An illustrated talk by Josie Dixon, curator of the exhibition Music and Migration: the Story of Felix Yaniewicz at Edinburgh's Georgian House in 2022, and a direct descendant of Yaniewicz.  This event is part of the Red Violin festival in Leeds.

The recent discovery of a historic instrument has led to new research on a remarkable violinist who changed the course of British musical history.  Featuring a Polish royal patron, encounters with Mozart and Haydn, a dramatic escape from the French Revolution and a lost Stradivarius, his story culminates in the founding of the first Edinburgh Music Festival of 1815.  .  

Arriving in Britain in the early 1790s as a refugee from revolutionary France and political upheaval in his homeland, the young Polish-Lithuanian violinist shot to fame as 'the celebrated Mr Yaniewicz', playing concertos under Haydn's baton.  He was soon touring the country giving concerts in fashionable cities,  performing in the Music Hall in Leeds in 1807 with the great operatic diva Angelica Catalani.  He was a violin sensation: as one reviewer wrote, 'in fire, spirit, elegance and finish, Mr Yaniewicz's concerto cannot be excelled by any performance in Europe'.  A charismatic soloist and orchestral leader, he soon became an energetic impresario, and after moving to Liverpool started a musical instruments business.  He is now best remembered as the composer of five violin concertos, now returning to the repertoire thanks to a series of landmark recordings from the Chopin Institute in which violinist Chouchane Siranossian recreates the magic that held his audiences in thrall two centuries ago.