[Nash Inventions, 13 March 2012, Wigmore Hall]
"The heavyweights of British contemporary music were out in force to hear their music performed at this 'Nash Inventions' concert. Mark-Anthony Turnage's 'Returning' for string sextet was lean and thrilling, with not a gesture wasted. The Nash cherished every line, the players delighting in the music's building intensity. Alexander Goehr's Quintet for clarinet and string quartet also brought impassioned and lovely string textures, shot through with influences from Masses by ]osquin and Ockeghem, the clarinet soaring eloquently over the top. Colin Matthews's 'The Island' (with soprano Claire Booth)
was fun of richness and power, its delicate ensemble writing intricately outlined by the Nash players.
Peter Maxwell Davies's beloved Orkney was the inspiration for his piece 'The Last Island' for string quartet, evoking the 'ever-changing light of sea and sky'. Moments of calm were interrupted by menacing interjections. The ending was particularly gripping. Over a static drift from the rest of the players, the first violin spun a creeping melody that ended on surely the world's scariest note to perform, at (he very top of the fingerboard - performed by a fearless David Alberrnan.
Then came the premiere of Birtwistle's 'Fantasia Upon All the Notes', for flute, clarinet, harp and string quartet, written at the behest of the Nash's artistic director, Amelia Freedman, as a companion piece to Ravel's Introduction and Allegro. Gritty intensity took hold with gestures that spilled out across the ensemble, building to a claustrophobic climax before dying away. Jonathan Harvey's beautiful Song Offerings (soprano and ensemble) made an evocative finale."
The Strad, May 2012
[Turina CD for Hyperion CDA67889]
"Everything here is performed with great warmth and a real sense of belief in the music - especially Marianne Thorsen and Ian Brown's eloquent and characterful account of the Sonata Espagnola for violin and piano. There are other performances of the masterful Piano Trio No.1 and the evocative Escena Andaluza for the unusual combination of solo viola and piano quintet, but I rate these as the very best I've heard, with Lawrence Power's viola an eloquent principal voice in the latter. Even the popular Oracion del torero, given here in its string quartet version, receives a performance of rare distinction, without any hint of sentimentality."
BBC Music Magazine, May 2012
[SCHUMANN Chamber works, Hyperion CDA67923 ]
CD OF THE WEEK
"Apart from the A minor Violin Sonata, Op 105, the collections of small pieces that make up the contents of this wonderful Schumann disc usually struggle to assert themselves in the concert hall and on disc. So it's good to have the Adagio and Allegro for Horn, Op 70, the Marchenbitder (Fairy-Tale Pictures), for viola, Op 113, the Fantasiestücke (Fantasy Pieces), for clarinet, Op 73, the Three Romances, for oboe, Op 94, and the Märchenerzählungen (Fairy Stories), for Mozart's unusual combination of clarinet, viola and piano. The Nash players are British chamber-music royalty, but it.is always an especial pleasure to hear the voluptuous viola sound of Lawrence Power (pictured) in such an eloquent dialogue with Ian Brown's piano in the too rarely heard Märchenbilder. They are joined by Richard Hosford's melifiuous, virtuoslc clarinet in the late trio pieces - once dismissed as a product of Schumann's mental decline, but never more persuasive-sounding than here. Marianne Thorsen and Brown are passionate advocates for the Violin Sonata, sweeping the listener along with the urgency of their playing in the outer movements and warmly expressive in the central allegretto. Richard Watkins's horn is exemplary in the seldom-heard Adagio and Allegro, and Gareth Hulse's plangent oboe makes exquisite songs without words of the Romances. A gorgeous, unmissable disc of great, too infrequently heard chamber music."
The Sunday Times, April 2012
[Russian CD for Onyx 4067]
"…all gorgeously played by the Nash Ensemble… delivered with such energy and relish…"
The Guardian, April 2012
[Russian CD for Onyx 4067]
"The Nash Ensemble's superior string players make a beautiful case for these not overfamiliar 19th-century Russian works… "
The Sunday Times, April 2012
[Turina CD for Hyperion CDA67889]
"This disc of some of his [Turina's] melodious and atmospheric chamber music is very welcome and contains one of his best-known scores, 'La Oración del Torero' ('The bullfighter's prayer') for string quartet. Folksy, imploring and suggestive, this fragrant piece is played with relish and sensitivity. Also included in this beautifully recorded and presented release is a succession of shapely and alluring pieces - for piano quartet, violin and piano trio. This is music that paints pictures and is imbued with Spanish sunshine and sensual nocturnes, the listener serenaded with expressive warmth and a wide palette of colour, all lovingly played. Maybe señor Turina is making a comeback. This disc should help."
Time Out, April 2012
[Queen's Hall, Edinburgh: 5 March 2012]
"The Nash Ensemble, in any of its formations, has become one of the great musical communicators.
In this week's New Town Concert, we heard it as a quintet for horn and strings, as a horn-violin-piano trio, and as a piano quintet – three concerts in one. Who could ask for more?
The first and shortest concert was the most sensational. James MacMillan wrote his Horn Quintet for the Nash Ensemble five years ago and the players have been right to keep it in their repertoire.
It's not just that Richard Watkins plays the horn part so well, delivering what MacMillan described as the work's hunting and battle exclamations with verve. What he does with the recurring five-note motif – making it sound heroic, poetic, hectic, and at one point manic – is a study in brilliant obsession, ending with him stealthily playing his way off the platform, leaving the rest of the ensemble (including that prince of violists Lawrence Power) looking bereft.
