Strings

Every level from beginner to accomplished performer is catered for. There are recital classes, which provide the opportunity to give a 15 minute performance of 2 or 3 contrasting pieces, concerto and sonata classes and classes for which lighter music can be played. If you have any particular requirement which does not seem to be catered for, please get in touch and we will see how we can best accommodate you.

In 2020, we plan to hold more non-competitive master classes, which give players the opportunity to perform and receive expert guidance, without the stress of a competition.

Please see the Orchestras & Ensembles Section for opportunities for chamber ensembles, larger ensembles and orchestras.

All string competitions will be held at Hampstead Garden Suburb Free Church, Central Square, NW11 7AG. The proposed dates for string classes in 2020 are; 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 9th, 10th, 16th, 17th, 23rd, 24th, 30^th and 31st March, 3rd, 21st and 24th April and 1st May.

The closing date for string entries will be Friday 7th February 2020.

Prizes and Certificates

There are cash prizes, gift vouchers and trophies to be competed for in the Premier Challenge, Concerto, Sonata and Recital Classes for the various instruments. In other classes there are gold, silver and bronze medals to be won, and every competitor will receive a written adjudication sheet and certificate of participation. The festival is delighted to have four generous sponsors of violin, viola, cello and double bass competitions:

D’Addario Orchestral awarded a £500 cash prize to the winner of the D’Addario String Prize Competition (held on Saturday 30th March) as well as vouchers towards its products at special festival prices for both the second and third prize winners of the competition and the prize winners from the ‘Violin Day’ on Friday 17th and Tuesday 21st May.

The D’Addario prize winners were:

Erik Fauss, First Prize Winner in the 2019 D’Addario String Prize Competition

2nd prize – Henry Hargreaves, cello

3rd prize – Alinka Rowe, viola

Highly Commended – Lucas Levis, viola and Sofia Kolupov, violin

Tamaki Sugimoto, First Prize Winner in the 2018 D’Addario String Prize Competition

The video above shows performances from the 2019 D’Addario String Prize Competition together with interviews with the adjudicator, Hilary Sturt, and Markus Lawrenson from D’Addario. The 2020 D’Addario String Competition will be on Tuesday 10th March.

The video below shows performances from the 2018 D’Addario String Prize Competition together with interviews with the adjudicator, Diana Cummings, and Markus Lawrenson.

Bishop’s instruments awarded cash prizes of between £25 and £500 to the prize winners from the Viola Day on Tuesday 30th April.

Stringers awarded vouchers to be spent in its shop to the prize winners from the Cello Day on Friday 26th April.

Thwaites Fine String Instruments awarded vouchers to be spent in its shop to the winners of the two Double Bass competitions on Tuesday 14th May.

We would like to congratulate the following winners of the 2019 string competitions – Mine Abrahim, Lucian Azoitei, Natalie Bhak, Rebecca Bradley, Malena Coia, Anna Crawford, Adam Cubitt, Eleanor Davis, Agatha Fancourt, Erik Fauss, Evelyn Freeman, Isabel Goldring, Eleanor Grant, Clara Hannay, Avram Harris, Lula Janovic, Lilly Kay, Jessica Keenlyside, Yugo Kobayashi, Polina Matusheva, Liesel May, Sophie Mitran, Kevin Mitran, Oliver Moh, Madeleine Murray, Maria Noskova, Haru Ogiwara, Jasper Penderis, Clem Pickering, Felix Rosenboom, Will Ross, Eliza de Silva, Soma Subramanian, Chen-Chen White, Chu-Yu Yang, Samuel Yu, Ziying Wang, Kiki Watanabe, Felix Weisz, Jaren Ziegler and Kalli Ziegler.

One form should be used for each competitor/group/choir/etc., listing all the classes to be entered in any ONE SECTION. A separate entry form must be used for each Section of the Festival entered. Once you have submitted the form, you will need to transfer the total amount due to our bank account. Our bank details are displayed at the bottom of this form. Closing dates for entries are clearly marked at the top of each section of the syllabus.

Name

Teacher's Name

Contact Number

Address for all correspondence

Postcode

Telephone

E-mail

Please, add only the entries you need.

Entry 1

Class No.

