Chamber Music Highlights (Edinburgh International Festival)

Comprising highlights from the 2021 Edinburgh International Festival Chamber Music Series, this collection opens with the rarely heard Nonet by Coleridge-Taylor. With its exhilarating energy and infectious enthusiasm, Chineke! Chamber Ensemble provides the perfect performance. One of Britain’s most treasured musicians, pianist Steven Osborne explores the enormous drama found in Schubert’s miniature Impromptu No. 1. Vocal highlights include Gerald Finley and Julius Drake performing Schubert’s Das Fischerma¨dchen, Mari Eriksmoen and Daniel Heide in Schumann’s Lied der Suleika, and Elizabeth Watts together with Roderick Williams and Malcolm Martineau in the Walter Scott poem O hush thee, my baby. The programme also includes excerpts from two string quartets: Haydn’s Op. 33 No. 1 by the Goldmund Quartet, and Dvorák’s No. 13 in G major, Op. 106, by the Gringolts Quartet. And finally two rarities: the recently uncovered Piano Trio in A minor by Russian composer Leokadiya Kashperova from the Gould Piano Trio, and the Sextet for piano & winds, Op. 6, by Richard Strauss’s contemporary and friend Ludwig Thuille from Maxim Emelyanychev and Principals of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.