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Who or what inspired you to take up the violin, and make it your career? 
My older brother had started on Suzuki method, and I always kicked up a big fuss if he was allowed to do something I wasn’t!   So when I was 6 my parents got hold of a violin and a teacher for me.   I think I decided pretty much right away I was going to be a violinist – although I was also convinced I could be a pianist, singer and ballerina at the same time.
Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career? 
My biggest influence was the wonderful Sidney Griller who I was fortunate to learn with when I was 10 – he was both ceaselessly generous with his time and knowledge, and unrelenting in his expectations, and I know I could never have had the same courage to explore the music and stretch boundaries if it hadn’t been for Sidney.   Since then so many people have opened my eyes to new ideas, colours, sounds and music.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far? 
I think probably the biggest continual challenge for me is to find balance.   It always seems so impossible to find the place where you’re doing enough to excite and stretch you, but without half killing yourself, and still managing to have a life.   Of course today I’m failing miserably – I’m typing this in a hotel in the middle of the night after a long day of rehearsals, practising and admin, listening to my colleagues having a fabulous time in the room next door!
Which performance/recordings are you most proud of?  
Strangely they aren’t necessarily the ones where I feel I played especially well.   But when someone has been particularly moved it reminds me there is a real point to performing.
Which particular works do you think you play best? 
I think probably anything that really has something to say for itself and isn’t just tricks or noises.
How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season? 
A lot of decisions are made for me by concert promoters.   But I do enjoy looking out fantastic music that isn’t played much – either less well known works by celebrated composers, or music by people who have been unfairly forgotten.
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why? 
There are the obvious places with amazing character and acoustics like Wigmore Hall, of course.   But in the end a venue for me is more made by the audience – you can play in a terrible acoustic but have a fabulous audience, and that will make the venue feel special.
Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to? 
There’s so much great music out there to perform, it’s usually what I’m playing at the time…. To listen to, going by the plays on my iPod, it’s a strange mix of John Coltrane, Bartok playing Bartok, Britten Violin Concerto, a Shetland fiddle group called Fiddlers Bid, Sibelius Symphonies and U2…
What is your most memorable concert experience? 
Possibly the first concert I went to when I was 7, listening to my first violin teacher leading a performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion at St. Paul’s Cathedral.   But there have been loads of very memorable performing experiences too, like playing Walton Concerto for the opening of the open-air amphitheatre in his home on Ischia, or a particularly unforgettable Death and the Maiden at IMS Prussia Cove a few years back with Pekka Kuusisto, James Boyd and Richard Harwood – and one of my very first performances in a local music festival playing a piece that mostly used open G and D strings, when slowly but surely, throughout the duration of the piece, my G String completely unwound.
What do you enjoy doing most?  
Walking on the beach and talking to the seals in Orkney

Fenella received her early training from Sidney Griller C.B.E. and Itzhak Rashkovsky whilst a scholar at the Purcell School, where she was awarded the Gertrude Hopkins Prize and the Guivier Award for an outstanding contribution to the string department.    She then won a scholarship to study with David Takeno at Guildhall School of Music and Drama.   Fenella completed her post-graduate studies as a scholar at the Robert Schumann Hochschule, Düsseldorf in Ida Bieler’s class, and was awarded the highest attainable mark both for the ‘Diplom’ exam and the ‘Konzertexamen’ soloists’ diploma.   At the same time Fenella studied in Andreas Reiner’s chamber music class at the Folkwang Hochschule, Essen.   Masterclasses have taken Fenella as far afield as Keshet Eilon, Israel, the Schleswig Holstein Festival and the Rheinischen Streicherakademie in Germany, and IMS Prussia Cove, in Cornwall, studying among others with Pamela Frank, Lorand Fenyves, Ferenc Rados, Gabor Takacs-Nagy, Levon Chilingirian, Thomas Brandis, Simon Rowland Jones, Thomas Riebl, Steven Doane, Johannes Goritzki and Krzysztof Penderecki.

www.fenellahumphreys.com

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A visit to the Austrian Cultural Forum last night for a short recital and presentation by pianist Alisdair Kitchen to mark the launch of a new interactive online project Haydn on Flipboard.

I first met Alisdair on Twitter last July when he launched his TwitterGoldbergs project, in which he released a single Goldberg Variation every day for a month. The project was supported by Norman Lebrecht via his Slipped Disc blog. Soon after, Alisdair and I met in Real Life, and we made a podcast in which Alisdair discusses his fascination with Bach’s Goldbergs, the value of recording and sharing music in the 21st century and a general conversation about his musical influences and career to date. What I particularly liked about the TwitterGoldbergs project was its immediacy and accessibility: one could listen whenever one wanted to, and catch up on missed installments via Alisdair’s Twitter feed or on YouTube (where the recordings were hosted). It also allowed one to really enjoy each individual variation and appreciate the artistry of Bach’s writing.

