On 12 June Fenella Humphreys premiered Tom Coult’s Études VII and VIII for solo violin at Wigmore Hall, where she is currently an artist-in-residence.
Coult describes Étude VII as “punchy, weighty…like a giant trying to dance a jig”. The miniature, lasting 1½ minutes, constantly switches between bowed and plucked notes, in percussive but agile triple-time. No. VIII, lasting around two minutes, is built on, glassy bariolage. The violin’s E string sounds constantly throughout the étude, around which its harmony turns.
The programme is punctuated by the first and third of Coult’s Études I-IV (2010-14), recorded by Humphreys for her 2022 album Caprices. “Nothing else could go at the front of the album”, Humphreys says, “the music is like a slap in the face, a call to arms.” It is music of real spectacle and drama: Coult’s first Étude recalls Jimi Hendrix’s performance of The Star-Spangled Banner and the roar of jet engines; the Third is obsessive, strident and dissonant, as loud, accented notes gradually become infected by chains of semiquavers.
The first pair of Études were commissioned by Sarah Hill in 2010; III and IV by the London Sinfonietta in 2014. In 2016 the London Sinfonietta revived Études Nos. 3 & 4 as part of an evening of live music and film as part of their residency at the Southwark Playhouse; the pieces were performed by Jonathan Morton alongside a film made by students from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design.
The late-night concert also includes solo works by Sally Beamish, Caroline Shaw, Freya Waley-Cohen, Laurence Osborn, and Oliver Leith’s grungy caprice Goat Head – a work about “playing out and not coming home”.
June 2026 also saw the UK debut of Coult’s Craftsmen and Clowns for solo cello from Nicolas Altstaedt at the Aldeburgh Festival. The 13-minute work, cast in three movements, was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society through the generous support of an anonymous donor. “There is an analysis about the makeup of sitcoms”, Coult writes, “that four central characters generally fit into the archetypes of ‘matriarch’, ‘patriarch’, ‘craftsman’, and ‘clown’.”
The first movement, marked liberamente, calls on the cellist to duet with themselves almost throughout, with a lyrical line in the instrument’s upper register punctuated – often quite violently – with left-hand pizzicato, and see-sawing between high and low. A scherzo-like second movement in triple time – Giocoso – features flickering open string grace notes as dance-like writing unfurls, before a bravura ending. The ‘Quasi passacaglia’ finale sees dark, plucked chords offset by tapping on the instrument, with occasional flutters from bowed passages.