‘The instrumentation brings such interesting flavours’: Fenella Humphreys on Stephen McNeff’s new violin concerto

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On 21 November 2025, Fenella Humphreys, along with the London Mozart Players and conductor Jonathan Bloxham, will perform the world premiere of Stephen McNeff’s Violin Concerto at London’s St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Humphreys is no stranger to performing new works by contemporary composers, having given first performances of works by composers such as Peter Maxwell Davies, Sally Beamish, Gordon Crosse, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Freya Waley-Cohen, and notably, a violin concerto dedicated to her by Adrian Sutton in 2023.

Humphreys recalls back to about five years ago, when McNeff said he would love to write a concerto for her. Eventually, the London Mozart Players and the John Armitage Memorial Trust jointly commissioned the work for performances in the 2025/26 season. The concerto neared completion earlier this year, whereupon Humphreys and McNeff spend time workshopping and exploring the possibilities and characters of the score.

The new concerto draws from Baroque influences, fusing historical ideas with modern sounds. Humphreys acknowledges the orchestration of strings, harpsichord and percussion, which has influenced the writing in the concerto

’The colours in the instrumentation bring such interesting flavours,’ she says. ’There is definitely some Baroque inspiration, but there is also a joy in the lushness that can be drawn from the strings, and fabulous quirkiness taken from those different colours the harpsichord and percussion bring.

’Across the concerto, Stephen exploits so many different characters in the violin writing – at times improvisatory, at others full of rich melodic lines, often brilliantly conversational with the different instruments in the ensemble, and then again full of vivid rhythmic brightness in the outer movements.’

As someone who has premiered a number of violin works, what is Humphreys’ go-to approach when playing a piece that no one has played before? Humphreys says she has always loved being able to work with composers, ever since she was introduced to contemporary music for the first time as a ten-year-old in her youth orchestra.

’Every work I’ve premiered has been a different journey as composers’ languages are so diverse – if you place Adrian Sutton’s concerto for example side-by-side with a work like Laurence Osborne’s Rendering Error, both composers have such distinctive ways of approaching the instrument and music generally, there will be different learning processes to some extent,’ she says.

’But for me personally the most important thing is understanding the characters, harmonies and colours in a new work. Usually once I get under its skin and feel like I understand what makes it tick the notes tend to fall under my fingers.

’In the end music will always be a conversation, a journey you’re taking together with the audience. My approach with learning and performing a work for the first time is pretty similar whether it was written 300 years ago or it’s brand new music where the ink’s still wet on the page.’

Stephen McNeff’s Violin Concerto will be performed in a programme also comprising Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and Symphony No.3 in E-flat major ’Eroica’. More details here.