Sainsbury Royal Academy Soloists

Bath Abbey

Pleasure at the proliferation of gifted young musicians appearing on our concert platforms has almost become a cliché.  We hear them every autumn at the Bath Young Musician of the Year.  Yet we should not take them for granted in these hard economic times.

  And these students from The Royal Academy, directed from the violin by Clio Gould, are quite exceptional. Their playing is disciplined and the ensemble has a precision without any sense of rigidity or lack of flexibility.  They have an admirable combination of technical assurance and confidence, allied to an understanding of the music and respect for it, which is strikingly impressive.  No histrionics, they just play. And how they play.

The opening Elgar Serenade in E Minor, with its sumptuous Larghetto, flanked by a lively Allegro and mobile Allegretto showed us a warm quality of sound and a dynamic range that Elgar would have loved.  The pianissimo playing was especially sensitive.  Laurie Bamon – in the audience to take a bow – heard the world premiere of her Urn Garden, showing a range of tone patterns from sostenuto to angular dissonances which conjured up the remarkable collection of urns at Highgrove House.  It is a delightful little miniature, gracefully phrased and tranquil, based on the Keats' Ode.

R V W's Concerto Accademico for solo violin and strings posed a very different challenge.  Bouncy and full of rhythmic vitality, it has a sinewy muscularity which is not typical.  Katie Littlemore played it with controlled intensity and an occasional wry smile, as if enjoying its enigmatic secrecy.  The final Presto has a spiky urgency, without losing any of the tone quality – "Presto ma non stoppo", perhaps?   Quite a talent to watch.

Britten's homage to his teacher Frank Bridge, Variations on a Theme, concluded the programme: ten sections written when he was just 23.  It has a youthful profusion of ideas showing the composer at his most inventive and daring, from Romance to Funeral March and a lot else besides, played with a freedom and virtuosity which underlined the expertise of the writing – no variation too long  and the shared enjoyment inherent in the piece for performer and listener alike.

 This was string playing of rare quality under Clio Gould's expert but unobtrusive direction.  The abbey should be delighted with the excellence of this first concert in 2012 – though a little disappointed perhaps that more people weren't there to share it.  The next concert in the series on  March 8 features award–winning classical guitarist Milos Karadaglic.

Peter Lloyd Williams