a series of performances and events entitled 'Before Life and After' in November and December 2012. Those concerts featured artists such as Alice Coote , Ann Murray , Mark Padmore , Gerald Finley , Julius Drake , Malcolm Martineau , Martyn Brabbins , Nash Ensemble and
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2336-660: The Semi-Finals and Final are held at Wigmore Hall. Sinc July 2020 the Hall has also hosted the triennial Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition (formerly The London International String Quartet Competition and initially the Portsmouth International String Quartet Competition). Singers and pianists aged 33 or under from around the world are eligible. The hall is a venue for broadcasting and recording . BBC Radio 3 transmits its lunchtime concert from Wigmore Hall every Monday during
2409-548: The Tudor period to the most modern times. With Britten, Pears was a co-founder of the Aldeburgh Festival in 1947 and the Britten-Pears School in 1972. After Britten died in 1976, Pears remained an active participant in the festival and the school, where he was director of singing. His voice had a distinctive timbre, not to all tastes; however, he could use his voice very well in singing many musical styles. Pears
2482-624: The business as a whole suffered during the First World War . Bechstein was forced to cease trading in Britain on 5 June 1916 after the passing of the Trading with the Enemy Amendment Act 1916 and all property, including the concert hall and the showrooms, was seized and summarily closed. In 1916 the Hall was sold as enemy property at auction to Debenhams for £56,500 – a figure considerably short of
2555-608: The character as "neither a hero nor a villain" and not a baritone but a tenor, written to fit Pears's voice. In January 1944 Britten and Pears began a long association with the Decca Record Company , recording four of Britten's folk song arrangements. In May of the same year, with Dennis Brain and the Boyd Neel Orchestra, they recorded the Serenade. As the war was nearing its end, the artistic director of Sadler's Wells,
2628-906: The comic (Flute in A Midsummer Night's Dream , 1960) to the deeply serious (Aschenbach in Death in Venice , 1973). His other creations at Aldeburgh included the Madwoman in Curlew River (1964), Nebuchadnezzar in The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966) and the Tempter in The Prodigal Son (1968). For the English Opera Group during the 1950s, Pears also sang Macheath in Britten's radically revised version of The Beggar's Opera , Satyavān in Holst 's Sāvitri , and
2701-458: The cottage, and their daily contact during this period cemented their friendship. Pears quickly became Britten's musical inspiration and close (though for the moment platonic) friend. Britten's first work for him was composed within weeks of their meeting, a setting of Emily Brontë 's poem, "A thousand gleaming fires", for tenor and strings. Up to this point Pears had not pursued his career or his vocal training with any great determination. With
2774-587: The course. He chafed at subsisting on a student's limited funds, and wanted a good, steady income. He auditioned for the BBC and was given a two-year contract as a member of the BBC Singers , a small vocal ensemble. In 1936 Pears made his first recording as a soloist, in Peter Warlock 's "Corpus Christi Carol". Headington comments on "a thoughtful word delivery and a sensitive moulding of quietly flowing phrases, but also
2847-421: The event Pears did not take to Oxford's academic regime, which required him to study a range of subjects before specialising in music. He failed the first-year examinations ( Moderations ) and though he was entitled to resit them he decided against doing so, and went down from Oxford. With no clear idea of his future, Pears took a teaching post at his old preparatory school in 1929. Among his dearest friends were
2920-553: The extensive press coverage was to do with the work, but there was also high praise for the performances of Pears and Cross. Dismayed by the in-fighting among the company, Cross, Britten and Pears severed their ties with Sadler's Wells in December 1945, going on to found what was to become the English Opera Group . Britten's next opera, The Rape of Lucretia , was presented at the first post-war Glyndebourne Festival, in 1946. It
2993-543: The famous legal case about causing a " nuisance " between neighbours – Sturges v. Bridgman (1879). [REDACTED] Media related to Wigmore Street at Wikimedia Commons 51°30′58″N 0°09′01″W / 51.51611°N 0.15028°W / 51.51611; -0.15028 This London road or road transport-related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Peter Pears Sir Peter Neville Luard Pears CBE ( / ˈ p ɪər z / PEERZ ; 22 June 1910 – 3 April 1986)
