Jean-Guihen Queyras plays the Bach Cello Suites at Wigmore Hall on Saturday 12 September 2026 at 7pm.
Jean-Guihen Queyras was born in Montreal in 1967, moved to Algeria at five and to France at eight, and has spent his career refusing to specialise. He was a soloist with Ensemble intercontemporain, which put him at the centre of contemporary music; he also records Haydn and Vivaldi concertos on a period instrument with the Freiburger Barockorchester, the Dvořák, Elgar and Ligeti concertos, Beethoven’s complete cello and piano works with Alexander Melnikov, and piano trios with Isabelle Faust. He won the Glenn Gould Protégé Prize in 2002 and has taught at Freiburg since 2011.
The Bach suites are the through-line. He has recorded all six twice, decades apart, which is a rare thing to have done and tells you the pieces have not finished with him. They are the works every cellist measures themselves against, written for an instrument that has to imply the harmony it cannot play. He has also recorded Britten’s complete suites, which almost nobody programmes, and co-directs a chamber festival in Haute-Provence.
He gives all six at Wigmore Hall on Saturday 12 September 2026, beginning at seven, an hour and a half of music on either side of one interval. It is the second recital in the hall that day: Víkingur Ólafsson plays there at one o’clock, which makes the 12th the fullest date of the opening week.