Nash Inventions, Wigmore Hall ****

In these dark days, it's worth broadcasting the cheerful fact that there's absolutely no recession at the Wigmore Hall. Always well attended, this temple of high art is on a roll: its latest coup has been to buy its lease with the aid of £3m donated by supporters. Moreover, the Nash Ensemble's concert gave the lie to another piece of received wisdom, in that its five world premieres reflected a new music scene in the rudest health: no one should talk about the impending death of the classical tradition.

Anderson proved the star of the evening, with the eight miniatures of his Poetry Nearing Silence suggesting eight vibrant worlds, and his Prayer for solo viola taking us on a roller-coaster through an extraordinary musical landscape. His inspiration had been the viola itself, and what he calls its "dirty/mellow" timbre, and, in the hands of Lawrence Power, that was exactly how it came across. And if Power was a virtuoso, so was everyone else on stage this evening: the Nash Ensemble, for whom all these works were created, is a chamber group beyond compare.

Michael Church, The Independent, 9th March 2009

Nash Inventions at Wigmore Hall *****

St Magnus Festival, Orkney - A (kirk) wall of sound

SUPERGROUP: The Nash Ensemble played at the St Magnus church as well as the cathedral

There was more exceptional musicianship from the Nash Ensemble who, in quartet-plus-horn formation, gave two concerts, the first of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Maxwell Davies and MacMillan in St Magnus Cathedral, the second of Mozart, Stravinsky and Britten in the tiny St Magnus Church in Birsay. Listening to the Nash performing works such as Beethoven's Op18 no1 Quartet, Mendelssohn's A minor,Op 17 Quartet and Stravinsky's pithy Three Pieces for String Quartet you would assume these musicians were an established quartet rather than soloists in their own right who are also part of a flexible chamber group. There is real poetry in their playing; the care and attention given to the small details of the phrasing in the first movement of op18 no1, the consciousness of ensemble blend where one voice never dominates but that alters as the music requires. Add to this the virtuosity of the playing and the results are exceptional.
Rowena Smith, The Glasgow Herald, 25 June 2008

Nash Inventions, Wigmore Hall

Birtwistle was one of the five British composers, all in attendance, whose music made up a Nash Ensemble concert at Wigmore Hall.  His Orpheus Elegies, for counter-tenor, oboe, and harp, was the only work not receiving some sort of premiere…. – Andrew Watts, Gareth Hulse and Lucy Wakeford – performed Birtwistle’s own selection of 11 items.  Accepting the harp as Orhpeus and the oboe as an ancient Greek pipe, it was easy to be wafted into an atmosphere of mythical otherness.
The exotic air was abruptly cleared by James MacMillan’s
Quintet for horn and strings (2007), receiving its London premiere with Richard Watkins as soloist.  MacMillan makes much of the instrument’s hunting associations: it is as if the strings are being co-opted into a new unstringy identity.  Yet, near the end of this shapely single movement, we hear a viola solo that seemed, at least in Lawrence Power’s hands, to capture the instrument’s soul.… The ingeniously satisfying programme included another single-span quintet, Alexander Goehr’s for clarimet (Michael Collins) and strings, and another Rilke setting, Colin Matthew’s The Island, both composed last year and having their premieres.
Paul Driver The Sunday Times 23 March 2008

‘Around Schubert’ 07/08 concert Series

Wigmore Hall, Saturday, 1 December
“Schubert’s piano Trio in Bb…their reading came up fresh as fresh, with violinist, Marianne Thorsen and cellist Paul Watkins playfully imitating one another’s tones and phrasings in their close dialogues, while Brown kept the piano part spinning along with delectable lightness.”
Bayan Northcott The Independent, 4 December 2007

