Wimbledon Worldwide Music Pageant returns subsequent month with 26 occasions on supply from 7 to 29 November 2026. This 12 months’s competition, the 18th, is the second competition underneath the creative directorship of Anthony Pal who took over from the competition’s founder, Anthony Wilkinson in 2025.
When he based the competition in 2009, Anthony Wilkinson had a long-held dream of making a brand new live performance corridor in Wimbledon. Below Anthony Pal, the competition has embraced a range of venues. The principle live performance venue is St John the Baptist, Spencer Hill however there are additionally occasions in Auditorium, Wimbledon Excessive Faculty; Higher Corridor, Sacred Coronary heart Church; King’s School Faculty, Wimbledon, together with extra uncommon areas together with Merton Arts House, Wimbledon Library; The Rushmere pub, Ridgway; Jeroboams wine bar, Wimbledon Village; together with a colleges’ live performance in New Wimbledon Theatre.
The competition opens with Sacred Splendour, music from Venice and Madrid carried out by Academy Choir of Wimbledon, conductor George Inscoe (Sub-Organist at St Paul’s Cathedral) , and His Majesty’s Sagbutts and Cornetts. And the competition concludes with a recital by pianist Angela Hewitt, who returns to the competition for the third time.
Different highlights embody a recital by pianist David Khrikuli, a laureate of the Chopin Worldwide Piano Competitors in Bach, Chopin, Ravel and Rachmaninoff, and competition creative director Anthony Pal joins Quatuor Agate for Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, plus quartets by Korngold and Schubert. Spanish pianist Antonio Oyarzábal joins the Solem Quartet for piano quintets by Dvorak and Amy Seashore. Members of Sinfonia Cymru are led by Haim Choi in a programme that strikes from Mendelssohn’s Octet and Oli Mustonen’s Nonetto II to smaller line-ups for music by Lili Boulanger, Louise Farrenc and Jean Francaix.
Max Barley (Director of Music, Holy Trinity Sloane Sq.) returns to the competition with the newest programme of Bach, this time the cantata Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, the motet O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht, and Magnificat. Sinfonia Smith Sq. are carried out by Charlotte Corderoy in Anna Clyne’s virtuosic orchestral showpiece Sound and fury, a brand new flugelhorn concerto, Hargrove, by Gabriel Jackson with soloist Imogen Whitehead (for whom it was written) and Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony.
A rising star of the viola, Edgar Francis was simply 22 years outdated when he gained the 2021 Cecil Aronowitz Worldwide Viola Competitors. At this 12 months’s competition he’s joined by pianist Jâms Coleman for the Tertis Memorial Live performance with music from Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, Rebecca Clarke and Frank Bridge.
There’s a gala recital by rising opera stars from the English Nationwide Opera, that includes favorite arias accompanied by piano and English glowing wine from Roebuck Estates. The Pageant takes over The Rushmere pub for 2 nights: jazz singer Natalie Williams and her band, in affiliation with Ronnie Scott’s, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, performing French Baroque music of their lighthearted Evening Shift format.
Candlelit concert events deliver a comfy Scandinavian environment to performances by the Lodestar Trio, combining Nordic people music with Bach, and soprano Ruby Hughes with lutenist Jonas Nordberg, performing a programme dedicated to John Dowland. While occasions at at Jeroboams in Wimbledon Village, pair music with wines from world wide: Neapolitan tune with wines from Naples and southern Italy, and Piazzolla with Argentinian wine. There’s a night of reside music and reside portray, with Jérémie Queyras and violinist Charlotte Spruit creating three large-scale canvases in the course of the live performance, which will probably be obtainable on the market afterwards.
Alongside its public performances, the Pageant reaches 1000’s of younger folks by its partnership with Merton Music Basis, supporting music schooling and bringing reside efficiency to colleges throughout the borough.
Full particulars from the Pageant’s web site.
