Wigmore Hall

Mozart 250: 1775

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Mozart 250: 1775
The Mozartists, Ian Page, Rachel Podger
Wigmore Hall. 18 June 2025

Photo: The Mozartists

Haydn: Symphony No. 66 in B flat
Mozart: Violin Concerto No.2 in D major, K.211
Symphony in D major, K.196+K. 121/207a
Violin Concerto No.5 in A major, K.219


The Mozartists‘ enterprising MOZART 250 project has reached its 10th anniversary, with concerts this season focusing on the year 1775, when Mozart was about 19. The project started in 2015 on the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s childhood visit to London and will follow Mozart’s musical life and that of his contemporaries year by year until the 250th anniversary of his death in 2041. It has been described as a “journey of a lifetime”, but it will probably outlive many members of the current concert audience. Given the noise the audience made during tuning up, I am not sure if they deserve to see the project through to the end. Perhaps surprisingly, given their status in the repertoire, Mozart completed all of his violin concertos by the time he was 19. This concert included two of them, with two more coming in November. The soloist, making her debut with The Mozartists, was the distinguished violinist Rachel Podger.

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Ton Koopman @ 80

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Ton Koopman 80th Birthday Celebrations
Soloists of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Ton Koopman
Wigmore Hall, 29 November 2024

Ton Koopman and a pocket-sized version of his Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra came to the Wigmore Hall as part of his extended 80th Birthday Celebrations. The main touring programme of the celebration year has been a new version of Handel’s Esther, which I don’t think ever came to the UK, but this was a less ambitious programme of music by the prolific Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) performed by six soloists from his orchestra.

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The Mozartists: Jommelli – a celebration

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Niccolò Jommelli – a celebration
The Mozartists, Ian Page
Fflur Wyn, Ambroisine Bré, Hugo Brady
Wigmore Hall, 18 September 2024

“Vidi il mar tutto in procella” from Ricimero, re de’ Goti (1740)
“Se il povero ruscello” from Ezio (1741)
“Io già sento nel mio petto” from Merope (1741)
“Crescon le fiamme” from Didone abbandonata (1763)
“De’ miei desiri ormai… Che farò?” from Il Vologeso (1766)
Duetto, “La destra ti chiedo” from Demofoonte (1764)
“ Ombre che tacite qui sede” from Fetonte (1768)
“Hereuse paix tranquille” from La critica (1766)
“Fra l’orror di notte oscura” from Armida abbandonata (1770)
“Prendi l’estremo addio” from Ifigenia in Tauride (1771)
“Sol del Tebro in su la sponda” from Il trionfo di Clelia (1774)
“Misera Armida … Odio, furor, dispetto” from Armida abbandonata (1770)

You would be forgiven for not having heard of Niccolò Jommelli (1714-1774), although he does have a Facebook profile, with the above profile picture – and now wants me to be his ‘Friend’. A prolific Neopolitan composer well-known in his day, he composed around 80 operas. He was described at the time as “the creator of a quite new taste, and certainly one of the foremost musical geniuses who have ever lived“. Selections from 11 of these were featured in this concert celebrating the 250th anniversary of his death, the first in The Mozartists’ 2024/25 season. Their exploration of Mozart and the composers around him in their MOZART 250 project has revealed many little-known delights, and Jommelli is certainly one of them. Of the five times I have reviewed music by Jommelli on this website, most have been courtesy of The Mozartists, including their 2016 concert performance of Jommelli’s opera Il Vologeso.

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The Mozartists

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Mozart in 1774
The Mozartists
Ian Page, Samantha Clarke, Jane Gower
Wigmore Hall. 2 May 2024

Mozart: Symphony No. 28 in C, K.200
Paisiello: Povera prence… Deh, non varcar (from Andromeda)
Mozart: Bassoon Concerto, K.191
Epistle Sonata in D major, K.144
Crudeli, fermate… Ah, dal pianto (from La finta giardiniera)
Symphony No. 30 in D, K.202

Following the opening concert on the 10th anniversary of their monumental MOZART 250 project, which gave a retrospective view of the wider context of music in 1774 (reviewed here), Ian Page’s The Mozartists focussed on Mozart himself in a concert that could be said to reflect the first true masterpieces of the still very young composer. The relatively little-known Mozart pieces were composed in Salzburg at a time when a new archbishop restricted the pan-European travels that his predecessor had allowed Mozart and his father. Only for the last three weeks of the year was he able to travel to Munich for the premiere of his opera La finta giardiniera, commissioned by the Elector Maximillian III for the Munich carnival.

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Strozzi: Il primo libro de madrigali 1644

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Songs from a Beautiful Mouth
Barbara Strozzi: Il primo libro de madrigali (1644)
Solomon’s Knot
Wigmore Hall, 4 Fenruary 2024

Solomon’s Knot has built an impressive reputation for its innovative approach to performing early music. Singing from memory, they incorporate subtle and very personal theatrical elements into their performances, whether bringing to life the individual characters in a Bach Passion or, as in this performance, stringing together a sequence of 17th-century madrigals into a believable storyline. The focus of this concert was the 1664 Il primo libro de madrigali the first publication by the extraordinary Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677), a Venetian composer who had been a teenage pupil of Cavalli. The madrigals, in a variety of styles, set texts by her father, the poet Giulio Strozzi. He had nurtured her musical career from an early age, helped by the elevated social and cultural circles in which her family moved.

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