Gig review: Hebrides Ensemble | Heath Quartet/James Baillieu

FOR the opening weekend of Music at Paxton, the top drawer chamber music that is at the core of the festival's raison d'tre couldn't have had better exponents than the ever classy Hebrides Ensemble and the dynamic young Heath Quartet.

Giving this year's first weekend of concerts in the Palladian splendour of Paxton House and its Picture Gallery, both groups' repertoire veered towards the safe side of classical programming, but were nonetheless challenging for that.

In Friday night's piano trios by Jancek and Schubert, Hebrides Ensemble showed much of what they are best at. Intensity of musical experience embedded in deep, inherent understanding of what they perform was offered through both pieces.

Contrasting in style, Jancek's Kreutzer Sonata (taking its name from Tolstoy's novella of the same name and more usually heard in its original version for string quartet) and Schubert's Piano Trio No 2, surprisingly shared some common ground in their emotional pull.

Impassioned and dramatic, especially with the full-bodied string playing of violinist Alexander Janiczek and 'cellist William Conway, Jancek's take on the story of a jealous husband who murders his wife after discovering her affair with a violinist, was a heart-pounding journey through a sweep of emotions. It made for powerful, heady stuff, but there was tenderness too, much of it to be found in the insightful playing of pianist Philip Moore.

The Schubert was an appropriately sunnier piece for a summer festival, although not without its own sort of troubled tensions. Beautiful moments of light and delicateness in the opening Allegro shifted to the darker colours of the slower second movement and weightiness of what was to come. Every angle was covered by the versatility of the Hebrides' players in a performance of all round equilibrium.

With the impact of Hebrides' opening concert still resonating, it was over to the Heath Quartet for Saturday evening's performance of Beethoven and, with pianist James Baillieu, Brahms. As award-winning, meteor-like rising young artists, they have clearly had comparable pathways to Paxton. That they should be such natural musical collaborators is surely, however, an added bonus. Brahms' Piano Quintet in F minor was simply superb. An audible communal sigh of exhalation from the audience marked the end of the first movement. The string quartet's sound is uncannily well blended, each of the four players exceptionally well-matched and with James Baillieu bringing additional colour, their palette box of shading, dynamics and nuance in shifting mood seemed to know no end.

Beethoven's Rasoumovsky Quartet Op 59 No 1 in the first half was fresh and spirited. Even though not always completely polished, any odd untidiness was cast aside by the Heath's immediately engaging appeal.

Formed less than ten years ago, while still students, the Heath Quartet are undoubtedly destined for a formidable future career. Music at Paxton has a track record in catching musicians on the up, and with Baillieu and the Heath, it seems that they've done it again.

• Music at Paxton runs until Sunday 24 July at Paxton House, near Berwick upon Tweed