I’ve been going to concerts at the Wigmore Hall for something like half a century and even worked there for a brief spell, when I forlornly manned an ill-advised bookstall set up in the foyer. Like so many others, I adore the place – how could I not? I’ve heard such wonders there, from Janet Baker, Martha Argerich, Christian Gerhaher and the Takács Quartet to the marvellous Canadian violinist James Ehnes earlier this year.

Beautiful it is not. Designed by Thomas Collcutt, the architect responsible for the Savoy Hotel on the Strand, it is plushly late Victorian, heavy with mahogany panelling and marble effects, the auditorium crowned with Gerald Moira’s ludicrously pompous cupola depicting ‘The Soul of Music crowned by the Genius of Harmony’. The ambience is genteel, stately. The seating is not, by modern standards, comfortable and they’ve never got their catering right. Glossy King’s Place, in groovy Camden, does these things much better. But none of that ultimately matters: accommodating 552, Wigmore Hall is the perfect size for chamber music and song recitals. The acoustics are superb, the welcome is warm and this is unmistakably somewhere serious about music – not just classical music, but all good music. 

Julia Boyd, author of two excellent books about the fringes of Nazi Germany, is a trustee of the Wigmore Hall and so parti pris. Her history of the institution will be uncontroversial – it’s a gentle, good-humoured trot, peppered with anecdotes and enjoyable throughout. There Is Sweet Music Here culminates