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Our popular concert-novel evenings continue with local author Jessica Duchen who returns to present her novel Odette - a modern retelling of Swan Lake with a twist - enhanced with virtuosic violin solos including Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, Chopin, Liszt and Gershwin.


Jessica Duchen was classical music correspondent for The Independent from 2004 to 2016, and has also written for The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times, BBC Music Magazine, Opera News and others.

Her librettos for opera and choral works include Silver Birch for composer Roxanna Panufnik, commissioned by Garsington Opera and shortlisted for an International Opera Award in 2018. Current projects include a youth opera, again for Garsington, with composer Paul Fincham, and a choral piece with Roxanna for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop - both to be premiered in 2019.

Her novel, Ghost Variations (2016) is based on the true story of the Schumann Violin Concerto's rediscovery in the 1930s - involving 'spirit messages', Nazis and some of the greatest musicians of the 20th century. Her earlier novels focused on tensions and cross-currents between family generations. The next, Odette (December 2018), is a magical-realist fairy tale for the 21st century.

She often narrates concert versions of her novels. Ghost Variations ('highly moving' - Birmingham Post) launched in 2017-18, setting the story of the Schumann Concerto amid music associated with the novel's heroine, the Hungarian violinist Jelly d'Arányi.

With violinist David Le Page and pianist Viv McLean, she has taken it to the Leicester International Music Festival, Kensington & Chelsea Music Society, Barnes Music Society, Burgh House Hampstead, Artrex Bromsgrove, St Mary's Perivale and Live at Zédel. It featured on London Live TV and BBC Radio 3's In Tune. Two other novel-concerts Hungarian Dances and Alicia's Gift (about a child prodigy pianist) have been presented at such venues as the Wigmore Hall, the Buxton Festival, the Kensington & Chelsea Music Society and the Chopin Society, London, among others.

Her first books were biographies of the composers Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Gabriel Faure. Her play, A Walk Through the End of Time, introducing Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, was commissioned by violinist Philippe Graffin for the Consonances Festival, Saint-Nazaire, in 2007 and won Medal of the Town of Saint-Nazaire. With the great tenor Robert Tear, she gave the UK premiere in 2008. Further performances included the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, the International Wimbledon Music Festival and the Ryedale Festival, with actors including Dame Harriet Walter, Janet Suzman, Michael Pennington, Guy Paul and Henry Goodman. Sins of the Fathers, about Wagner, Liszt and Cosima, was commissioned by the International Wimbledon Music Festival in 2013, and presented at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, starring John Sessions, Jeremy Child and Sarah Gabriel. Both plays also went to the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville, Queensland.

Speaking of the AFCM, in 2018 its artistic director, Kathryn Stott, commissioned Jessica to write and narrate a words&music show about Anna Magdalena Bach. It featured festival musicians including Roderick Williams, Siobhan Stagg, Guy Johnston and the Goldner String Quartet. 'Being Mrs Bach was a beautifully crafted retelling of the 'Bach' story with a lot of heart'.

Over the years Jessica has given pre-concert talks at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, the Wigmore and the Royal Festival Hall. She writes a lot of programme notes. She has served on the juries of the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, BBC Music Magazine Awards and Classical:NEXT's Innovation Award. And she is honoured to be on the Ambache Charitable Trust's board, giving grants to organisations promoting the music of female composers.


Fenella Humphreys, winner of the 2018 BBC Music Magazine Instrumental Award, has won critical admiration and audience acclaim with the lyrical grace and intensity of her playing.

Described in the press as alluring, unforgettable and a wonder, Fenella is one of the UK's most established and versatile violinists. She enjoys a busy career combining chamber music and solo work, performing in prestigious venues around the world. She is frequently broadcast on the BBC, Classic FM, DeutschlandRadio Berlin, West-Deutsche-Rundfunk, ABC Classic FM (Australia) and Korean radio.

Fenella performs widely as a soloist. Her first concerto recording, of Christopher Wright's Violin Concerto with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Martin Yates (Dutton Epoch) was released in 2012 to great critical acclaim (Fenella Humphreys' performance is a wonder International Record Review), and was selected as Orchestral CD of the Month in a 5 star review in BBC Music Magazine.

Over the past decade Fenella 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. She has given the first performances of scores by, among others, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Sally Beamish, Gordon Crosse, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Adrian Sutton and Piers Hellawell, and made the world premiere recording of Christopher Wright's elegiac Violin Concerto.

Fenella's most recent disc, Four Seasons Recomposed with Covent Garden Sinfonia and Ben Palmer (Rubicon), was released in June 2019. The album unites Max Richter's iconic Recomposed: The Four Seasons with Pēteris Vasks' Lonely Angel and Arvo Pärt's Fratres to produce a compelling meditation on the profound power of melody. The disc was launched with a performance of Recomposed at Proms at St Jude's, and was placed at No. 6 in the Classical Charts. It was chosen as one of BBC Radio 3's pick of new releases on Essential Classics; chosen for Apple Music's Classical A-List; was Scala Radio's Album of the Week, and was been described by Radio 3's Record Review as ...a delight. The whole thing is gently expressive, meditative, touching and very effective.

