Nash Ensemble: 60 years – and counting

James Jolly
Friday, November 29, 2024

As the Nash Ensemble celebrates its 60th birthday James Jolly went to meet Amelia Freedman, its founder and Artistic Director for those six decades

Amelia Freedman receiving Honorary Membership of the RPS at Wigmore Hall from the RPS’s Chief Executive James Murphy
Amelia Freedman receiving Honorary Membership of the RPS at Wigmore Hall from the RPS’s Chief Executive James Murphy

It was as a BBC Radio 3 ‘Composer of the Week’ sometime in my late teens that I first encountered the music of Franz Berwald. My first, and almost immediate, purchase was a Decca LP of two of the symphonies played by the LSO under Sixten Ehrling (11/68); next came the Septet played by the Nash Ensemble, a CRD release – and looking back at the August 1978 issue where it was enthusiastically reviewed by one of the Swedish composer’s most loyal champions, Robert Layton, I see that it was the second of three Nash/CRD releases reviewed consecutively that month. In common with many people, I suspect, the Nash Ensemble was the group that led the way to numerous discoveries for me of slightly off-the-beaten-path chamber music. It has been a companion throughout my adult musical life and is celebrating its 60th birthday this year (it was founded in October 1964): a perfect opportunity to talk to the ensemble’s guiding spirit for all of those 60 years, Amelia Freedman.

‘I was a student at the Royal Academy of Music, and I used to organise chamber concerts there under the guidance of Professor Watson Forbes, who was quite a well-known viola-player,’ she tells me when I visited her at her North London home just a few days after the Nash’s 60th Anniversary concert at Wigmore Hall in October. ‘One day about 20 students took me down to the pub that we all used to go to and said, “Look, Amelia, you’re the only one who can organise us. Will you start a group?” And, of course, at first I was very reluctant. But after a while, and after a number of drinks, I said yes. At the beginning I had a committee, but that was completely hopeless because nobody agreed on anything – somebody had to make the decisions, so I had to assume the role of benign dictator. That’s how it started. I continued to organise concerts at the Royal Academy, but soon elsewhere, and our first major engagement outside was at the American Embassy for the Park Lane Group, conducted by Graham Treacher. And actually our programme – which included the Stravinsky Octet and a new piece by Michael Nyman – received quite a nice notice in The Times, saying that we were an interesting group.’

‘I have to be very careful because my group don’t want to be conducted’

Amelia Freedman

The Nash – in common with the Melos Ensemble, which preceded and in some ways inspired it, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, which followed it by a few years – is not a fixed group; it can expand or reduce according to the needs of the repertoire – as Freedman points out ‘if you’re doing things like the Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, you need a trumpet and a trombone, so one added or subtracted along the way’ – though at its heart it’s a wind quintet, a string quintet, plus piano and harp.

(The name ‘Nash’, incidentally, is not musical, but rather architectural. ‘I went to the Principal of the Royal Academy who, at the time, was Sir Thomas Armstrong, a really wonderful man,’ Freedman recalls. ‘But he lived in the 19th century, I think. He clearly thought I was a bit suspicious because I was too ambitious. And I said, “Sir Thomas, could I call it the Academy Ensemble?” And he said no. At the time the Park Lane Group was run by John Woolf who was a terrific support in those early days, and he said, “Why don’t you call it the Nash Ensemble after the John Nash terraces around the Royal Academy?” So that’s how it got its name. Actually there’s a little postscript to the story,’ Freedman adds. ‘When, in 1989, we got our first RPS [Royal Philharmonic Society] Award, Sir Thomas was there. He came up to me and said, “Amelia, many congratulations. I’m so glad I supported you all those years ago”. Of course, he hadn’t! He wanted to sack me because I was too ambitious. But I didn’t have the heart to say so – I simply thanked him!’)

Freedman played the clarinet in the Nash Ensemble for its first four years but soon it became evident that she needed to concentrate on administration and so, in 1968, she stepped away from playing and, while no longer on stage, her guidance has been crucial both to the group’s longevity and its ambition. Central to the Nash’s musical philosophy has been the performance of new music, and since its debut it has premiered more than 330 works by 225 composers. And what composers! One giant, with whom Freedman had a very fruitful relationship with was Sir Harrison Birtwistle: ‘We recorded four CDs of Harry’s works, including The Moth Requiem [for Signum], which was very close to his heart. Most recently, we recorded a chamber music record [including the Oboe Quartet] for BIS when he was still with us. I still find it really difficult not to ring him up and say, “What would you like us to do?” Because that that was our relationship. It was very, very warm and friendly. In fact, he said I was his Jewish mother, which I thought was rather sweet. I’m very pleased to have supported Julian Anderson and Simon Holt, and of course David and Colin Matthews. And Sandy Goehr. I had a great relationship with Peter Maxwell Davies, who I loved. He was such a wonderful man – and such a contrast to Harry. Max was always such a gentleman. And he was a really, really wonderful composer. We’re actually playing a piece of his on March 18 at Wigmore Hall, a string quintet that he wrote for us. It’s a fantastic piece. There were so many composers! I’ve had a wonderful life, really, in music. I’ve always stuck to my guns and I think it’s very important that you do that. You don’t necessarily go with what’s fashionable. You go with what you believe in.’