Competitor's Name (as it will appear in programme)

Age on 1.4.15 (if under 18)

Instrument

Group/Choir Size (if applicable)

Title and Composer
Author of Piece to be Performed

Time to Perform

Class Fee*

Entry 2

Entry 3

Entry 4

Entry 5

Entry 6

* see syllabus for fees applicable to each class

Declaration by person filling in the Entry Form

Yes, I agree I/We agree to abide by the Rules & Regulations of the North London Festival as set out in the Syllabus and accept responsibility for the above named entrant(s).
Yes, I agree I/We also agree to allow Festival ofﬁcials or the local Press to take photographs solely for Festival publicity purposes.
Yes, I agree I/We agree to deposit the total amount into North London Festival bank account within the next 48 hours. (If we do not receive full payment, we will be unable to process your application)
Official Accompanist: Do you wish to use an Official Accompanist?
NOTE: YOUR PAYMENT MUST BE REFERENCED WITH CLASS No. AND COMPETITORS NAME

Bank details

Bank Name: CAF Bank

Account name - North London Music Festival

Account number - 00014585

Sort Code 40 - 52 - 40

REF: Add your class number and competitors name

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Enter online

Section Administrator

Rosemary Cook

40 Prospect Road
Barnet
Herts.
EN5 5AD

Tel: 07966 934186

Email: strings@northlondonfestival.org.uk

Adjudicators

Jessica O’Leary

Combining performing, teaching, examining, writing, mentoring, adjudicating and editing, Jessica has a persuasive portfolio career. Jessica has recorded and toured internationally as a professional violinist and member of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and Principal 2nd violin of the Orchestra of St. John’s for twenty-five years.

Jessica is passionate about playing and teaching music in a variety of styles and has worked with Madonna, Led Zeppelin, London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Opera House. She has performed in a variety of venues including Carnegie and Wigmore Halls, Sydney and Royal Opera Houses and pop arenas in London and Dubai.

She is a string consultant and examiner for ABRSM and regularly presents seminars including a tour of South East Asia in 2019. Her Best of Grade 1-5 violin books are a series of current and past exam pieces and her series of Violin Studies (in two volumes) are also published by Faber. She has written articles for the Music Teacher magazine including her ‘notes’ on violin repertoire and ‘behind the examiner’s desk’. She is a mentor on ESTA (European String Teacher’s Association) PGCE teaching course.

Coming from a family of innovative string teachers who were the first to start the Suzuki method in Europe, Jessica played in the Cork, Irish and European Youth Orchestras before moving to London to take up a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music where she studied chamber music with the Amadeus String Quartet. She is Head of Strings at Eltham College, London and taught violin and viola at Junior Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London for fifteen years. She has been a tutor on National Youth Orchestra Outreach days, works with the Autistic society, regularly plays chamber music and has recently taken up the harp.

Martin Outram

Martin Outram studied at Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music. He is a member of the internationally renowned Maggini Quartet and also appears regularly as a soloist. He has recorded over fifty discs with the quartet and other chamber music ensembles and has been the recipient of the Gramophone Award, the Diapason d’Or, a Cannes Classical Award, three Grammy nominations and the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for chamber music. His solo discs have been widely acclaimed, including five star reviews in the BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone and Strad magazines. Several works have been written for him, including concertos by Peter Aviss, Adam Gorb and David Gow. He has appeared as a concerto soloist at the Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall and performed on tour in South America as a soloist with the Britten Sinfonia. His recital partner is Julian Rolton, with whom he has given recitals throughout the UK and at international viola competitions and congresses. He has given masterclasses in Austria, France, China, Germany, Norway, Poland, Sweden and the USA and is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and an Honorary Fellow of Brunel and Canterbury Christ Church Universities. He plays on a very fine viola by Henricus Catenar, made in Turin in 1680.

Josephine Horder

Josephine Horder studied in London, Salzburg and Düsseldorf. Her career in chamber music has included many performances at the Wigmore Hall, and the South Bank as well as numerous recordings for radio. She was a founder member of Divertimenti Ensemble and the Schubert Ensemble and was a member of the Adriano String Quartet. Her commercial recordings include several with Divertimenti, most notably the Mendelssohn Octet, and chamber works of Arnold Bax, Brahms and Weber. Her recording of the complete Mozart Flute Quartets for Collins Classics has remained consistently high on the classical ‘charts,’ and was the recommended version on BBC Radio 3’s Record Review. In recent seasons she has played with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under the batons of Sir Mark Elder, Sir Roger Norrington and Marin Alsop at the Proms and in Brussels, Warsaw, Glyndebourne and Helsinki. She is a committed and highly respected cello teacher. In 2015 she graduated as a Feldenkrais Method practitioner, teaching weekly public classes in ‘Awareness Through Movement’ in West Hertfordshire. She has held specialist Feldenkrais workshops for musicians, notably for the European String Teachers Association in London, a weekend for musicians at Benslow, and most recently at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.

Paul Barritt

Paul Barritt is Permanent Guest Leader of the Hallé Orchestra, having previously held the position of leader of the Northern Sinfonia and the English Chamber Orchestra. His numerous recordings for violin and piano include the complete violin sonatas of Howells, Ireland, Stanford and Schoeck as well as the salon pieces of Albert Sammons (‘The English Kreisler’). During the 2005-6 season he recorded the complete Beethoven violin and piano music with James Lisney, receiving unanimous acclaim. A recording of the Brahms Violin Sonatas on the Woodhouse label was released in 2012 as was a recording of Antony Hopkins’ Partita for solo violin. Paul Barritt and James Lisney have presented cycles of the complete Beethoven Violin Sonatas some 20 times, most recently in Holland and Belgium. (The Duo presented the whole cycle in a Beethoven weekend for Tring Chamber Music in 2017). In the Summer of 2014 he gave a series of Brahms’ Sonata masterclasses at the Royal Northern College of Music and toured Scotland with concerts of string sextets and quintets. Recent engagements have included concerts with the Hallé at the Proms and Edinburgh Festival. Future concerts include an appearance as soloist in Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending with the Hallé Orchestra as well as many concerts of chamber music including a special commissioned string quintet from Sally Beamish.

