Philippa Mo

Event information

After a highly successful solo concert in January 2024, Calstock Arts is delighted to welcome back the virtuosa violinist, Philippa Mo.

Between January and November 2025, Philippa will be playing a series of concerts ‘SUITE FANTASIA CAPRICE’ in which the music of Johann Sebastian Bach will be highlighted, tracing his progression as a composer from his earliest compositions written for solo violin to his later works.

We are very fortunate that Philippa will be playing the first and final concerts of the series at Calstock Arts.

Further information about the other concerts, all of which will be performed at other venues in the south-west, will be publicised at a later date. Tickets can be purchased for either CA concert individually or for both concerts at a reduced price (see below https:/ ).

Philippa studied at the royal Academy of Music, London and at the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing. She performs extensively as a chamber musician and has given performances and live broadcasts worldwide, including her acclaimed debut at the Wigmore Hall, recitals at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, the Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow, the Deutsches Museum, Munich, and further afield at the Ankara International Music Festival, the Lincoln Center, New York and Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia.

As a champion of contemporary music, Philippa has worked closely with many leading British composers including Gabriel Prokoviev, David Matthews, John McCabe, Cecilia McDowell and Jim Aitchison and has given premieres of their solo and violin duo works.

Philippa was appointed Senior Lecture in Violin at Leeds Conservatoire and was awarded Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM) in 2015. In 2020, she won the Future Classic Women Awards held by the Women’s Radio Station.

In the November concert, Philippa delivers the Partita in D minor by Bach, one of the most deeply contemplative of pieces with the astonishingly complex final movement the Chaconne, a dance over a ground bass with 64 variations. Missy Mazzoli is a groundbreaking composer from New York who responds to the opening of the Chaconne in her mesmerising piece ‘Dissolve, O my Heart’. Telemann casts an elegant Baroque path through his solo fantasias and is answered by the exciting young British composer Leo Geyer, who wrote ‘Guarea‘ for Philippa to perform at the Barbara Hepworth Garden in St Ives. The music comments on the exotic wood and shapes of Hepworth's most famous sculptures. To continue with an upward trajectory and idea of flight (of fancy, of fantasy), we close with a tiny gem, ‘Bumblebees’ by Cyril Scott.