Allan Clayton and Paul Lewis perform Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin at Wigmore Hall on Monday 14 September 2026 at 7.30pm.
Allan Clayton was born in 1981, sang as a chorister at Worcester Cathedral, and went from there to a choral scholarship at St John’s College, Cambridge and on to the Royal Academy of Music. The Royal Philharmonic Society gave him its singer’s award in 2018, he was appointed MBE in 2021 for services to opera, and his Peter Grimes at the Royal Opera in 2022 was the performance that moved him from admired tenor to the one people book a year ahead. He won an Olivier Award in 2025 for Festen at the same house.
Die schöne Müllerin is Schubert’s first song cycle, twenty songs set to Wilhelm Müller in 1823: a young miller follows a brook, falls in love with a girl who prefers a huntsman, and walks into the water. It is sung by a tenor with a piano and nothing else, and it asks the singer to hold a narrative for over an hour without a set, a costume or another voice to lean on. Paul Lewis has recorded all three Schubert cycles and the complete Beethoven sonatas.
Clayton sings it at Wigmore Hall on Monday 14 September 2026 at half past seven, with Paul Lewis at the piano, complete and unbroken. It is the first full cycle of the hall’s new season, six days after the gala that opens it.