The Nash Ensemble has built up a remarkable reputation as one of Britain’s finest and most adventurous chamber groups, and through the dedication of its founder and Artistic Director Amelia Freedman and the calibre of its players, has gained a similar reputation all over the world. The repertoire is vast, and the imaginative, innovative, and unusual programmes are as finely architectured as the beautiful Nash terraces in London from which the group takes its name. By the end of the 2011/12 season the group will have premiered around 267 new works, of which 168 have been specially commissioned.
An impressive collection of recordings illustrates the same varied and colourful combination of classical masterpieces, little-known neglected gems and important contemporary works. CDs released in 2010/11 have included all the Mozart String Quintets for Hyperion, and Brahms Piano Quartet in A and the Clarinet Trio for Onyx. A disc of chamber works by David Matthews for NMC was recently shortlisted for a Gramophone Award. Future releases include chamber works by Schumann, Turina and 19th-century Russian composers. As a consequence of the Ensemble's acclaimed Theresienstadt weekend at Wigmore Hall in June 2010, Hyperion will record a CD of works by composers who were incarcerated in the Theresienstadt concentration camp between 1941 and 1945 - Gideon Klein, Viktor Ullmann, Pavel Haas and Hans Krasa. This CD will be launched in conjunction with the publication by Penguin Books of a diary kept by the Czech artist Helga Hoskova who as a child was incarcerated in both Theresienstadt and Auschwitz.
In their current Wigmore Hall series "Echoes of Romanticism", the Nash explore the romantic period in Germany and Austria, focusing on music written in the 19th and the second half of the 20th century. The Ensemble traces the romantic spirit from Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, by way of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms, to Schoenberg and Zemlinsky. The great Straussian soprano Dame Felicity Lott will sing the last scene from Strauss's opera Capriccio, and leading singers Bernarda Fink, Wolfgang Holzmair and Alice Coote join the group in song cycles by Mahler to mark the centenary of his death. The 2012/13 Wigmore series, entitled "Dreamers of Dreams", focuses on the works of British composers from the first half of the 20th century, in particular Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten.
The Nash tours throughout Europe and the USA: highlights include 3 concerts in the 92nd Street Y New York's Theresienstadt project "Will to Create, Will to Live", performances in the Berlin Konzerthaus, Musée d'Orsay (Paris) and the Vienna Konzerthaus; at the BBC Proms and the Edinburgh International Festival; and residencies at the Toronto Festival in Canada and the Lofoten Festival in Norway.
The Nash Ensemble has won numerous accolades including The Edinburgh Festival Critics award 'for general artistic excellence' and two Royal Philharmonic Society awards in the chamber music category "for the breadth of its taste and its immaculate performance of a wide range of music."