By Peter Williams

Were there, I idly wondered last Sunday afternoon, ghosts perched on the Corinthian capitals of Leominster’s Lion Ballroom, gazing down approvingly on the scene beneath them? The ghosts of Jacqueline du Pré, Bernard Greenhouse, Sidney Griller, Frederick Grinke, Gareth Morris, Max Rostal? All, just listed in uninvidious alphabetical order, great players and teachers of an earlier generation, exemplars of that tradition by which performing artists have been the stepping stones for the next generation eagerly reaching for the distant musical shore equipped with both essential technique and, above all, precious sense of style.

In an age where youth is so fêted, maturity deserves a higher ranking - and the “pupils” we were privileged to be listening to now had the maturity of their own teachers: and it showed: in Spades. Those names from the past evoked memories of the Griller Quartet, the Beaux Arts Trio, Boyd Neel. And in the present we had a Trio and a Quartet worthy of those memories.

The Trio (their teachers’ names in brackets) consisted of Michael Bochmann (Grinke), Carol Hubel-Allen (Griller & Rostal) and David Powell (du Pré and Greenhouse). They played with such unanimity of thought and feeling, with such varied colour and so much space around their individual parts that one wondered why anyone had ever bothered to invent the string quartet - what could an extra violin bring to the party?

And how encouraging that Leominster could reward Espressivo, venturing on a programme that was not exactly Box Office, with such a numerous and enthusiastic audience. We were rewarded by not one but two First Performances, one of a string quartet written by a 16-year-old Schubert, no less, but reworked and shorn of excess puppy fat in a version for Flute and String Trio. That ended the programme, which had begun with another Flute Quartet, an arrangement “after” Haydn, in which the Bochmann Trio was joined by Catherine Handley (Gareth Morris and the New Philharmonia under Klemperer).

For if the above-mentioned ghosts were up there on their Corinthian columns, perhaps another was swinging from the chandelier above the players’ heads - the ghost of Malcolm Arnold, who had taught composition to the man responsible for three of the works on the programme, imbuing him with adept, light touch and, like Arnold himself, with a genuine and rare sense of musical humour.

Derek Smith, both in 1930 (a VERY good year, for it also saw the birth of your scribe), was there to hear the Schubert Quartet, which ended the programme, premièred; together with his arrangement, for the same instrumentation, of a work by a youthful Haydn. This was written for string quartet but with the lion’s share of the music given to the lead violin. Smith has replaced one of Haydn’s violins with a flute part up-graded to match the violin’s. So, with the viola and cello also being given more to do than mere accompaniment, we heard delightful music that has otherwise languished unplayed in the concert hall and under-valued by the musicologists. Mining history’s neglected seams for musical gems that deserve to see the light of day in more “commercial” format is one of Derek Smith’s pre-occupations - one that deserves everyone’s appreciation and thanks. But he also composes in his own right, and the second half of the programme began with the first-ever public performance of his Rondoletto for Flute and String Trio, written in 2017. He points out that the title Rondoletto was much loved in the 19th century and Beethoven wrote a very popular one that lasted one minute. Smith argues that his, lasting three minutes, must therefore be three times better than Beethoven’s, a piece of chop-logic that would somewhat over-value Satie’s Vexations, eighteen hours in performance. No matter, this light-hearted and witty piece put the audience in receptive mood for the single movement of a String Trio that the 19-year-old Schubert started in 1816 but never took beyond a draft of a second movement.

This was Schubert straddling two worlds, his feet and head rooted in the Classical world of form and structure, his heart and his voice in the Romantic world of melody - contrasting admirably with the early Beethoven Serenade and The Mozart Flute Quartet in D that, together with the Haydn, had made up the first half.

Altogether an intriguing afternoon, so much novel and fresh, so many related strands, all intertwining and based in Vienna where, in the matter of teacher and pupil, young Beethoven planned to have lessons from Haydn - a relationship that definitely did NOT work out! And hearing, in the Serenade, Beethoven’s ponderous attempts at musical humour, one is sad that he could not instead have had some lessons from Derek Smith.