Rheingau Musik Festival 2007

London Nash Ensemble at the Rheingau Musik Festival
“A characteristic of these musicians, in whatever formation, is that their playing is as unpretentious as it is exact, poetry with a touch of realism and no idiosyncratic interpretations.  That they also take the supposedly easy seriously, showed itself from the outset in the Haydn Trio, where the experimental character, at that time, of the interplay between the piano and the string instruments came through clearly; fresh as on the first day and with a wonderful, slim, singing tone from the violin (Marianne Thorsen).  
In the Adagio, Fauré’s Piano Quartet seduced anew through the dynamic differentiations, but within a small scale, which gave the work not just weight but rather a hint of intimacy, proof of the technical supremacy of the ensemble.
Then Schubert’s Trout Quintet, led by Ian Brown masterful and effortless at the piano, and joined impressively by the ensemble, not least through their exact intonation…. in the wonderful relaxed balance of their playing, without suppressing the moments of feeling, the poetic magic of the Schubertian emotion.  As stated, a fine evening.
Matthias Gerhardt, Frankfurter Neue Presse, 16 July 2007 (translated)

Cheltenham Music Festival, 9 July 2007

“Commissioning chamber music often involves creating a contemporary twin for a classical model, and so it was with the new James MacMillan piece for the Cheltenham Festival. Mozart’s K407 Horn Quintet, among his most beautiful chamber works, defined the territory for MacMillan’s work and, to a degree, the options…..
MacMillan suggested in an introduction that this was purely abstract music. Yet there was a force at work as the viola’s briefly impassioned outpouring of the lament set up the final exchange with the horn. The gesture that emphasised the drama was the horn’s gradual retreat from the room, its insistence on the baleful repeated motif fading to nothing.
In both the Mozart and MacMillan, Richard Watkins’ horn playing was exemplary. Meanwhile Watkins’ colleagues gave probing performances of two solely string works, Shostakovitch’s Quartet No 11, Op 122, had precision and intensity, while Mozart’s Quintet in C K515, also featuring two violas and eloquently played, set the seal on this rigorous morning recital.
Rian Evans, The Guardian, 12 July 07

Washington & New York, March 2007

A Flute Sparkles in Mozart's Spirited, Rent-Paying Quartet
"Chamber music ensembles can sometimes seem like poorly arranged marriages, with a dynamic that doesn't quite work. But the members of the Nash Ensemble from London, who performed at the 92nd Street Y on Wednesday, were collegial and dynamic, attuned to one another (and in tune) throughout a wide variety of repertory...
The Nash Ensemble champions the British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage, whose visceral music often hints at jazz influences. On Wednesday it played his dreamy, subtle "Three Farewells"...
The harp, which has a small role in the Turnage work, takes center stage in the sensually colored Introduction and Allegro for Flute, Clarinet, Harp and String Quartet by Ravel, a fan of the instrument. The Nash gave a stellar performance, with Lucy Wakeford, the harpist, playing the rippling arpeggios and evocative solo with finesse.
Debussy, unlike Mozart, never professed a dislike for the flute. The lights onstage dimmed for his fleeting "Syrinx" for Solo Flute, in which Ms. Davies evoked a pastorally meditative atmosphere.
Then it was on to a very different sound world with Mendelssohn's youthful String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 13, here given a fine reading that was bristling and passionate, lyrical and graceful. There was a lot of smiling onstage, and the Nash's enthusiasm was contagious. "    
New York Times, 26 March 07

Nash Ensemble Premieres the Alluring 'Terrible Beauty,' Inspired by the Bard
"London's celebrated Nash Ensemble is a collective of players who form and regroup for varied chamber music programs. Particularly noted for its commitment to enlarging the repertoire for mixed ensembles, the Nash has championed 255 new works over its long history, nearly half of them commissions. On Tuesday evening at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater, the Nash gave us one of the finest chamber music concerts of the season, both in programming and execution... The evening was a triumph"    
Robert Battey, Washington Post, 22 March 07

‘Realms of Gold’ October 06 – March 07 at the Wigmore Hall

Saturday 17 February 2007
"If it has demonstrated nothing else, the Nash's Realms of Gold series, highlighting Elgar and the British composers who succeeded him, has shown the range of a repertoire still stigmatised as parochial... the performers' precise interplay continued throughout an imaginative programme that was executed with distinction."
George Hall, The Guardian, 20 Feb 07

Saturday 20 January 2007
"These Nash musicians live gold. They play gold. They just don't earn it. Time and again we heard the group trademarks: warm colouring, perfect balance, a miraculous ensemble sense, exquisite but never bloodless taste... the Bliss Oboe Quartet, with Hulse again, delivered with ease: more realms of gold. And a packed house. I hope for the same at the all-contemporary Nash Inventions concert in March."
Geoff Brown, The Times, 25 Jan 07

