The Nash Ensemble
Claire Booth soprano
Martyn Brabbins conductor

Another concert in which long-established and new music combine.

Mozart’s first piano quartet has a passionate charm which has delighted listeners over the years. Beethoven’s Clarinet Trio – for the rare combination of clarinet, cello and piano – is a work of expansive and genial elegance. Julian Anderson’s “vivid, transfixing sound worlds” (Gramophone) are evident in his three songs for soprano and ensemble, for which The Nash Ensemble – “the best champion that any composer could hope to have” (The Times) – is joined by the internationally renowned Claire Booth.

Of her Distance and Enchantment, Judith Weir writes: “Folklore is full of stories about people who suddenly disappear from home, never to return. Distance and Enchantment is a musical essay about this strikingly common occurrence. It takes the form of two meditations on traditional songs, which are played together without a break.

“The first song – The Dark-Eyed Gypsy – from Northern Ireland, tells of a woman who, of her own volition, leaves her comfortable home to roam the unknown world with a band of gypsies; and the second, A Ghaoil, Leig Dhachaigh Gum Mhàthair Mi from South Uist, Scotland, tells of a girl who wanders a little too far from home on a dark night and is stolen away by the fairies.”