Keen to explore the piano music of Haydn, which Alisdair feels is sadly underrated (and somewhat under-represented in concert programmes), and in an attempt to create an interactive project redolent of the Viennese coffee house culture, which Haydn would have known well, Alisdair’s Haydn on Flipboard uses an application, Flipboard, which allows the user to create an online scrapbook of links which can be shared, and he is inviting readers to contribute items for future issues (you may see something from this blog amongst the pages of the first issue). While perusing the articles, one can enjoy Alisdair playing Haydn via SoundCloud. This aspect of the application works best on tablets and smart phones: if viewing the Flipboard on a PC or Mac, you can listen to Alisdair via his YouTube channel. Thus, Alisdair hopes to create a community of listeners, readers and contributors – a kind of “virtual coffee house”, if you will. You can in fact enjoy a cup of coffee while reading Alisdair’s Flipboard.

For his recital, Alisdair chose to play what is generally considered to be Haydn’s last piano sonata, the great E flat, No. 52. This is well-known and widely performed, sometimes in a programme featuring the last piano sonatas of Beethoven and Schubert (as here). Before this, he played the Andante and Variations in F minor, Hob.XVII: 6, a work with an interesting “double variation” device, which Haydn pioneered, of two themes, in minor and major respectively. Played with commitment and a very obvious affection for this music, there were moments of great poignancy and melancholy which seemed to look forward, beyond Beethoven, to Schubert. The E-flat Sonata was performed with equal commitment, Alisdair enjoying the full range of sonorities available from the magnificent Bosendorfer piano which resides at the ACF.

Haydn on Flipboard

Twitter Goldbergs Podcasts

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Last month I was fortunate enough to have a piano lesson with noted pianist and pedagogue Alan Fraser.

Originally from Montreal, Canada, Fraser is a professor of piano at the University of Novi Sad, Serbia, where he now lives with his family. Alan Fraser is best known for his writings on piano technique, including The Craft of Piano. His piano technique is the result of much research into earlier piano schools and methods, and has resulted in a deeper understanding of the complex physical, mental and emotional processes of artful piano playing. The underlying unifying theme is his analysis of the the innate structure and function of the human hand, which helps you replace tension or over-relaxation with effective hand activation – it’s not so much about the hand’s shape or position as how it moves. He is also an ardent champion and senior practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method, which focuses on learning and movement, and which can bring about improved movement and enhanced functioning. Not dissimilar to Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais can permanently improve  posture, balance and coordination, and relieve tension and physical discomfort.

I was curious to meet Alan, having come across his writings online and in his book, and via the recommendations of colleagues, and I found him an enthusiastic and inspiring teacher (I was also permitted to observe him teaching another student). While some of his technique and suggestions runs counter to my own teacher’s philosophy, he had interesting and valuable advice and techniques for relieving tension and producing a vibrant sound, and I think as an adult student it is always useful to play for teachers other than one’s regular tutor.

Alan runs regular seminars and masterclasses across Europe and America. Further information about his teaching, writing and performing can be found on his website

It is standard practice for him to film his lessons, and I have uploaded my lesson with him to YouTube to allow others to observe the lesson.

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Violinist Fenella Humphreys

Bach to the Future is an exciting new project to commission a set of new works for unaccompanied violin to be performed alongside J.S. Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas. The brainchild of violinist Fenella Humphreys, the aim of the project is to commission new works from some of the UK’s finest living composers, including Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Cheryl Frances Hoad, and Sally Beamish. As Fenella says “It’s almost 300 years since Bach finished writing his pieces in 1720, and a lot has happened in music since then.   While there’s some great music out there for solo violin, a lot of my favourite composers both from the past and present haven’t written anything at all.   So it made sense to commission some new works”.

The project is being funded via Kickstarter, the world’s largest crowd-funding platform which enables people to develop creative projects, such as recordings, films, and exciting new music commissions like Fenella’s. For every donation made to the project, Fenella will give donors a special “thank you”, from a fee MP3 of her playing Bach, to an original manuscript from one of the composers, your name set to music, or tickets to the special Supporters’ Concert.

The project needs pledges totalling £3000 by 24th February 2014 to enable it to go ahead. Please consider donating to this excellent project, which will make new music available to musicians while also celebrating the special genius of J S Bach.

Donate here:

Bach to the Future

My Meet the Artist interview with Fenella Humphreys will be published next week.