Friday 17 September – A Late Beethoven Quartet

Description

8pm Friday 17 September 2021

Fingringhoe Church

Hensel Quartet in Eb major
Beethoven Quartet in A minor Op 132

Ellie Fagg and Sara Wolstonholme violins
Jenny Lewisohn viola
Orlando Jopling cello

The festival’s artistic director Orlando Jopling gathers four fine chamber musicians for Beethoven’s Op 132, with its transcendental slow movement, in the venue where the festival started 21 years ago.

A rare and beautiful quartet by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, an equal talent to her brother Felix but stifled by her marriage and social conventions of the 1830ies, sets the scene.

Ellie Fagg

Described by the Strad magazine as playing ‘with a sense of enchantment’, Ellie Fagg enjoys a varied career performing around the world as a soloist, chamber musician and orchestral player.

Her love of chamber music began at the age of seven at Pro Corda and she went on to lead the National Youth Orchestra in 2001. She studied at the Royal College of Music as an Associated Board Scholar and won coveted awards from MBF and Countess of Munster.

She has appeared regularly at the Wigmore Hall with the Scottish Ensemble and Aurora Orchestra and at Kings Place with her Jazz-Classical fusion group, Living Room in London.

Ellie has toured extensively with the LSO and with European Camerata. With the Puertas Quartet she has made three tours of New Zealand and recorded two CDs on Atoll records to critical acclaim.

Sara Wolstenholme

Sara is a member of the critically-acclaimed Heath Quartet. A graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music, Royal College of Music and the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía, Sara is a former leader of the Finzi String Quartet and has served Guest Principal positions with the English Symphony Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Jenny Lewisohn

British/Danish violist Jenny Lewisohn performs with a rich variety of distinguished artists which has taken her around the UK, Europe, South America and Asia. She regularly attends IMS and OCM Prussia Cove and was invited to join the OCM annual tour culminating at Wigmore Hall. A movement of a work for solo viola by Raymond Yiu has been dedicated to Jenny as well as a viola concerto by Eloise Gynn.

Jenny has been a member of several award-winning chamber groups including the Hieronymus Quartet who completed a Beethoven Cycle at Woodhouse Music and the Lipatti Piano Quartet who have given multiple performances at the Wigmore Hall, in the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room and at Kings Place as Park Lane Group Young Artists. She is currently a member of the Kleio Quartet, recently described by Alina Ibragimova as “a wonderfully creative group of musicians who bring assuredness and freshness to everything they play.”

She regularly joins the London Symphony Orchestra and Aurora Orchestra with whom she has participated in memorised performances at the Proms, around the UK and abroad, as well as on their recent Deutsche Grammophon ‘Music of the Spheres’ release.

Orlando Jopling

Orlando is artistic director of Roman River Music and a cellist and conductor.

This performance is supported by