In a change to the advertised programme of music from the notorious Terezín, the Nash Ensemble brought not so much the harrowing echoes of the holocaust to the Royal Pavilion as a surprise serenade of romantic splendour.
A last-minute substitution of violinist Krysia Ostostowicz for Marianne Thorsen necessitated the switch to Schumann's Piano Quartet in E flat major, a work of gentle exuberance which the strings captured with a rich, soft breathiness and a busy sense of intrigue in the scherzo.
Pavel Haas's virtuosic Suite for solo piano – played here by Ian Brown – was a revelation. Written in 1935, nine years before its composer was murdered by the Nazis, the suite encapsulates all the business and flourish of a life fully lived. Bluesy and playful, Haas's music combines the swagger of Gershwin with the daydreaming of Debussy while, in the Danza, asserting its own pigeon-toed charm.
Strings were never enough for Dvořák and even the mighty Nash struggled to smash sufficient power out of their instruments for the Piano Quartet No 2 in E flat major.
Their unfashionably full-blown romanticism was unabashed and given all that's happened in Europe in the last hundred years, a bit of full-blown romanticism is no bad thing.
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