Festival Music

Trio Zimmermann

Queen's Hall

Keith Bruce

four stars

WELL, that was welcome and bracing. After a surfeit of gut strings and gigues from early music specialists, Schoenberg's Opus 45 String Trio came as a breath of sharp, fresh modernist air. Not that it was labelled as such, but there was also a valid 70th birthday reason for its inclusion in a morning recital, as it dates, like the Festival itself, from 1947. Arguably a little more of the same compositional vintage in the 2017 programme might have balanced things up a bit.

It is a bow-shredding piece at the start – and violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann and viola-player Antoine Tamestit were soon shedding horse-hair to prove it – but also has its mellow moments, with delicate harmonics and muted strings – and if there is little that mainstream taste would identify as "melodic", the use Schoenberg makes if his material, in something that requires virtuoso technique, is fascinating.

So too, and as technically demanding, is Dmitry Sitkovetsky's arrangement of Bach's Goldberg Variations. Given the status of Bach's Partitas and Sonatas as solo showpieces for string players, the idea seems almost obvious, but this was the first time I have heard the epic 80-minute 1985 work. In a sense it is a relay, with the musical baton being constantly passed between Zimmermann, Tamestit, and cellist Christian Poltera, a former BBC New Generation with a superb sound and articulation. Sitkovetsky uses every conceivable combination of the three instruments along the way, and it is a marathon as well, obviously. These athletes paced themselves beautifully, with plenty of vim left for the demanding breath-catching speedy fingerwork required at the sprint to the tape.