Wigmore Hall Celebrates The Coronation With Rare Performances of All Four Handel Coronation Anthems

Wigmore Hall celebrates the coronation of King Charles III with a concert featuring George Frideric Handel's music for the 1727 coronation of King George II on Tuesday 6 June. The programme includes all four of Handel's coronation anthems, rarely performed together, and the Dettingen Te Deum, which celebrated the British victory over the French during the War of the Austrian Succession.

As a gesture of diplomatic and neighbourly friendship, this most British celebration is performed by the leading French baroque ensemble Le Concert Spirituel and conductor Hervé Niquet at St James's Spanish Place, the historic Catholic church a short walk from Wigmore Hall.

John Gilhooly, Director of Wigmore Hall, said, "Musicians from republican France, performing German music about a British victory over the French in battle, for the coronation of a British king, in a Roman Catholic church with historic links to Spain - it is a wonderfully 21st-century mash up for the cosmopolitan classical music world. I knew we had to do it as soon as I heard the edits of their wonderful recording. St. James's Spanish Place is a long-standing friend of the Hall and the ideal venue for the large forces required for this festive music."

Handel - born in Germany but, by early 1727, a naturalized British subject and London resident of some 15 years - was one of Georgian England's most feted artistic personalities. His four coronation anthems for King George II and Queen Caroline's coronation were hugely popular at the time but are rarely performed together today. The much-loved 'Zadok the Priest' has been featured in every British coronation since then and is the basis for the UEFA Champions League Anthem.

The St. James's Spanish Place concert is the latest instalment of Wigmore Hall's programme to bring the highest-quality music-making to its immediate community - following a series of successful family concerts at Portman Square in 2021. Linked historically to the Spanish Embassy, which once occupied the present Wallace Collection building, St James's Spanish Place was the site of a requiem mass for Dom Carlos I, King of Portugal, in 1908, which was attended by King Edward VII, the first British monarch to attend a Catholic mass since King James Ii. The church will host another concert from Wigmore Hall's summer season on Monday 19 June, when Solomon's Knot performs Bach's St Matthew Passion.

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