Fenella Humphreys & Emma Abbate
Saturday, 23rd November, 2024 | 7:30pm
Brahms - Scherzo in C minor from F.A.E. Sonata
Rebecca Clarke - Midsummer Moon
Mozart - Sonata in B flat Major for violin and piano, K. 454
INTERVAL
Lili Boulanger - D'un matin de printemps
Fauré - Andante Op. 75 & Berceuse Op. 16
Arvo Pärt – Fratres
Fanny Mendelssohn - Adagio for violin and piano H.72
Bartók - Romanian Folk Dances
Fenella Humphreys, violin
Emma Abbate, piano
Fenella Humphreys, winner of the 2023 BBC Music Magazine Premiere Recording Award, has attracted critical admiration and audience acclaim with the grace and intensity of her remarkable performances.
With her playing described in the press as “alluring”, “unforgettable” and “a wonder”, Fenella is one of the UK’s most established and versatile violinists, having also won the 2018 BBC Music Magazine Instrumental Award. She enjoys a busy career combining chamber music with solo work, performing in the most prestigious venues around the world and is frequently broadcast on the BBC, Classic FM, Scala Radio and international radio stations.
Fenella performs widely as a soloist. Over the past decade, she has captured international attention by applying spellbinding virtuosity to a strikingly broad range of compositions. Her Bach 2 the Future albums (the second of which won the coveted BBC Music Magazine Instrumental Award) combined newly commissioned works with two of Bach’s solo sonatas and partitas and other repertoire landmarks.
Fenella has given the first performances of scores by a vast range of composers, most notably Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Sally Beamish, Gordon Crosse, Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Freya Waley-Cohen. In June 2023, she premiered a new violin concerto, dedicated to her by Adrian Sutton, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Concertmaster of the Deutsche Kammerakademie, Fenella also enjoys guest leading and directing various ensembles in Europe.
As an avid and passionate chamber musician, Fenella enjoys performances with the Roscoe Piano Trio, Perpetuo and Counterpoise, as well as collaborations with artists including Nicholas Daniel, Martin Roscoe, Sir John Tomlinson and Peter Donohoe, and is regularly invited by Steven Isserlis to take part in the International Musicians’ Seminar, Prussia Cove. A new collaboration with the writer and broadcaster Leah Broad, and pianist Nicola Eimer, has seen the creation of a new project ‘Lost Voices’ which explores one of Fenella’s greatest passions: unknown and under-performed repertoire by female composers, something which She seeks to champion in all areas of her programming.
Fenella’s teachers have included Sidney Griller CBE, Itzhak Rashkovsky, Ida Bieler and David Takeno at the Purcell School, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the Robert-Schumann-Hochschule in Düsseldorf where she was awarded the highest attainable marks both for the ‘Diplom’ exam and the ‘Konzertexamen’ soloists’ diploma.
Fenella plays on an 18th century G.B. Guadagnini violin.
Emma Abbate enjoys a demanding career as a piano accompanist and chamber musician. Described as "an amazingly talented pianist" by the leading Italian magazine Musica, she has performed in duo recitals for international festivals and concert societies in Austria, Portugal, Italy, Poland and the USA, and at many prestigious UK venues such as the Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre, Royal Opera House, St John’s Smith Square, St George’s Hall, Bristol and at the Aldeburgh Festival. She also regularly broadcasts on BBC Radio 3.
Emma has made a series of acclaimed recordings devoted to Italian vocal chamber music and is a keen advocate of contemporary music. Emma has released two discs devoted to works by Stephen Dodgson that include his piano quintets, performed with the Tippett Quartet. Together with Julian Perkins, she has recorded the complete keyboard duets by Mozart and Weber and, on another disc, she brings together the complete works for piano duet by three major American composers: Edward MacDowell, Amy Beach and Samuel Barber.
Based in London, Emma is a professor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, a staff coach at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and is regularly invited to teach at the Verbier Festival Academy. Following her graduation from the S. Pietro a Majella Conservatoire in Naples and an Advanced Diploma from the S. Cecilia Conservatoire in Rome, Emma studied in London with Yonty Solomon. She completed her studies with Geoffrey Pratley, as a scholar at the Royal Academy of Music, from where she graduated with distinction. She was also awarded an Italian Literature and Culture degree cum laude from the Federico II University in Naples, and has been elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in recognition of her ‘significant contribution’ thus far to the music profession.
Photos:
Alejandro Tamagno (Fenella Humphreys)
Tomirri Photography (Emma Abbate)