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3066-524: The first of many song cycles for Pears. The composer and biographer David Matthews described the cycle as Britten's "declaration of love for Peter". The partners made a private recording of the work in New York shortly after it was completed, but the public premiere was not for a further two years. In 1941, spurred by a magazine article by E M Forster about the Suffolk poet George Crabbe , Pears bought Britten
3139-471: The first of which was the Fauré Series in 1979–80, with subsequent programmes dedicated to Schumann , Purcell , Bach , Ligeti , Haydn , Shostakovich and Vaughan Williams . Building on its heritage, Wigmore Hall has become a major commissioner of new music. On 31 August 2007, John Gilhooly announced a scheme for modern composers. Wigmore fosters further links with the contemporary music scene through
3212-649: The hall include Leslie Howard , Vladimir Ashkenazy , Charlie Siem , Stephen Kovacevich , András Schiff , Joshua Bell , Maxim Vengerov , Angela Hewitt , Steven Isserlis , Pierre-Laurent Aimard , Steven Osborne , Stephen Hough , Bruce Brubaker , the Nash Ensemble , the Beaux Arts and Florestan Trios and the Artemis, Aviv , Belcea, Emerson, Endellion, Hagen, Jerusalem, Takács and Zehetmair Quartets. In recent years, artists and ensembles including Igor Levit, Iestyn Davies,
3285-549: The inaugural festival, Albert Herring played at the Jubilee Hall, and Britten's new cantata Saint Nicolas , was presented in the parish church, with Pears as the tenor soloist. The festival was an immediate success and became an annual event that has continued into the 21st century. New works by Britten featured in almost every festival until his death in 1976. They included operas in which leading roles were created by Pears, and written with his voice in mind. They ranged from
3358-499: The introduction of its Composer-in-Residence scheme. Luke Bedford became the first Composer-in-Residence in 2009 and was succeeded by Julian Anderson in 2013. Alongside performances of their work, Wigmore has featured series of concerts dedicated to the music of Sir George Benjamin , Huw Watkins , Thomas Larcher , Elliott Carter , Brett Dean , Kevin Volans , James MacMillan and Jörg Widmann . The 2019–20 season Composer-in-Residence
3431-452: The junction with Welbeck Street . For about a hundred years beginning in the late 19th century, Wigmore Street had a great concentration of optometrists, dispensing opticians, makers of ophthalmic instruments, and related professions. Harley Street and Wimpole Street , famous for their private medical practices, are nearby and have junctions with Wigmore Street. The veteran pharmacy John Bell & Croyden has been located in premises on
3504-470: The opera were mixed, but Pears's performance as Albert, the mother's boy who kicks over the traces, received consistently good notices. While on tour as Albert, Pears came up with the idea of mounting a festival in the small Suffolk seaside town of Aldeburgh . Britten had bought a house there, and the town was his principal residence for the rest of his life. The Aldeburgh Festival was launched in June 1948, with Britten, Pears and Crozier directing it. For
3577-664: The opportunity to take part. The programme includes work with schools, including concerts, teacher training, projects with hospital schools and the innovative Partner Schools Programme, in which Wigmore Hall Learning works in partnership with schools and Music Education Hubs to co-produce activity over three years, creating a creative whole school plan for music. Families are invited to the hall to take part in interactive workshops and concerts for families with babies, children in their early years and children aged 5+. Community partnerships include Music for Life (for people living with dementia and their families, friends and carers), projects with
3650-663: The perilous Atlantic crossing in April 1942. Having arrived in England, Britten and Pears successfully applied for official recognition as conscientious objectors , Pears's application running much more smoothly than Britten's. One of their early performances together after their return was the public premiere of the Michelangelo cycle at the Wigmore Hall in September 1942. Their recording of
3723-655: The season, which runs from September to July. Recent BBC Lunchtime Concerts have featured Benjamin Grosvenor , the Škampa Quartet, Christoph Denoth, Noriko Ogawa , Gautier Capuçon , Gabriela Montero , the ATOS Trio, Clara Mouriz, Mark Padmore and Yevgeny Sudbin . A number of evening concerts are also broadcast live or recorded for later transmission on Sky Arts TV as well as being released by recording companies. Wigmore Hall also publishes recordings of concerts by prominent artists on its own record label Wigmore Hall Live, receiving
