Charles Hutch Press, Charles Hutchinson

Lumas Winds opened their programme with a confident performance of Mozart’s Magic Flute Overture. There are no hiding places in this music; technique is very much on the line and the crisply articulated playing throughout was both brave as well as admirable. Enjoyable too.

David Matthews’ Three Woodwind Studies, a set of personal, intimate portraits, was a delight. A Song For Emma (solo flute), with its charming melodic ebb and flow, was beautifully judged by Beth Stone.

Chris Vettraino’s performance of A Birthday Song (oboe) was both haunting and hypnotic. A Study For Sam (solo clarinet) was a first performance and proved to be a quirky, fun-filled gem.

Mozart’s Divertimento in F is an early work written in 1775. To be sure, it is more of a window into what was to come, but impressive nonetheless.

“… The playing was wonderful, the balance impeccable.”

Sally Beamish’s The Naming Of Birds proved to be an evocative set of character pieces; very imaginative and quite unlike anything I have heard before. Each of these five demanding movements had five soloists evoking the call of each bird – partridge (horn), lapwing (oboe) and so forth.

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… Sally Beamish’s arrangement of Mozart’s Adagio for Glass Harmonica was an entirely musical affair. The sound was so seductive with the cor anglais replacing the oboe “to give a warm, dark quality to the quintet”. Which it did. How inspired.

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Lumas Winds ended this splendid concert with the best work in the programme – apart from the Mozart, obviously – in Elizabeth Maconchy’s terrific Wind Quintet. It was so well written by a composer so clearly still at the top of their game. She was in her mid-seventies.

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“The players were at one with the technical and musical demands. The performance was illuminating.”