Review: Nash Ensemble ***

The Nash Ensemble can be anything you want it to be, four of their woodwind joining the pianist, Ian Brown, in this on-going season of French music.

It allowed them the permutation of playing bassoon, oboe and flute sonatas by Saint-Saens, Dutilleux and Poulenc before coming together in a performance of Poulenc's effervescent Sextet, a work they have recorded to much acclaim

The applause spoke volumes of an audience that had been well satisfied by the musicianship and technical fluency of these musicians, yet had missed that tingle factor needed to take it to a higher level.

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I certainly much enjoyed the Saint-Saens from Ursula Leveaux who has that highly desirable ability to move the bassoon from the beauty of a lyric quality to that juicy sounds we hear from the great French exponents.

They were all more than deeply indebted to the perceptive, perfectly balanced and cleanly detailed accompaniments from Brown, many far more challenging than the role of the solo instrument,

He eventually emerge from the background in an outstandingly imaginative recreation of a section of Messiaen's Catalogue d'Oiseaux.

The Venue, Leeds

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