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Top Stars Queue Up for Wigmore Season

In launching Wigmore Hall’s 110th season, artistic director John Gilhooly delivered a shocking statistic. The proportion of money that goes to the arts in the UK is just 0.007% of public funding. It puts the seemingly high amounts awarded to the big opera companies, let alone the lesser sums to many much smaller arts organisations throughout the country, into some sort of context.

It’s a wonder that a small venue like Wigmore Hall can attract performers of the quality that they do year after year. There’s a predictability to the programming perhaps – you know you’re going to get Angelika Kirchschlager, Mark Padmore, Ian Bostridge, Julius Drake, Alice Coote, Christopher Maltman and Gerald Finley to name a few – but with such outstanding artists, who’s complaining?

Other singers who will be appearing during the 2010/11 season will include Karita Mattila, Susan Graham, Jonas Kaufmann, Thomas Hampson, Andreas Scholl, Sandrine Piau, James Gilchrist, Soile Isokoski and Kate Royal, and that’s just among the singers. The line-up of chamber artists and instrumental soloists is equally impressive.

There are too many riches to fully summarise the programme but just a few highlights include Ms Kirchschlager singing Schumann to kick off the season, Matthias Goerne and Mark Padmore singing Schubert (separately), Diana Damrau singing anything (programme to be announced) and Kaufmann also doing Schubert with Die schöne Müllerin.

For full details of the rest of this and next season at Wigmore Hall, go to www.wigmore-hall.org.uk

- by Simon Thomas

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