The Nash Ensemble and Claire Booth
Celebrating its 60th anniversary, the renowned Nash Ensemble returns to the Festival with classical delights from Mozart and Beethoven, songs by Julian Anderson, and Judith Weir’s folkloric piano quartet.
The Nash Ensemble
Claire Booth soprano
Martyn Brabbins conductor
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Martyn Brabbins
Credit : © Alastair Muir
The Nash Ensemble
Claire Booth
Credit : © Sven ArnsteinAnother 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.”