Diana Cummings

Diana is one of the most distinguished violinists in Great Britain, her career spanning a wide spectrum of musical activities. Born in London, she studied with David Martin at the Academy, with Remy Principe in Rome and Louis Persinger in New York . After winning prizes in the International Competition ‘Nicolò Paganini’ and the International Violin Competition ‘A. Curci’, she developed a busy international solo career as a recitalist and concerto soloist, playing an extensive repertoire from the Baroque to the Contemporary. She gave the first performance in Finland of the Violin Concerto by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, and is dedicated to the promotion and performance of new works.

As leader of the Cummings String Trio and the English String Quartet Diana has performed widely both nationally and internationally. The English String Quartet was also the resident ensemble of the London Festival of Chamber Music, a month-long event which during the course of thirteen consecutive years (1995–2007) gave over 200 concerts, bringing an extensive repertoire of both familiar and rarely heard works to audiences London-wide.

Orchestrally, Diana has guest-led the London Philharmonic, the BBC Philharmonic, the Liverpool Philharmonic and the Halle Orchestra, and has played with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and the English Chamber Orchestra. With the London Bach Orchestra she performed several times the complete concerto repertoire of Bach at London’s South Bank, and she was leader and soloist of the Northern Chamber Orchestra.

In all these capacities Diana has broadcast frequently, and has made many recordings for major labels.

Diana is a Fellow and professor at the Royal Academy of Music, where she is also the specialist for the LRAM Teaching Diploma. She is also a professor at TrinityLaban Conservatoire for Music and Dance. She is violin coach of the National Youth String Orchestra. She is frequently invited to give masterclasses and workshops, and to participate as adjudicator and jury member at competitions and festivals both nationally and internationally.

Liz Partridge

Liz Partridge began her musical education as a junior at the Royal Academy of Music, and subsequently went to Trinity College of Music on a scholarship, where she studied both the violin and the piano. Whilst at college she co-founded the Court String quartet and still thrives on playing chamber music whenever possible.

Positions in the BBC concert orchestra and ENO were followed by ten years at the Royal Opera House as a sub-principal first violin, where she had the privilege of working with such luminaries of the conducting world as Bernard Haitink, Georg Solti and Carlos Kleiber and listening to Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo. For some years now she has been a freelance musician, working mainly in London and around the world, with the major orchestras, in west end shows and in recording studios.

Recent solo recordings have included work with the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and recordings of the last two Trinity College violin exam syllabi, and for whom she helped choose the violin grade Initial – 8 pieces, and is also an examiner. She is currently working with Boosey and Hawkes, contributing to their string education music and has commissioned and edited a recently published series of new string quartets (4 Strings) for children and adult learners.

She has led many orchestras during her freelance career and directed chamber groups from the violin. Teaching features highly in her portfolio. She has taught all age pupils, from beginner to post graduate level both privately and at Trinity Laban. She has an evening class position coaching and leading the second violins (and sometimes the orchestra) with the Forest Philharmonic Orchestra. She has contributed presentations and seminars to members of ESTA and currently sits on council for the ISM.

Stephanie Waite

Hilary Sturt

Hilary Sturt studied the violin with Sheila Nelson, David Takeno, and Felix Andrievsky, graduating from the Guildhall School of Music and the Royal College of Music with solo, chamber and contemporary music prizes. As a violinist and violist she performed and recorded worldwide with Ensemble Modern for 20 years, including notable projects with Frank Zappa, Peter Eötvös and Pierre Boulez. She has been guest leader of many British ensembles and chamber orchestras, a member of the Rasumovsky Quartet and Apartment House, winners of the Philharmonic Society Award for the Most Outstanding Chamber Music in 2011.

Hilary is much in demand as a teacher, adjudicator and conductor, and sits on many audition and interview panels throughout the UK. She is Head of Strings at St Paul’s Girls’ School, Head of Chamber Music at the Junior Department of the Royal College of Music, lecturer at the Senior RCM, a Diploma examiner for the Associated Board and an examiner for AQA exam board. Hilary recorded the violin syllabus Grades 1-4 for the ABRSM in 2015 and was involved in choosing repertoire for the forthcoming ABRSM violin syllabus in 2019. Most recently, she was awarded an MA from the Institute of Education. A delightfully misbehaved rescue dog and her husband’s home-made bread keep her grounded.