Waking – Marquee, Welburn

The final concert of the North York Moors Chamber Music Festival took place in a large marquee at Welburn Manor bulging at the seams with the extra chairs brought in. A final touch of drama came when briefly torrential rain beat on the roof of the marquee, but Schubert’s trout rose triumphantly above it. The Into the Looking Glasstheme may not have been always convincing, butWakingcould not have been more appropriate for this last concert, a wonderfully buoyant pair of Schubert pieces of one of which Robert Schumann remarked, “The troubles of our human existence disappear and all the world is fresh and bright again.”

The 10-day programme had more than its share of less well known items, but to finish Artistic Director Jamie Walton settled for a perennial favourite, Schubert’s Trout Quintet. Before that he programmed the same composer’s late Piano Trio. Eight of the 20-plus soloists used in the Festival took part in the concert.

The trio, played by Daniel Lebhardt (piano), Benjamin Baker (violin) and Alice Neary (cello), began with typically Schubertian melodic flair, the galloping first subject succeeded by a gentler second subject. Nor did it let up, with the tender second movement succeeded by the instruments echoing each other in a lively Scherzo before the final Theme and Variations, full of jaunty episodes and building up to a false ending. All the trio played immaculately, notably Lebhardt’s witty approach to the piano part.

The Trout Quintet was written for domestic performance which may account for the unusual instrumentation: piano added to a conventional string quartet, but with a double bass taking over from the second violin. The trout in question is the subject of an earlier song by Schubert which is the basis for the magical theme and variations in the fourth movement.

Liberated by the cello/double bass combination from its bass role, the piano sparkles throughout, constantly suggesting the rippling of water. As played by Christian Chamorel, the song melody somehow seems to lie beneath all the piano’s part. The string players – Charlotte Scott (violin), Simone van der Giessen (viola), Jamie Walton (cello) and Siret Lust (double bass) – seized their solo opportunities with relish and brought the right degree of effervescence to the explosive finale.

At the end, as the rain slowed, Jamie Walton promised fresh delights next year, no doubt again a mix of the familiar and the obscure.

Reviewed on 26th August 2023.