THE young and dynamic Navarra Quartet will perform in Harrogate on February 7 after last year’s concert was cancelled when one of the violinists injured his hand after tripping over a cat.

Now, with Magnus Johnston’s hand mended, the quartet are looking forward to playing at the 2016 Sunday Series at the Old Swan Hotel as part of the Harrogate International Festivals' 50th anniversary celebrations.

The Navarra Quartet, incidentally, will be holding their own festival for a third year in 2016 in the small town of Weesp, near Amsterdam, where viola player Simone van der Giessen’s family live.

“Festivals are amazing and it's wonderful that Harrogate has been going for half a century,” says 31-year-old Simone. “We're delighted to be playing again in Yorkshire. We'll give it our all.

“We always thought about having our own festival. When we played a concert in the church in my parents’ town, there was such a lovely, warm and intimate atmosphere and great acoustics that we decided to hold it there. I love being able to create our own programme and invite the people we want to collaborate with. My mum and friends volunteer, so it makes it very special.”

The string quartet formed in 2002 when violinists Magnus Johnston and Marije Johnson and cellist Brian O’Kane were studying with Simone at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, where their mentors were Alasdair Tait and the late Christopher Rowland.

“The students were all placed in quartets so we played together and didn’t want to stop when we graduated,” says Simone. “We had such exceptional teachers who really inspired us when we were at the college. We teach at the Birmingham Conservatoire and try and pass on that passion to the next generation. I find a lot of young people are really passionate about classical music.”

York Press:

The Navarra Quartet, on track for Harrogate on February 7

The Navarra Quartet’s development continued with studies in Cologne with the Alban Berg Quartet, Pro-Quartet in Paris, the International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove and from residencies at the Britten-Pears School in Aldeburgh and at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland.

They have won many prizes and accolades, such as the Florence International Chamber Music Competition, and among their recordings are Haydn’s The Seven Last Words for Altara Records and a disc of Pēteris Vasks’ first three String Quartets for Challenge Records, recorded while working closely with the composer himself.

The quartet have appeared at major venues throughout the world, among them the Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Luxembourg Philharmonie and Berlin Konzerthaus, along with international festivals such as Bath and the BBC Proms.

Like all musicians of their prominence they have a punishing schedule of touring, but Simone has found a way to combat some of the stresses and challenges of travel, rehearsal and performance.

“I used to always do things too quickly and I was hyperactive and then tired,” Simone says. “Then I discovered yoga, which has really given me stability in my hectic life. I attend a group and the mediation and breathing is done to my own rhythm and pace.

"This has really helped my performance too as music is connected to how you breathe. Yoga has also reduced the pressures I used to experience during the tough schedules. I'm always trying to persuade the others in the quartet to take up it up, but so far it's just me.”

The quartet play on a variety of fine instruments, such as ieronymus II Amati and Fendt violins, an unknown, old English viola and a Ruggieri cello, and their impeccable ensemble phrasing will be heard in Harrogate in an emotive Sunday morning programme, topped off by a Haydn work that earned him the sobriquet “the father of the string quartet”.

The Navarra Quartet play the Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate, as part of the Harrogate International Festivals’ 2016 Sunday Series on February 7 at 11am. Box office: harrogateinternationalfestivals.com/sunday-series or 01423 562303.