Fenella Humphreys (violin) and Joseph Tong (piano)

Pre-concert talk by Richard Wigmore at 6.15pm

Fenella Humphreys, winner of the 2025 and 2023 BBC Music Magazine Premiere Recording Award, has attracted critical admiration and audience acclaim with the grace and intensity of her remarkable performances. Throughout the 2025/26 season, Fenella is be resident at Wigmore Hall as part of a three-concert series where she is exploring a variety of solo and chamber violin repertoire.

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. Her album of Sibelius’ solo works with BBC National Orchestra of Wales and George Vass has been featured in BBC Radio 3’s Building a Library, Gramophone Magazine’s Guide to the Concerto, and was Album of the Week on Scala Radio. BBC Music Magazine has written of the recording: “it takes an unusually fine artist to be able to bridge the two extremes. Fenella Humphreys’s playing is a genuine revelation in the way it brings out the music’s dark and introspective qualities, with no shortage of technical panache meanwhile.”

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 passions: unknown and under-performed repertoire by female composers, something which Fenella seeks to champion in all areas of her programming.

Performer, recording artist and writer with expertise in the field of Jean Sibelius’ solo piano works and as a renowned duo pianist, Joseph extended his series of Sibelius recordings through a collaboration with the violinist Fenella Humphreys for Resonus Classics released in 2022.

His solo Wigmore Hall recital in November 2022 featured Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy, marking 200 years since this work was composed, and also the London Premiere of David Matthews’s ‘Five Trees’ performed alongside the ‘Tree Pieces’ Op. 75 by Sibelius. 

An enthusiastic review in International Piano Magazine commented that ” Someone from whom we don’t het hear enough is the British pianist Joseph Tong, whose lunchtime recital – a satisfying blend of old and new – was perfect in every way.”

A versatile and imaginative pianist, much in demand as a soloist, duo pianist and chamber musician, Joseph Tong enjoys a busy and varied career giving regular performances at concert venues and festivals throughout the UK and abroad whilst producing critically acclaimed new recordings reflecting his musical interests and passions.

Joseph Tong has been particularly associated with the piano music of Jean Sibelius, having recorded three discs of a complete cycle for the Quartz label to critical acclaim and performing regularly in Finland over recent years. He has twice been invited to play at the Korpo Sibelius Festival, taking part in a Sibelius piano ‘marathon’ in 2019, and has given several recitals on the composer’s original Steinway at Ainola. Joseph has also performed at the Helsinki Musiikkitalo (Camerata Hall), Hämeenlinna City Hall, the Sibelius Museum in Turku and, most recently, at the 2024 Joensuu Music Festival. To mark the 150th anniversary of Sibelius’s birth in 2015, he gave an all-Sibelius recital at St John’s Smith Square in London together with a live broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune.