Music review: Nash Ensemble, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh

Crash! Bang! Wallop! If that seems like a crass misrepresentation, which it is, of the opening and closing bars of James MacMillan’s Fourteen Little Pictures, there is an element of truth to it, being the gut reaction to the anger that embraces this 1997 piano trio.
The Nash Ensemble. Picture: EIFThe Nash Ensemble. Picture: EIF
The Nash Ensemble. Picture: EIF

Nash Ensemble, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh * * * *

Yes, the opening bedlam – unleashed with head-banging venom by Nash Ensemble members Marianne Thorsen (violin), Adrian Brendel (cello) and Alasdair Beatson (piano) – was fearsomely arresting.

But as it dissipated, the music revealed its inner charm: a cocktail of mutating conversations: intimate and acerbic, loving and witty, as varied and unpredictable as MacMillan’s quicksilver thought process.

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Then that ending: a ferocious crescendo of repeated notes on the piano, pile-driven by Beatson, beating the music into exhaustive submission and aching silence, except for the inadvertent interruption by a perfectly-timed police siren passing outside the Queen’s Hall.

Beethoven’s Trio for clarinet (Richard Hosford), cello and piano, and Dvorak’s E minor Dumky Trio inevitably slipped into the shadows either side of the MacMillan, at least in terms of temperament. As such, though, they were perfect bookends.

Beethoven’s cheery Trio was a breeze all the way to its coquettish theme and variations.

Dvorak’s Dumky smiled with folksy élan.

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