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#17328521223263796-431: The singer Joan Cross , announced her intention to re-open the company's home base in London with Britten's new opera Peter Grimes , casting herself and Pears in the leading roles. There were complaints from company members about supposed favouritism and the "cacophony" of Britten's score, as well as some ill-suppressed homophobic remarks. Peter Grimes opened in June 1945 and was hailed by public and critics. Most of
3869-430: The special award Label of the Year in the 2011 Gramophone Awards. The label entered the classical charts with a recital by the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson , which has also been nominated for a Gramophone Award. Recent additions to the catalogue include recitals by the violinist Maxim Vengerov of works by Bach and Beethoven and baritone Roderick Williams's concert of works by Mahler, Korngold and Schumann, accompanied by
3942-404: The stimulus of Britten's music written for him he became much more focused. After their deaths John Amis wrote that Britten would have become a great composer without Pears, but that Pears would probably not have become a great singer without Britten. Pears took vocal lessons from the eminent Lieder singer Elena Gerhardt , but they were of limited help to him, and it was some time before he found
4015-486: The street since 1912. Number 95 Wigmore Street was the location of the original offices of the Beatles ' Apple Corps in 1968 prior to their move to Savile Row . The nearest tube stations are on Oxford Street, which runs south of and parallel to Wigmore Street: Marble Arch , located to the south-west; Bond Street to the south, and Oxford Circus to the south-east. The corner of Wimpole and Wigmore Streets features in
4088-677: The tenor part in Das Lied von der Erde in the same year. From the late 1940s he gained an international reputation as the Evangelist in the St Matthew Passion . The music critic David Cairns wrote, "Pears's interpretation of the evangelist's part in the Bach Passions seemed complete as no other singer's: it encompassed every turn in the drama, the pity, the anger, the despair, the resignation." In Lieder by Schubert , Schumann and others he
4161-716: The title role in Mozart's Idomeneo . At Covent Garden he created roles in operas by Britten and Walton: Vere in Billy Budd (1951), Essex in Gloriana (1953), and Pandarus in Troilus and Cressida (1954). Among his roles in older operas were Tamino, Vašek, and David in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg . Throughout the 1940s and 1950s Pears continually expanded his recital and concert repertoire. He sang his first Gerontius in 1944, and
4234-455: The twins Peter Burra and Nell Burra; Peter was a close friend from Lancing days, and Nell looked on Pears as almost another brother. She urged him not to drift into a lifetime of schoolmastering, and he concluded that his future lay in singing. He later said that it was hearing the tenor Steuart Wilson (a distant cousin) singing the Evangelist in J S Bach 's St Matthew Passion that "started me off". He successfully applied for admission to
4307-404: The university, he was appointed temporary assistant organist at Hertford College , which was useful practical experience. Headington comments that a musical conservatoire such as the Royal College of Music would have suited Pears better than the Oxford course, but at the time it was seen as a natural progression for an English public school boy to continue his education at Oxford or Cambridge. In
4380-476: The voice could also be commanding, almost heroic, as was shown in the more vehement sections of Captain Vere's role or in the part of the Madwoman in Curlew River . David Cairns broadly concurred, writing: His voice … was not beautiful in itself; its reedy timbre was so idiosyncratic that for some people it came between them and the music. Even his countless admirers might have agreed that, objectively considered, it lacked warmth and variety of colour. But so great
4453-548: The work for HMV was released in February 1943. Britten was by now so obsessed with the sound of Pears's "heavenly voice" that he went out of his way to discourage sopranos from singing his earlier song cycle, Les Illuminations , though it had been specifically composed for the soprano voice. For Pears, Britten composed one of his most popular works, the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings (1943). In early 1943 Pears joined Sadler's Wells Opera Company . His roles included Tamino in The Magic Flute , Rodolfo in La bohème ,
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#17328521223264526-413: The £100,000 cost of the building alone. It was then rechristened Wigmore Hall and opened under the new name in 1917. The Wigmore Hall follows the Renaissance style , using alabaster and marble walls, which furnish a flat, rectangular hall with a small raised stage area complete with a cupola above depicting the Soul of Music. The distinctive mural was designed by Gerald Moira , who was responsible for