After this, in Brahms's Horn Trio, written in mourning for his mother, Watkins caught not only the desolation but also the false jollity Brahms drew from the instrument. The genuine jollity came later in Dvorák's Piano Quintet, Op 80, where it pierced the veil of melancholy Dvorák cast over the slow movement. The scherzo's lift-off and the comedy of the finale were deftly handled, maintaining the versatility of this big work right to the end.
Though it left no space for an encore, in a concert like this no encore was needed."
The Herald, 8 March 2012
[Queen's Hall, Edinburgh: 5 March 2012]
"Many chamber groups whose members don't play together permanently have trouble finding a convincing corporate sound. But as the London-based Nash Ensemble players demonstrated in this concert, they manage to retain their individual voices while merging in a radiant tone that combines impeccable technical assurance with a versatile musicality.
They breathed as one in their supple reading of the sunny A Major Piano Quintet by Dvorak that finished the programme, bringing the piece's almost orchestral textures to vivid life with often breathtaking energy.
Cellist Paul Watkins stood out for the effortless simplicity of his opening melody, and for his gently swelling tone in the quizzical slow movement, based on a lament from the composer's Czech homeland.
The autumnal colours of Brahms's Horn Trio were perhaps a touch too subdued, though, and the performance could have done with some of the sheer élan that characterised the Dvorák. But violinist Stephanie Gonley had just the right burnished sound for Brahms's rich harmonies, and pianist Ian Brown played with a sparkling brilliance that could subside into glowing mellowness.
But it was horn player Richard Watkins who really stole the show, both in the Brahms Trio and in the arresting 2007 Horn Quintet by leading Scottish composer James MacMillan, who was there to introduce his work.
Watkins's heartfelt playing and remarkable ability to shape a melody put him firmly in the spotlight, and when he rose from his seat to walk into the audience at the quintet’s solemn conclusion, it only added a theatrical note to what was already a hugely dramatic performance."
The Scotsman, 7 March 2012
[Turina CD for Hyperion CDA67889]
"The near-masterpieces here, none longer than 20 minutes, are the splendid Piano Trio, Op 35 (the best-known of the selection), the A minor Piano Quartet, Op 67, and the Violin Sonata, played with searing tone and rhythmic dash by Marianne Thorsen and Ian Brown, mainstays of the wonderful Nash Ensemble. Lawrence Power's viola and Paul Watkins's cello shine in, respectively, the Escena Andaluza and the songful trnor/bass melodies of the trio. It would be hard to imagine more compelling performances."
The Sunday Times, March 2012
[Berlin Konzerthaus, 21 February 2012]
"[In Bartok's Contrasts] Their playing struck exactly the right note. Percussive, with no vibrato and great virtuosity, Stephanie Gonley played her cadenza as if she had learnt to play the violin on a Hungarian farm… [In Dohnanyi's Sextet Op.37] Both the presence of mind and the infectious joy of communication with which these players perform revealed the complexity of the work in a vivid and exciting manner: this is chamber music at its finest… There was also a superb performance of Liszt's "La Lugubre Gondola."
Berlin Tagesspiel, February 2012
[Wigmore Hall, 14 January 2012]
"Sometimes the very opening bars of a concert tell you it's going to be a good evening. As the wonderful Ian Brown matched his first notes precisely with the Nash wind-players - Gareth Hulse, Richard Hosford, Richard Watkins and Ursula Leveaux - in the slow introduction to Beethoven's Quintet, you could sense a glow of anticipation spreading through a packed Wigmore Hall. … It was a beautiful performance, bespeaking careful preparation and spontaneous execution. … Schubert's Octet created exactly the right impression: it seemed to be expansively phrased, with plenty of room for individual enterprise; but if you focused on the basic tempo, it was never merely being indulgent. Movement after movement passed by in the pleasantest way, until suddenly we were at the end of the Minuet and Paul Watkins and Duncan McTier were launching the Andante molto to begin the finale. Then the strings went spinning away into the Allegro and we experienced that typically Schubertian feeling - pleasure in the passing moment, regret that it would soon be over and we would be facing the chill of a wintry Wigmore Street. Stephanie Gonley and Richard Hosford must be given special mention but every member of the Nash Ensemble played his or her part with grace and equanimity. This was a lovely concert in every way."
ClassicalSource.com, January 2012
[Wigmore Hall, 15 October 2011]
"This concert began with Mozart's great Piano Quartet in G minor, a key associated in his music with proto-romantic intensity: the performance was a quiet wonder, graced by Ian Brown's serenely intelligent pianism, and charged with the luminous force of Lawrence Power's viola. Bernarda Fink was the eloquent mezzo-soprano in arrangements of Zemlinsky songs and Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, conducted by Martyn Brabbins; and the Adagio, standing alone, from Bruckner's String Quintet in F revealed depths unplumbed by a Shostakovich."
The Sunday Times, October 2011
[Ottawa Chamber Music Festival - 28 July 2011]
"An ensemble of the highest quality… Nash group brings audience to its feet… The Nash Ensemble performance of this masterwork [Schumann Piano Quintet] was a wonder. From the stern logic of the first movement through the dark magic of the fugue and the towering fury of the scherzo to the sad little smile of the last few measures, everything was totally in focus and phenomenally effective. The concert had a nearcapacity audience that came to its feet just seconds after the musicians lowered their bows."
Ottawa Citizen, July 2011
[Nash Inventions concert - Wigmore Hall, 23 March 2011]
"Where would British music have been without the Nash? Artistically poorer, for since its foundation in 1964, this world-beating ensemble has commissioned 160 new works, including major ones from Elliott Carter, Harrison Birtwistle, Mark-Anthony Turnage, plus a catalogue of now-prominent others."
The Independent, March 2011