Saturday 20 January 2007
Traversing England's Musical Landscape
"The Nash Ensemble, under the artistic directorship of the indefatigable Amelia Freedman, has always led where others follow in terms of inspired and resourceful programme planning.
This season's Wigmore Hall concerts, for example, are exploring the early 20th-century British repertoire with a characteristic mix of the well-known and unfamiliar. The peg, as if any were really needed, is the 150th anniversary of Elgar's birth...Peter Warlock's death-imbued Yeats setting The Curlew for flute, cor anglais and string quartet. Tenor John Mark Ainsley brought the acute detail of word-awareness and silvered tonal delivery for which he is renowned to Warlock's music. He also shone in that other great chamber song cycle from the early 20th century, Vaughan Williams's On Wenlock Edge, charting the bitter irony of A E Housman's "Is My Team Ploughing?" with searing intensity.This wonderful piece also allowed the Nash's string players to shine, especially in the atmospheric expanses of "Bredon Hill", with its troubling transformation, in the string harmonics, of the hazy bells of summertime into the sombre tolling of winter."
Matthew Rye, The Daily Telegraph, 23 Jan 07

Saturday, 4 December 2006
Britten And His Many Loves
"The brilliance of Britten's writing for strings was further emphasised in the Nash Ensemble's performance of Les Illuminations, Phaedra and the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings under Edward Gardner. Heard in the Wigmore's perfect acoustics and played by small ensemble of indisputable virtuosi these were almost overwhelming. Biting violins, intoxicating violas, warm cellos and fervent double-basses magnified the opulence of Rimbaud's words and Britten's dazzling orchestration."    
Anna Picard, The Independent, 10 Dec 06

Saturday, 4 December 2006
"Call me mad or fanciful, but sitting in the packed Wigmore Hall, 30 years after Benjamin Britten's death, I felt a real sense of the composer's spirit infusing the performers who delivered this superlative evening of his vocal music... the string players of the Nash Ensemble, under Edward Gardner's direction, matched her [Lisa Milne] for fervour, digging their bows deep into the raw opening fanfares and maintaining this exhilarating energy to the last... Mark Padmore's account of the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings - magnificently enhanced by Richard Watkins's virtuosic horn-playing - brought me close to tears (for the right reasons, I hasten to add)."
Richard Morrison, The Times, 6 Dec 06

Saturday, 7 October 2006
"The Nash Ensemble seems incapable of giving anything less than a first-rate performance. The regular line-up of musicians is now stronger than it ever has been and, together with the imaginative and carefully thought out programmes, makes Nash concerts unmissable.
Michael Allen, Classicalsource.com, 10 Oct 06

Head Rules The Heart In Schumann Celebration

"Amelia Freedman was in the audience for this concert. This in itself was not unusual, since, as head of music on the South Bank for more than a decade, she has been a familiar figure fondly respected and admired at countless events. But the Philharmonia Orchestra, in dedicating this programme to her as she relinquishes the post offered a timely salute for all that she has done at the Festival Hall and its satellite venues to consolidate the musical programming, keeping it constantly alive and injecting it with fresh ideas in the many award-winning series that have not merely taken place under her aegis but were actually the fruits of her own imagination. Her wise and genial counsel on the South Bank will be greatly missed, for, aside from her obvious skills, she managed to achieve the almost impossible feat of maintaining friendships across a whole spectrum of the musical profession with composers, performers, impresarios - and even with us journalists."
Geoffrey Norris, The Daily Telegraph, 5 July 06

Mozart Piano Quartets K.478, K.493 - ASV Gold 2007

"The Nash are right up there with the leaders in this dazzling Mozart coupling... There have been many fine versions of this favourite coupling but this new offering stands among the finest."
Gramophone, July 07

“The playing is faultless, exquisitely polished and nuanced, full of verve and energy in the propulsive outer movements, serenely expansive in the Andante of K478 and the sublime Larghetto of K493.  The catalogue already rejoices in superb recordings of this music, but this newcomer is worthy of such exalted company.”
HC The Sunday Times, 22 April 2007

