Classical Sessions: Fenella Humphreys

Getting the venue right was key to violinist Fenella Humphreys’ Classical Session. “My flat was too small to sound nice on a recording, so one of my mates in London said we could borrow his living room,” she says. “It felt strange recording in a room full of sofas and carpets, but it felt really relaxed and chilled in a way a recording never usually does.” That laid-back vibe is reflected in the session’s opening track, Debussy’s “La fille aux cheveux de lin” (“The Girl with the Flaxen Hair”). “Debussy originally wrote this for piano in 1909/10,” Humphreys explains. “I loved listening to it when I was little, so my dad found me an arrangement for violin and piano. During lockdown I started arranging music I loved for unaccompanied violin. This was one of the first arrangements I did. It takes me back to being 10 or 11 when the world felt like a much simpler place.” Henry Mancini’s “Moon River” is another self-arranged number which takes Humphreys to a happy place. “As soon as I saw Breakfast at Tiffany’s I wanted to be Audrey Hepburn,” she recalls. “That moment of her sitting in the window at the fire escape singing ‘Moon River’ is complete perfection. I’ll never be able to recreate that in my life, or sing like that, but I can nick the song and play it and imagine!” For her final selection, Humphreys turned to her friend Seonaid Aitken for inspiration. “Seonaid is an incredible polymath—a brilliant violinist, composer, singer, trad musician, jazz artist,” she comments. “‘The Mad Piper’ is a fabulous piece she originally wrote to perform in her final violin exam at music college, mixing folk influences and full on virtuosity. The haunting opening melody is one of the main reasons I totally got hooked on this music.”