Edinburgh International Festival 2019: Nash Ensemble Queen’s Hall, Five stars

Miranda Heggie

Five stars

Performing a trio of trios, musicians from London’s Nash Ensemble gave an engrossing recital at the Queen’s Hall on Saturday. the players maintained an impeccable balance throughout Beethoven’s Trio in B flat major for clarinet, cello and piano as each instrument took its chance to shine. Alasdair Beatson’s piano playing was insightful and sensitive, his repeated notes ringing like bells. Clarinettist Richard Hosford’s solo duet with cellist Adrian Brendel in the second movement had a bare honesty to it, before the jaunty, rhythmical twists of the third. Each note, but perhaps more importantly, each rest, was immaculately timed, the final effect best summed up by a whispered ‘wow!’ from a lady a couple of rows behind me, just audible through the rapturous applause.

Hosford then swapped his place on stage with violinist Marianne Thorsen for James MacMillan’s Fourteen Little Pictures. This is a hugely evocative piece, the piano swirling and stormy in its lower registers. The strings’ glissandos seemed to gain an almost unbearable potential energy, like a band about to snap, before the music became eerily tranquil towards the end. The closing piano postlude saw a return of the earlier bars’ ferocious ardour, with Beatson hammering his fist on the bottom keys, before letting the instrument’s ringing completely die away.

Dvorak’s Piano Trio in E minor, ‘Dumky’ - titled after a style of Slavic folk songs - brought the performance to a close. Brendel’s double stopping produced a powerful drone, and Thorsen’s pizzicatos were rounded but fierce. Each player had completely absorbed, or was absorbed by, the music, almost seeming to conjure up the souls of those for whom these folk songs were written.

Performing a trio of trios, musicians from London’s Nash Ensemble gave an engrossing recital at the Queen’s Hall on Saturday. the players maintained an impeccable balance throughout Beethoven’s Trio in B flat major for clarinet, cello and piano as each instrument took its chance to shine. Alasdair Beatson’s piano playing was insightful and sensitive, his repeated notes ringing like bells. Clarinettist Richard Hosford’s solo duet with cellist Adrian Brendel in the second movement had a bare honesty to it, before the jaunty, rhythmical twists of the third. Each note, but perhaps more importantly, each rest, was immaculately timed, the final effect best summed up by a whispered ‘wow!’ from a lady a couple of rows behind me, just audible through the rapturous applause.

Hosford then swapped his place on stage with violinist Marianne Thorsen for James MacMillan’s Fourteen Little Pictures. This is a hugely evocative piece, the piano swirling and stormy in its lower registers. The strings’ glissandos gained an almost unbearable potential energy, like a band about to snap, before the music became eerily tranquil towards the end. The closing piano postlude saw a return of the earlier bars’ ferocious ardour, with Beatson hammering his fist on the bottom keys, before letting the sound of the instrument ringing completely die away.

Dvorak’s Piano Trio in E minor, ‘Dumky’ - titled after a style of Slavic folk songs - brought the performance to a close. Brendel’s double stopping produced a powerful drone, and Thorsen’s pizzicatos were rounded but fierce. Each player had completely absorbed, or was absorbed by, the music, almost seeming to conjure up the souls of those for whom these folk songs were written.