Fenella's previous disc, So Many Stars with acclaimed pianist Nicola Eimer, was released on Stone Records in February 2019. It was described as hugely rewarding by The Observer; an absolutely exquisite album by BBC Radio 3's Record Review, and was The Strad's Recommended Recording that month.

Fenella is a passionate chamber musician, enjoying performances with Ensemble Perpetuo, Counterpoise and I Musicanti as well as collaborations with artists including Alexander Baillie, Adrian Brendel, Pekka Kuusisto, Alec Frank-Gemmill and Martin Lovett, and is regularly invited by Steven Isserlis to take part in the prestigious Open Chamber Music at the International Musicians' Seminar, Prussia Cove. Concertmaster of the Deutsche Kammerakademie, Fenella also enjoys guest leading and directing various ensembles in Europe.

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 a beautiful violin from the circle of Peter Guarneri of Venice, kindly on loan from Jonathan Sparey.


Winner of the First Prize at the Maria Canals Piano Competition in Barcelona, Viv McLean has performed in all the major venues in the UK as well as throughout Europe, Japan, Australia and the USA. Viv's concerto work includes appearances with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Halle Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Sinfonia Viva, Orchestra of the Swan, Orchestra of St John's, Northern Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Concert Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of such conductors as Daniel Harding, Wayne Marshall, John Lubbock, Christopher Warren-Green, Owain Arwell Hughes, Philip Hesketh, David Charles Abell, Stephen Bell, Carl Davis, Christopher George and Marvin Hamlisch. Recent concerto highlights include Mozart K467 with the ECO at the Royal Festival Hall, Grieg with the LPO at the Barbican, Rachmaninov's 3rd Concerto with the RPO in Cambridge, Gershwin, Bernstein, de Falla and Ravel with the Hallé at the Bridgewater Hall, The Sage Gateshead and other venues in the North of England, and Beethoven's 5th Concerto with the Philharmonia at the Royal Festival Hall. Viv has recently been on tour with the London Concert Orchestra where he played Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in venues including the Royal Festival Hall, Symphony Hall, Bridgewater Hall, St David's Hall Cardiff, Philharmonic Hall Liverpool and Leicester's De Montfort Hall.

Viv plays regularly with the Adderbury Ensemble and the Le Page Trio and has also performed with other leading chamber groups such as the Ysaye String Quartet, the Sacconi String Quartet, members of the Elias, Allegri and Tippett String Quartets, Ensemble 360, the Galliard Wind Ensemble, the Bristol Ensemble and the Leopold String Trio. He has collaborated with musicians such as Natalie Clein, Marianne Thorsen, Daniel Hope, Lawrence Power, David Le Page, Matthew Sharp, Fenella Humphreys, Kate Gould, Guy Johnston, Alena Lugovkina, Ruth Rogers, Tim Horton, Alasdair Beatson, Jack McNeill and many others.

He has performed at numerous festivals including the Cheltenham International Festival, Buxton Festival, Music in the Round Festival and Harrogate International Festival in the UK, the International Beethoven Festival, the Mecklenburg Festival and the Kultur Kreis Festival in Germany, the Festival International de Musique Classique d'Aigues-Mortes, the Melle Festival and Festival de Saintes in France, the Vinterfestspill i Bergstaden in Norway and the Musik vid Kattegatt Festival in Sweden.

Viv studied from an early age with Ruth Nye and, after attending Chetham's School of Music, he went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music with Hamish Milne. At the Academy he held the Hodgson Fellowship and was made an Associate of the Royal Academy in 2005. He made his Wigmore Hall recital debut through winning the Friends of the Royal Academy Wigmore Award. Whilst studying at the Academy, he was the piano winner at the Royal Overseas-League Music Competition and was selected as one of three winners of the National Federation of Music Societies' Young Artists Competition, leading to various recitals and concerto appearances throughout Great Britain.

Viv has recorded regularly for BBC Radio 3 since making his recital debut through the BBC Radio 3 Young Artists Forum scheme and has also recorded for Classic FM, WDR Radio in Germany, Radio France, ABC Radio in Australia, NRK Radio in Norway and for the Sky Arts television channel. His commercial releases include recordings for such labels as Sony Classical Japan, Naxos, Nimbus, RPO Records and, most recently, a Gershwin album for ICSM Records and an album of pieces by regular chamber music partner David Le Page for Harmony & Imagination Records.

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49 Station Road,

Barnes,

Greater London,

England,

SW13 0LF.