ARC Ensemble – Wigmore Hall Feb 1 [Sam Gaetz]

THINK of music and you think of people on a stage. Performers. But to make a concert happen takes hard work and (sometimes) genius behind the scenes – planning the programme, booking artists who will do it justice, hiring halls and selling tickets. And there was nobody around who did all that with such un-showy dedication as Amelia Freedman whose life is honoured in a grand memorial concert at Wigmore Hall, Feb 2.

At its core will be the Nash Ensemble, the gold-standard chamber group that Amelia founded back in 1964 as a Royal Academy student and was still running six decades on when she died last year, aged 84.

The number of concert-series, tours and projects she devised for the Ensemble – named after the Nash terraces near the Academy – is dizzying. But at the same time, she ran the Bath Festival in the days when it really counted for something; was head of classical music at the South Bank Centre; organised festivals for the Philharmonia Orchestra, LSO and Barbican; and created the flourishing Bath Mozartfest and Bachfest, which stand as models of how to sell chamber music to a wide audience without the slightest compromise in seriousness or quality.

It was a full life, well lived. And this Wigmore concert pays tribute with the kind of programme she liked to put together: Ravel, Mendelssohn, Mahler, and a recent commission from contemporary composer Helen Grime. Wigmore-hall.org.uk

• Another big deal at the Wigmore is a day of events given over to ARC Ensemble’s Music in Exile project: a long-term exploration of composers whose careers were stifled by the Third Reich. Over from Canada, ARC will be in residence Feb 1 for concerts morning, afternoon and evening – with a talk by Michael Haas, the Vienna-based expert on what the Nazis called “Forbidden Music” and what became of those who wrote it.

Thanks to the efforts of Haas and his colleagues, more or less forgotten voices from the past are being heard again. And some at least are seriously compelling. Find out more at wigmore-hall.org.uk

• Other Wigmore highlights this week include the stand-out (in every sense: they don’t use chairs) young Leonkoro Quartet from Germany playing Webern & Beethoven, Feb 3; and what should be a powerful account of Schubert’s Winterreise song-cycle from uber-tenor Allan Clayton and the immaculate Schubert pianist Paul Lewis, Jan 31.

• Named after one of Schubert’s haunts in old Vienna, the Red Hedgehog in Highgate is a venue I’ve found slightly crazy in the past; but on Jan 31 it hosts the impressively off-the-wall ensemble Madsong playing minimalist music by Reich, Muhly and Michael Finissy. madsong.co.uk

• Feeling adventurous, the London Philharmonic Orchestra give over a whole Royal Festival Hall concert, Jan 30, to Kukai Symphony: an epic work by Chinese composer Zou Ye, based on the teachings of an 8th-century Buddhist Master and performed with singers from the Central Conservatoire, Beijing. southbankcentre.co.uk

• Finally, English National Opera revives its Phelim McDermott staging of Cosi fan tutte: a cheerful candy-floss confection set amid the fairground rides of 1950s Coney Island, with roller-coaster emotions to match. Runs Feb 6-21. eno.org