Growing old gracefully | 25 June 2011

Michael Tanner says that the Wigmore Hall, celebrating its 110th birthday, combines Edwardian grandeur with contemporary appeal

The Wigmore Hall is so expert in advertising itself with taste and discretion that it manages to give the impression, simultaneously, of belonging to a previous era and thus having all the charm of the Edwardian age at its most appealing, while also showing its adaptability to contemporary technology and, at least as important, to contemporary music. Even its website contrives to have a winningly traditional air, while of course being completely up-to-date. Certainly the building itself, especially as you approach it, evokes the age in which it was constructed, 110 years ago, with its pointed glass canopy and its lengthy, narrow, mahogany-lined entrance hall. It was the Bechstein Hall, but in the fervour of anti-German feeling induced by the first world war it was sold off to Debenhams and the name was changed.