There are also some very impressive names among the non-British composers. ‘I commissioned Elliott Carter. He wrote a piece called Mosaic [also to be heard on March 18], and I commissioned Tristan Murail. And we gave quite a few Henze premieres in the UK. I also had a good relationship with Henri Dutilleux. And with one of my other hats, which was with the Bath Festival, there was Olivier Messiaen. I had a festival of French music, and I brought Messiaen over with his wife Yvonne Loriod.’ (The Nash’s website, incidentally, contains a dizzying list of all the works premiered and commissioned.)

Another of my earliest Nash recordings was an Argo album of Ravel, with the soprano Felicity Palmer, some works conducted by a young Simon Rattle. It prompted the question ‘When is a conductor deemed necessary?’ ‘If I’ve got a large work with more than seven or eight players – and generally contemporary – or it’s for voice and ensemble (I love the voice!). For instance, the Mahler songs in arrangements – there I know that we have to have a conductor. But I have to be very careful because my group don’t want to be conducted. Take Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. I’d say that probably all other groups would have a conductor, but my group don’t need it – they’re wonderful musicians, just wonderful. But if I’m choosing Walton’s Façade, which we’re doing next year, it can’t be done without a conductor.’

The Rattle relationship with Freedman started with a conversation with Martin Campbell-White, until 2014 CEO of the artist management company Askonas Holt (formerly Harold Holt Ltd), and already Rattle’s manager. ‘I’ve got this young conductor and he’s really going to go places,’ Freedman recalls him saying. ‘He was very young and had a job as assistant conductor. Anyway, with him we did some recordings for the Open University, Schoenberg and Webern and things like that. Simon conducted and of course he was wonderful. There was even some discussion about him becoming the artistic director of the Nash, but it didn’t work out. He conducted us several times, went on tour to Spain. We did a concert, an amazing concert, with the New London Ballet in the 1970s. It was obvious he was going places. I’ve always admired him. He’s wonderful – he’s not only a great conductor, but he’s always stood up for things that were important.’ And the Nash has also been conducted by Sir Andrew Davis and Sir Mark Elder – not to mention Martyn Brabbins who, as Freedman says, is virtually ‘an honorary Nasher’. (It was with Brabbins conducting that the Nash secured its most recent Gramophone Award – for an album of music by John Pickard for BIS in 2021.)

Recording has always played a major role for the Nash Ensemble. It was Graham Pauncefort’s CRD label that gave the Nash its break. ‘The reason why Graham gave us the opportunity,’ Freedman recalls, ‘was because we both went to the same school, St George’s in Harpenden. He was a year ahead of me and I think he liked me quite a lot! He was wonderful, and he gave us the opportunity when we were pretty unknown, really. And it was often in works that were fairly unknown, music by Hummel, Krommer, Arensky and Rimsky‑Korsakov.’

Then Ted Perry and Hyperion oversaw the next chapter. ‘For Hyperion we started a British series – and it’s enormous – works by Britten, Lambert, Bax, Bliss, Vaughan Williams, Bridge, Walton and so on. Ted really supported that repertoire, which very few people were doing at the time. And Hyperion – and after Ted’s death with Simon, his son – really have been the mainstay of the Nash’s recording. And, of course, with Hyperion, we’ve been able to do things like a recording of Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann. We’ve just recently recorded the Tchaikovsky String Sextet with the Korngold.’ At 83, Amelia Freedman may have slowed down a bit, but her energy and passion for music is still formidable.

Other labels to record the Nash have included Virgin Classics, NMC, Black Box and Signum. ‘It’s so important to make recordings, not only because they’re a calling card, and they give you the chance for the players to actually hear what they sound like,’ Freedman says, ‘but they present a performance that’s going to be special to the Nash and different from any other recordings. It’s so important.’ The cellist Paul Watkins, a former member of the ensemble, pointed out to Amelia Freedman that often it was the Nash’s recording that set the benchmark for other ensembles to aim for, and their recorded catalogue over all those different labels is as broad as it is deep, and it keeps giving – next month sees a new Hyperion album of Debussy that brings together the String Quartet, various sonatas and the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle should perhaps have the last word: ‘Michael Tippett used to say that the world was divided between those on the side of the angels and those not. In the case of Amelia Freedman and her Nash Ensemble there is no question they stand well over the line of good and are blessed with wings of gold.’

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