8 - 12 SEPTEMBER 2024
After five glorious years led by the Doric String Quartet, Mendelssohn on Mull begins a new chapter in its story. The Maxwell Quartet includes two musicians who participated in Mendelssohn on Mull as students. They tell us that what they learned on Mull informs their professional careers to this day. And we are proud that our quartet celebrates the heritage of Scotland in their performances all over the world.
The Maxwell brought eight students, all resident in the UK, and created eight wonderful concerts, as in previous years. We heard from five new ensembles, with one member of the Maxwell in each, in Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Glazunov, and all this music presented twice. We heard the Maxwell themselves in Haydn, Mendelssohn and Dvorak, and aMozart quintet, with violist Georgia Russell. And the Maxwell shared with us music from their repertoire of tributes to Scottish heritage, including Haripol, a work of their own composition, which concluded the week, presented by the whole ensemble, to a standing ovation!
We prefaced three concerts with performances by groups from Mull Music Makers, our parallel scheme to teach the young people of Mull the violin. Now that we are led by Mendelssohn on Mull participants from yesteryear, we await the day when a world-famous quartet includes artists who began as Music Makers!
A truly inspiring week of learning and performing chamber music – the immense beauty that surrounded us as we worked and performed, and the supportive community on the island that made up much of the audience. The Maxwell Quartet’s unique position as a Scottish quartet provided me with a completely new way of approaching chamber music. It was truly an amazing and unforgettable experience – I have never had so much fun working on or performing a quartet as on Mendelssohn on Mull!
Jemimah Quick, viola
