[Wigmore Hall, 14 January 2012]
"Sometimes the very opening bars of a concert tell you it's going to be a good evening. As the wonderful Ian Brown matched his first notes precisely with the Nash wind-players - Gareth Hulse, Richard Hosford, Richard Watkins and Ursula Leveaux - in the slow introduction to Beethoven's Quintet, you could sense a glow of anticipation spreading through a packed Wigmore Hall. … It was a beautiful performance, bespeaking careful preparation and spontaneous execution. … Schubert's Octet created exactly the right impression: it seemed to be expansively phrased, with plenty of room for individual enterprise; but if you focused on the basic tempo, it was never merely being indulgent. Movement after movement passed by in the pleasantest way, until suddenly we were at the end of the Minuet and Paul Watkins and Duncan McTier were launching the Andante molto to begin the finale. Then the strings went spinning away into the Allegro and we experienced that typically Schubertian feeling - pleasure in the passing moment, regret that it would soon be over and we would be facing the chill of a wintry Wigmore Street. Stephanie Gonley and Richard Hosford must be given special mention but every member of the Nash Ensemble played his or her part with grace and equanimity. This was a lovely concert in every way."
ClassicalSource.com, January 2012
[Wigmore Hall, 15 October 2011]
"This concert began with Mozart's great Piano Quartet in G minor, a key associated in his music with proto-romantic intensity: the performance was a quiet wonder, graced by Ian Brown's serenely intelligent pianism, and charged with the luminous force of Lawrence Power's viola. Bernarda Fink was the eloquent mezzo-soprano in arrangements of Zemlinsky songs and Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, conducted by Martyn Brabbins; and the Adagio, standing alone, from Bruckner's String Quintet in F revealed depths unplumbed by a Shostakovich."
The Sunday Times, October 2011
[Ottawa Chamber Music Festival - 28 July 2011]
"An ensemble of the highest quality… Nash group brings audience to its feet… The Nash Ensemble performance of this masterwork [Schumann Piano Quintet] was a wonder. From the stern logic of the first movement through the dark magic of the fugue and the towering fury of the scherzo to the sad little smile of the last few measures, everything was totally in focus and phenomenally effective. The concert had a nearcapacity audience that came to its feet just seconds after the musicians lowered their bows."
Ottawa Citizen, July 2011
[Nash Inventions concert - Wigmore Hall, 23 March 2011]
"Where would British music have been without the Nash? Artistically poorer, for since its foundation in 1964, this world-beating ensemble has commissioned 160 new works, including major ones from Elliott Carter, Harrison Birtwistle, Mark-Anthony Turnage, plus a catalogue of now-prominent others."
The Independent, March 2011
[Mozart String Quintets - Hyperion CDA 67861/3]
Sunday Times Top 100 Albums of 2010
No.2 in the Classical section:
"These wonderfully integrated performances are those of a group of players who have lived together with this great music for years, rather than a string quartet with a guest viola."
The Sunday Times, December 2010
David Matthews and Amelia Freedman
at the post-concert dinner
on 21st November[Amelia Freedman's 70th birthday concert, Wigmore Hall, 21 November 2010]
"There's nothing to hit but the heights. When Kim Criswell made a surprise appearance at Wigmore Hall at the weekend, hair flaming red, body bound in twinkling midnight blue, she made rapid eye contact with one particular woman in the audience, Amelia Freedman - indefatigable commissioner, programmer, impresario, founder-director of the Nash Ensemble and, as Harrison Birtwistle put it, nothing less than the Arsene Wenger of Music - was celebrating her 70th birthday…" Click here to read the whole review.