Brahms String Sextets - Onyx 4019 2007

“The Nash Ensemble's passionate reading may be too purple. Occasionally there is a cluttering of texture. Yet the intense, heel of the bow emotionality of this recording is also its most compelling aspect. A red wine, red meat disc from the must-have boutique label."    
The Independent, 27 May 07

“For a composer who feared comparison with Beethoven and excelled at multiple string lines, the string sextet was the ideal chamber formation.  The two works Brahms wrote in this format are among his most satisfying, because they underline his glorious contrapuntal skills and broadly blended sense of cantabile.  These performances are effortlessly attuned to the music’s rich sonority and seamless argument.
Andrew Clark, Financial Times, June 07

“This is quite possible the finest coupling of these works we’ve had in nearly 30 years, and the recording is as richly resonant and opulent as the performances themselves.”
Julian Haycock, International Record review, July/August 2007

Strauss: Metamorphosen; Piano Quartet in C minor; Prelude to Capriccio

Nash Ensemble - Hyperion CDA 67574

 
"Reducing the string size of Strauss's Metamorphosen from 23 to the seven of the composer's short score, as Rudolf Leopold did in the 1990s, might seem to be going light on the tragic force of this great wartime elegy. Not so in the hands of the Nash Ensemble. If anything Strauss's most private moments of grief have even more eloquence, especially as they attempt to shy away from the monumental waves of emotion that threaten to engulf the memorial's closing stages... Truthful recording does full justice to the warmth, poise and integration of these marvellous performances." Performance: ***** Sound: *****
David Nice, BBC Music Magazine, March 07

"...I am lost in admiration at The Nash Ensemble's achievement here in capturing the music's noble intensity with an emotional flexibility and glowing textural fluidity denied even Karajan's sensational Berlin players at their most refulgent. Captured in immaculately balanced, velvety sound by producer Andrew Keener and engineer David Hinitt, this is a performance that gets right to the heart of this glorious score, tantalisingly retaining its chamber-scale purity even when Strauss is at his most super-heated. There are magic moments galore along the way, but to hear Marianne Thorsen (ravishing portamentos) and her fabulous team soar aloft with the pulsating phrases that briefly resolve at 16'48" is an unforgettable experience. The Prelude to Capriccio, Strauss's sublime operatic swan-song, also makes an indelible impression in this sensitive performance." International Record Review, Feb 07

"This captivating disc from the Nash Ensemble features music from both ends of Richard Strauss's long and productive life. The Piano Quartet in C minor is a product of the 21-year-old composer's infatuation with the music of Brahms. In its own way it is a remarkable piece - as one early critic quoted in the booklet noted, it shows Strauss "a better Brahmsian than Brahms" - with a hint of the sweeping, ardent melodies of the high-Romantic Strauss to come. The Nash players certainly give it their all and make one wonder why it's not better known.
More familiar is Strauss's great late lament Metamorphosen, but it is played here in a realisation of his original draft for seven strings rather than the 23 he eventually settled upon. With a performance as searing as this, it makes just as much of a mark as the better-established "orchestral" version - the textures sound just as full, yet the intertwining lines emerge with greater focus and the whole is underlined by the tonal solidity of Duncan McTier's double bass. An equally seductive account of the string sextet Prelude to Capriccio completes the programme."
The Daily Telegraph, 27 Jan 07

Coleridge-Taylor: Piano Quintet in G minor, Ballade in C minor, Clarinet Quintet, Nash Ensemble Hyperion CDA67590

“The Nash players do these deeply attractive and enjoyable works proud,…in affectionate performances that revel in Coleridge-Taylor’s idiomatic and challenging writing.  The recording is warm but texturally crystal-clear.  Highly recommended”
Performance *****  Sound *****  
Calum MacDonald, BBC Music Magazine, November 2007

Editor’s Choice

“Coleridge- Taylor is enjoying a decent innings at present:… and now comes this wonderful Hyperion collection featuring the Nash Ensemble at its golden-toned and responsive best.
In truth the performance of the 1985 Clarinet Quintet is in a different league to the Centaur version … it comes as no surprise to learn that these consummate artists had given a memorable live rendering at the Wigmore Hall just a few weeks previously.
Backed by a blemish-free production from the Keener/Eadon team and attractively presented, this has to be one of the most engaging releases I’ve heard all year.”
Andrew Aschenbach, Gramophone November 2007