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London’s upcoming concert week runs from Thursday 1 October through Sunday 4 October, and its strongest one-room proposition arrives on the opening night. Fretwork’s 40th Anniversary Gala at Wigmore Hall on Thursday 1 October gathers the viol consort with Sir George Benjamin, mezzo-soprano Susan Bickley, countertenor Iestyn Davies, tenor Ian Bostridge and organist Silas Wollston. It is an anniversary with a precise sense of place: Fretwork made its Wigmore Hall debut on 25 June 1986, and this return joins the group’s own history to music stretching from seventeenth-century England to work written for these players. The 7pm start also makes this a useful early-week anchor before London’s weekend calendar fractures into competing routes.[1][2]
The appeal is in the shape of the programme. William Lawes, Purcell, John Jenkins and Dowland supply the consort’s deep repertoire, while songs and vocal pieces by Britten, Vaughan Williams, Pearsall and Schütz draw the three visiting singers into the frame. Louis Couperin’s Pavanne and Wollston’s Swansong widen the palette again. This is a concert built around changes in scale and grain: six-stringed viols in close conversation, voices arriving as an extension of that texture, and organ bringing a further colour at selected points. Wigmore Hall’s programme presents the evening as a route across several centuries of music made for intimate acoustic attention.[1][2]
A Benjamin piece returning to its original circle
The centre of gravity is George Benjamin’s Upon Silence. Benjamin will conduct the work, with Bickley singing, in a performance that reconnects it to its first performers. Faber Music identifies the 1990 score as a piece for mezzo-soprano and five viols, written for Fretwork; its complete first performance came at Queen Elizabeth Hall on 30 October 1990 with Bickley, Fretwork and Benjamin. The text is W. B. Yeats’s “The Long-Legged Fly”, a useful detail for listeners who want an entry point into the work’s vocal line before the instrumental writing begins to circle it.[2][3]
That lineage gives the concert a focus beyond an anniversary roll call. Benjamin’s presence connects composition, conducting and the ensemble’s long-running commitment to new work, while Bickley’s return supplies a direct thread to the piece’s origin. Davies and Bostridge bring further vocal character to an evening whose historical repertoire includes Dowland’s “In darkness let me dwell” and Pearsall’s “Lay a garland on her hearse”. The result is a carefully assembled programme of voices, viols and memory, with each work carrying a different weight in the room.[1][2][3]
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Ten one-minute handovers
The newest gesture comes at the close. Fretwork has commissioned ten composers to contribute one minute each, in sequence, to a collective piece called Consequences. That compact premise suits an anniversary concert particularly well: a chain of handovers, with distinct composers writing into one shared occasion. It also keeps the evening rooted in the present, alongside the Lawes and Purcell that define much of the consort tradition. For listeners curious about how a specialist early-music ensemble sustains an active relationship with living composers, this final commission is the practical answer.[2]
Go to Wigmore Hall, 36 Wigmore Street, on Thursday 1 October for the 7pm performance. The event packet lists Fretwork, Sir George Benjamin, Susan Bickley, Iestyn Davies, Ian Bostridge and Silas Wollston; the hall’s published programme supplies the full repertoire sequence. Arrive with time to settle into the room, since the concert’s interest lies in fine changes of blend and resonance. Recheck Wigmore Hall and Fretwork’s official pages before travelling for current running, access and ticket information.[1][2]
Sources
- Fretwork 40th Anniversary — Wigmore Hall
- Concerts — Fretwork Viol Consort
- Upon Silence — Faber Music