For Thursday 8 through Saturday 10 October, Wigmore Hall offers a compact way through three connected ideas: the recital song, its instrumental afterlife, and the literary work that keeps repertoire in circulation. Iestyn Davies and Oliver Wass begin with a Vienna-focused programme for countertenor and harp; Bertrand Chamayou and Vilde Frang bring Bartók’s First Violin Sonata into Friday’s chamber setting; then Richard Stokes’s Carl Loewe book launch turns Saturday lunchtime into a sung encounter with a composer whose ballads have remained a specialist pleasure. The scale is deliberately intimate across all three dates, yet the range of music and formats gives each night a distinct centre of gravity. Seen together, the sequence gives listeners three different ways into closely worked musical storytelling: through voice and text, through instrumental argument, and through songs introduced alongside the research that frames them.[1][4]

Thursday: Vienna reframed for countertenor and harp

Iestyn Davies and Oliver Wass arrive at Wigmore Hall at 7.30pm on Thursday with Wiener Abend: The Evolution of Art Song in Vienna. The listed arc moves through Gluck, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Brahms, placing the programme inside a long Viennese line of voice-led expression. Its most individual detail is the pair’s arrangement of music from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice as a dramatic cantata. That makes the evening useful for listeners who enjoy recital programmes with a firm historical thread, while still wanting the concentrated sound world of two performers shaping the room together.[1][2]

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Friday: Bartók in chamber focus

Friday 9 October, also at 7.30pm, shifts the route from sung text to the charged conversation of violin and piano. Bertrand Chamayou joins Vilde Frang, alongside Salamon and Benjamin Eredics, for a programme whose announced centre includes Bartók’s Violin Sonata No. 1. The sonata is a meaningful choice for this sequence: it keeps the intensity and rhetorical directness of the preceding night, while placing those qualities in instrumental lines. Chamayou’s own work has repeatedly included chamber partnerships, including performances with Frang, so the concert carries the feel of an established musical exchange instead of a one-off pairing.[3][4]

Saturday: Carl Loewe’s ballads in the room

At 12 noon on Saturday 10 October, Richard Stokes launches A Carl Loewe Song Companion with singers Juliane Banse, Lizzie Bett Estrada, Aksel Rykkvin and Henk Neven, joined by pianist Joseph Middleton. The accompanying recital is built from Loewe ballads, Frauenliebe, Goethe settings and lyrical songs, bringing the book’s subject out of print and into performance. Loewe’s songs can feel unusually dramatic in recital because narrative, character and scene carry such weight; this programme leans into that theatrical current through titles including Faust material, supernatural scenes and historical ballads. It is the weekend’s most direct invitation to hear scholarship become programming.[1][4]

A practical three-date route

Taken together, the three concerts offer a clean progression: Thursday’s countertenor-and-harp colours, Friday’s violin-and-piano friction, then Saturday’s voices carrying Loewe’s stories. All take place at Wigmore Hall, with starts at 7.30pm on Thursday, 7.30pm on Friday and 12 noon on Saturday. The Saturday event is scheduled to run for about two hours including an interval. Check Wigmore Hall’s official pages again before travelling for current ticket availability, running times and any programme changes.[1][4][5]

Sources

  1. Calendar — September to December 2026 — Wigmore Hall
  2. About — Iestyn Davies
  3. Biographie — Bertrand Chamayou
  4. Wigmore Hall 2026/27 Season Announcement Press Release — Wigmore Hall
  5. Wigmore Hall — Wigmore Hall