4599-429: Was Vijay Iyer . In 2012, John Gilhooly publicised a renewed commissioning scheme, supported by a major gift from the Fondation Hoffmann and its president, the Swiss businessman, conservationist and philanthropist, André Hoffmann. The Fondation's donation has ensured the commission of new works by Julian Anderson, Peter Eötvös , Anna Meredith , Nico Muhly , Wolfgang Rihm , Judith Weir and Jörg Widmann and from 2013
4672-532: Was a chamber piece for eight singers and an orchestra of twelve players. Pears and Cross were the Male and Female Chorus, with Kathleen Ferrier as Lucretia. After the festival, the work was taken on tour to provincial cities under the banner of the "Glyndebourne English Opera Company", an uneasy alliance of Britten and his associates with John Christie , the autocratic proprietor of Glyndebourne. The tour lost money heavily, and Christie announced that he would underwrite no more tours. Britten and his associates set up
4745-403: Was almost always accompanied by Britten, a partnership that Headington calls "as nearly an artistic unity as could be imagined"; Cairns calls their Lieder performances "never to be forgotten". They made recordings for Decca of Die schöne Müllerin , Winterreise and Dichterliebe that have remained in print since their first issue in the 1960s. Among the highlights of Pears's career in
4818-414: Was an English tenor . His career was closely associated with the composer Benjamin Britten , his personal and professional partner for nearly forty years. Pears' musical career started slowly. He was at first unsure whether to concentrate on playing piano and organ, or singing; it was not until he met Britten in 1937 that he threw himself wholeheartedly into singing. Once he and Britten were established as
4891-406: Was born in Farnham , Surrey, the youngest of the seven children of Arthur Grant Pears and his wife, Jessie Elizabeth de Visme, daughter of Richard Luard . Arthur Pears was a civil engineer and successful businessman, who spent much of his time working overseas. The biographers Christopher Headington and Donald Mitchell both remark on two contrasting strands in Pears's heredity: the Luard family
4964-431: Was both unmistakable and controversial. Some music-lovers found his characteristic timbre uncongenial. The critic Alan Blyth described it thus: Clear, reedy and almost instrumental in quality, it was capable of great expressive variety and flexibility, if no wide range of colour. Its inward, reflective timbre, tinged with poetry, was artfully exploited by Britten, from the role of Peter Grimes to that of Aschenbach, but
5037-402: Was built between 1899 and 1901 by C. Bechstein Pianofortefabrik , the German piano manufacturer, whose showroom was next door. The British architect Thomas Edward Collcutt was commissioned to design the space. Collcutt was also responsible for the Savoy Hotel on The Strand (since modified) and the Palace Theatre on Cambridge Circus (originally the Royal English Opera House ), with which
5110-456: Was his skill and so subtle and imaginative his musical sensitivity and mastery of inflection that it conveyed, together with his air of patrician authority, an extraordinary richness of atmosphere and feeling. Pears was awarded honorary degrees or fellowships by three music academies and nine universities in the UK and US. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1957, and knighted in 1978. Other awards included
5183-549: Was notable for its naval and military connections, and on his father's side there was a strong religious tradition, both Anglican and Quaker , with Elizabeth Fry counted among his ancestors. Mitchell comments that Pears's lifelong pacifism stemmed from the Quaker side of the family, and adds, "There was indeed something of the patrician Quaker in his looks, manners, and deeds. His habitual charm and courtesy rarely deserted him." Although his father, and sometimes his mother, were absent abroad for long periods, Pears evidently had
5256-550: Was on BBC television, and Aschenbach in Death in Venice (1973). It was in the latter role that Pears made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera , New York, at the age of 64. After Britten's death in 1976, Pears had the good fortune to find another accompanist with whom he could collaborate fruitfully. With Murray Perahia , Pears gave performances of such works as Britten's Michelangelo Sonnets and Schumann's Liederkreis to critical acclaim. He continued to perform until
5329-493: Was refurbished in 2004 and was widely praised for being completed on time and on budget. The Hall's current capacity, spread across the stalls and a smaller balcony, is 545 seats. In 2005, the Wigmore Hall Trust purchased a long lease of 300 years for £3.1m. This both secured the future of the Hall and allowed money previously required for rent to be used for further development of its artistic programme. There are two bars and
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