This year’s Islington Festival ended last night in a splendid flurry of Kreutzers.
First festival founders and directors, Martin André and Joana Ly gave a thrilling rendering of Beethoven’s Kreutzer sonata.*
Then actor Samuel Collinge read extracts from Tolstoy’s novella, also called the Kreutzer Sonata, in which a jealous husband stabs his pianist wife who he suspects of having an affair with a violinist with whom she is performing Beethoven’s sonata.
The story so inspired Leoš Janáček that he wrote a passionate and thrilling string quartet to illustrate it – and, in turn, Sam’s reading so inspired Joana, Fran Barritt (violin), Dan Shilladay (viola) and Gemma Wareham (cello) that they turned in a extremely exciting performance of that quartet. A perfect summation of the 2026 festival’s theme.
Earlier festival performers had included cellist Miguel Ángel Villeda Cerón with an electrifying performance of Kodály’s extraordinary Sonata for cello, pianist Dmitrii Kalashnikov with Chopin and Beethoven, Armenian folk songs and songs by 17th century Venetian woman composers from Intesa Duo, jazz from Sol Grimshaw and his jazz quartet and possibly my favourite events of the festival – two Sunday morning coffee concerts at the Duke Organic pub – complete with chocolate brownies.
The first featured Kati Debretzeni and her daughter Alma – playing Bach, Telemann and a new piece by Rachel Stott on Kati’s baroque violin and Alma’s wonderful selection of recorders. In view of our upcoming concert with Melinda and Hugh featuring Melinda’s aulos and Hugh’s lyre, I was very excited that Alma not only included an aulos in her collection but played us a short piece on it.
However, it was yesterday’s coffee concert of Haydn string quartets that I think gets closest to the excitement and intimacy of the early performances of these quartets; composed as they were to be played, hot off the printers’ blocks, by keen amateur musicians and their friends in their own houses. To give you a flavour here are just a couple of minutes of Joana, Fran, Dan and Gemma playing Haydn’s Opus no 76 in E flat.
So, thank you Jo and Martin and we all look forward to the Islington Festival 2027…..
Meanwhile….. Saturday 15th August.
Trio Rienecke from Italy, Bernardo Bertamini (clarinet), Elena Lorenzoni (viola) and Samuele Masera (piano) are coming for a short tour in the UK. They will be playing at a private concert in the clock tower at St Pancras on the evening of 15th August.
The programme will include Beethoven’s ‘Gassenhauer’ Trio , Paul Juon’s Trio-Miniaturen, John Jacobsson, Three Pieces, Carl Reinecke’s Trío Op. 274 and Robert Kahn’s Serenata.
If you would like to attend, please email Peter Tompkins. Donations on the evening will be welcome.
And before that on Sunday 8th August
The HGO’s annual Summer concert at St Michael’s in Highgate.
For their 2026 Fundraiser for the Alastair Macgeorge Singers Fund ‘four of the HGO’s most gifted singers of recent years will thrill you with an evening of unforgettable operatic joy, including arias by Mozart, Puccini and Verdi’.
More details and tickets here.
And then come September 8th…
Salon Music’s autumn programme kicks of with Melinda Maxwell and Hugh Webb and the Aulos and the Lyre….
For more details see the last post or to book, go here.
For more of our autumn events see the Upcoming Events page.
* The story behind Beethoven’s Kreutzer sonata.
For those of you who do not know the story, Beethoven had originally dedicated the sonata to the violinist George Bridgetower who gave the first performance. However Bridgetower had had no time for rehearsal and whether because the resulting performance was not up to much or because Beethoven and Bridgewater fell out over a woman who Beethoven fancied, Beethoven, removed the dedication from Bridgetower. Instead he dedicated it to Rodolphe Kreutzer, who was considered the finest violinist of the day.
However, when Kreutzer was informed he apparently rejected the dedication. He was not a fan of Beethoven’s music, the sonata had already been dedicated to someone else – and he regarded it as ‘outrageously unintelligible’. So Beethoven’s most famous sonata which bears Kreutzer’s name was never actually played by Kreutzer.
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