Wigmore Hall is a concert hall at 36 Wigmore Street in west London, England. It was designed by T.

Venue: Wigmore Hall
Town: London, GB

Wigmore Hall is a concert hall at 36 Wigmore Street in west London, England. It was designed by T. E. 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. It has been a Grade II listed building since 1966. The Bechstein Hall was built between 1899 and 1901 by C. Bechstein Pianofortefabrik, the German piano manufacturer, whose showroom was next door. The British architect T. E. 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 the Hall shares pale terracotta ornamentation. Bechstein Hall opened on 31 May 1901 with a concert featuring the pianist and composer Ferruccio Busoni and the violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. During its early period the Hall attracted great musicians like Artur Schnabel, Peter Arnold, Pablo de 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 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 the £100,000 cost of the building alone. It was then rechristened Wigmore Hall and opened under the new name in 1917. The