The Times, November 2010
[20 unmissable events during November 2010]
"Whether as an erstwhile head of classical music at the Southbank, respected festival director, or consummate programmer for her beloved Nash Ensemble, Amelia Freedman has immeasurably enriched musical life. No surprise then that as the Nash plays Ravel, Schubert and Dvorak in honour of her 70th birthday, a distinguished clutch of composers including Birtwistle, Maxwell Davies, Holt and Turnage are obliging with a bouquet of specially-written short pieces"
BBC Music Magazine, October 2010
[Mozart String Quintets - Hyperion CDA 67861/3]
CD of the Week: ***** "Several Nash players - notably its first viola, Lawrence Power, and cellist, Paul Watkins - have important solo careers, but they are first and foremost interpreters of chamber music. The urbane early quintet.. gets an amiable performance, full of high spirits in the Allegro and Minuet. The performances of the four original works.. are magnificently played throughout - conversational, argumentative, profoundly expressive, witty - and rank with the finest ever committed to disc."
The Sunday Times, September 2010
[Theresienstadt Weekend - Wigmore Hall, 19-20 June 2010]
"The greatest musical experiences radically alter our perspectives. This was very much the case with the Nash Ensemble's Theresienstadt weekend. Concerts, films, talks and exhibitions examined the extraordinary cultural flowering in the ghetto-camp near Prague, set up by the Nazis in 1941, where, among thousands of others, the Czech-Jewish intelligentsia were held before transportation to death camps. The event's force lay in its broadening of our contextual awareness, and in its revelation of the quality of the work produced.
Paintings and drawings by children, unflinching witnesses to history, hung on the walls of the Wigmore's subterranean Bechstein room. Three extraordinary women – an actor, a painter and a singer – spoke with wise eloquence of surviving both Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. Creativity was an existential affirmation of life, though traditions died along with people. Krása and Pavel Haas, Janácek's rightful successors, were murdered in the gas chambers. The ironies of Weimar Republic cabaret were kept alive, for a while, in bittersweet songs by Adolf Strauss and Otto Skutecky.
Many works were outright masterpieces. Haas's Four Songs on Chinese Poetry, Erwin Schulhoff's Duo for Violin and Cello, and above all Krása's Passacaglia and Fuga and his Rimbaud settings for baritone, clarinet, viola and cello belong in the regular repertory, irrespective of the circumstances of their composition.
The Nash, an ensemble of stars, played with great technical power and depth of feeling. The singer was Wolfgang Holzmair, richly expressive, if overly score-bound. The Nash should tour this internationally – it deserves to be heard around the world."
The Guardian, June 2010
[Brahms Clarinet Trio & Piano Quartet no.2 - Onyx 4045]
"These are beautifully expressive, thoughtful performances of two unalloyed masterpieces, presented with all the sonic excellence and distinction that we've come to expect from Onyx's series of recordings with the Nash Ensemble. It makes a fine companion to their previous disc of Piano Quartets Nos 1 and 3… it's the account of the account of the Clarinet Trio which which especially impressed me, partly due to the refinement and subtle colouring of Richard Hosford's clarinet playing. The middle movements especially strike me as outstanding, with a wonderful sense of regret and melancholy in the Adagio."
BBC Music Magazine, July 2010
[Brahms Clarinet Trio & Piano Quartet no.2- Onyx 4045]
"The seductive clarinet of Richard Mühlfeld tempted Brahms out of retirement to write his Clarinet Trio and Quintet and one can't help feeling that Richard Hosford's creamy tone - as displayed here - would have proved equally inspirational. An account of an early performance of the Trio said it was 'as though the instruments were in love with one another' - which could equally fit this recording of the Piano Quartet No.2, such is the effortless mastery of the Nash Ensemble."
The Observer, May 10
[Brahms Piano Quartet No.2 - Onyx 4045]
"The splendid performance of the piano quartet shows the young Brahms's intellectual power and melodic abundance to magnificent advantage."
The Sunday Times, May 10
[Invitation au voyage, Wigmore Hall, 6 March 2010]
"The Nash Ensemble absolutely filled the chamber-sized stage of Wigmore Hall and the result was an incredibly rich sound, which filled the hall and our hearts with uplifting music"
Classical Guitar Magazine, April 10
[Brahms String Quintets - Onyx 4043]
"The Nash Ensemble are nothing less than the London regiment of chamber music's crack troops... Both discs present this joyful, compelling music in its best light; the Nash are on cracking form..."
Gramophone, November 09