Wigmore Hall Live Streaming Concert to Begin January 28, Featuring Berlin's Armida Quartet

Although classical concerts are typically the privilege of paying customers – and, by definition, a matter of physical attendance – London's Wigmore Hall has adopted a more altruistic approach in a program that caters to the widest audience possible without charging a dime. The Wigmore Hall live streaming concert on January 28th, 8pm GMT (to inaugurate their 2016-2017 season) will be the first of a new series of streamed concerts for the Wigmore. It will feature the performances of Berlin’s Armida Quartet, Soprano Anna Lucia Richter, Pianist Michael Gees, and Baritone Andrè Schuen, and Pianist Daniel Heide.

The Wigmore Hall, a premiere classical recital hall dating from 1901, has been respected not just in the U.K. but throughout the world for its arguably superior acoustics. A recent surge of interest in the Wigmore's season schedules was observed by The Strad, which reported that in the 2015-2016 season the Wigmore saw audiences nearly double from 120,000 to 200,000 with most recitals “playing to capacity”. With seating already in high demand, the Wigmore Hall live streaming concert series could be seen as an ambitious case of public relations as they take advantage of an untapped “nosebleed” section thanks to increasingly capable internet connections.

Berlin's award-winning Armida Quartet, founded in 2006, is sure to be a major draw for the Wigmore, pulling from both European and world audiences alike. The Strad reported the ambition of Wigmore Hall's world-reach using the words of Wigmore's chief executive and artistic director John Gilhooly: “It is our responsibility to actively promote the arts, to make them as accessible as possible beyond the Hall and into the wider communities, and this is made possible by a new and stronger presence in the digital world.” Wigmore Hall's live streaming concerts on January 28th, after all, are promised to be “internationally available”, representing the expanding ambitions of a landmark music venue in response to some rapidly increasing awareness of the arts.

We've linked the Wigmore Hall live streaming concert below, where Berlin's Armida Quartet and many other talents will appear on January 28th. Now all you have to do is... wait.