The Nash Ensemble

Mozart – Trio in E flat major for clarinet, viola and piano K 498
Mozart – String Quintet in C minor K 406
Mozart – Serenade in B flat major (Gran Partita) for 13 instruments K 361

The virtuoso Nash Ensemble, always welcome on its visits to Bath, presents an all-Mozart evening based on a programme given in the Leipzig Gewandhaus concert series in January 1883. It begins with the Trio for clarinet, viola and piano, supposedly written during a game of skittles, and continues with the composer’s own arrangement for string quintet of the dramatic Serenade in C minor for wind octet.

But the pièce de résistance is another wind Serenade, the Gran Partita for twelve wind instruments and double bass, which matches its lavish, colourful scoring with an expansive seven-movement plan and a remarkable richness of invention.