Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1884, Marie Hall was one of the most important women violinist of the early 20th century. An early fighter for the acceptance of women as soloists, she was born in comparative poverty but achieved enormous popularity in her teens and was the dedicatee and first performer of one of the most popular violin works: The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Hall began her serious violin studies under Edward Elgar when she was 10 years old, and moved to London to work with August Wilhelmj. After Jan Kubelík heard her, he helped arrange for her to study with his teacher, the legendary Otakar Ševčík, in Prague, where she made her début 1902 with her teacher’s Amati. At the age of 18, she appeared at St James’s Hall playing Paganini’s D major Concerto, Tchaikovsky’s Concerto and Wieniawski’s ‘Faust’ Fantasy, with Henry Wood and the Queen’s Hall Orchestra, scoring a sensational success. The following year, she made her first records for the Gramophone & Typewriter Ltd, which later became HMV.

At a prophetic concert given in Cambridge in 1909, Hall was first heard by Vaughan Williams who took note of the young violinist, and would eventually write his beloved Lark Ascending for her. In December 1912, after Hall performed Elgar’s Violin Concerto with the LSO under the composer’s baton, the Illustrated London News critic felt she ‘played the difficult solo part...with extraordinary facility’.