We had an amazing time at the Isle of Bute yesterday and enjoyed performing to a lovely and warm audience. We fell in love with the island from the first sight and were sad that we didn’t get to see more than a tiny sliver of it – we will definitely have to come again and explore! Our concert was at the beautiful Trinity Church right by the sea front. We have been told that only a few years ago the concerts had an audience of about 30 people, but last night we played to over a hundred, which with only around 5000 people on the entire island is pretty impressive.

We are on the road again after a day in Bute, taking ferries and country trains throughout this tour which is a quite a different travel experience to what we’re accustomed to in London. We are taking in all the sights and are being reminded that people’s lives outside London move at a different pace and we find ourselves tuning into it as well. It’s lovely to stay next to the sea, to breathe in different air, and to see and experience different towns.

Now, we’re on the way to Linlithgow for tonight’s concert. Looking forward to visiting two more places!

Today we are in Dumfries, the town of Robert Burns and J.M.Barrie!

We had a lovely afternoon meeting and playing for a delightful group of primary school pupils. We talked about all things strings and played a varied selection of excerpts of string quartet repertoire – safe to say Shostakovich 3rd movement was the winner of the session, with quite a few of them dancing along to this explosive movement.

There was an abundance of enthusiastic interactions and questions, and the most popular question following the Shostakovich was : “how do you not break your instruments when you play that?!”

Our first venue was the birthplace of Peter Pan, Moat Brae. Amongst the many rooms filled with intricate exhibits paying tribute to J.M Barrie and the famous novel, was the room we performed in, overlooking a beautiful garden view through the glass windows – what a magical place for our first concert!

Huge thanks to everyone in the audience, and to those who looked after us so well 😀

We have arrived in Dumfries last night, the first stop of our tour! There was the unique blend of mist and drizzle in the air (we learnt a new word, ‘mizzle’) but other than that we were treated to an exceptionally mild Scottish evening for this time of the year. We kick things off with an afternoon workshop for the local school children and then we will get ready for our evening recital.

We are thrilled about the music we will share with the audiences on this tour. Works by the genius Mendelssohn siblings, Fanny and Felix in the first half, and our favourite Shostakovich quartet in the second half. Felix’s connections with Scotland and love for its exceptional beauty are known far and wide, and we’re excited to see what happens for us when we bring his music to this wonderful country many years later. We also have a very personal connection with Scotland and the Shostakovich’s 3rd quartet, we played this piece on the Isle of Coll in 2021 in what was our first performance to a live audience since the start of the pandemic.

We are excited about playing this programme at the unique venue that is Moat Brae House, the birth place of Peter Pan!