Leonore Piano Trio at the 2025 Presteigne Festival

James B Wilson
In ocean waves – world premiere of a Presteigne Festival ‘Evolve’ commission

Eleanor Alberga
No-Man’s-Land Lullaby

Weir
Piano Trio

Shostakovich
Cello Sonata in D minor, Op.40

Leonore Piano Trio
Benjamin Nabarro (violin), Gemma Rosefield (cello), Tim Horton (piano)

Among the 12 world premieres at this year’s Presteigne Festival (now in its 44^th year), James B Wilson’s In ocean waves opened an afternoon concert given by the Leonore Piano Trio. Already familiar to audiences here in this Welsh border town, Wilson’s scores are readily accessible and distinctive for their preoccupation with timbre and texture. His latest commission is no exception and is permeated by the imagery of waves, each of its six sections reflecting “the ebb and flow … found in the natural shape of waves”. A sense of tension and release unfolded in its alternating animation and tranquillity, the three players keenly responsive to the work’s lyricism and shimmering textures, the latter suggesting the dazzle of reflected sunlight on water. In short, a well-crafted work that consistently held the ear.

Darker shadows characterised No-Man’s-Land Lullaby by Jamaican-born Eleanor Alberga. As this year’s composer in residence, six of her works were heard across Presteigne’s five-day festival. This 1996 work drew inspiration from the horrors of the Great War which, in her programme note, she had envisaged “men dying slowly and uncomforted in the ravaged wasteland between opposing armies”. Conceived for piano and violin, a haunting melody eventually emerged from its three sections, the whole variously brooding, elegiac and ultimately cathartic. An arresting and concisely conceived work, it was beautifully shaped by Benjamin Nabarro and Tim Horton.

No less well-structured was Judith Weir’s Piano Trio (1998), apparently influenced by location-specific sources – Venice, Africa and the Outer Hebrides. Buoyant rhythms unfused the first piano-dominated evocation, obsessive pulsing figures coloured the second, while the third allied fragmentary material to spare textures possibly intended to suggest the unspoiled coastal landscape of the Western Isles. However one wished to interpret Weir’s sound sources (her programme note invited us to ignore these influences), the Leonore Piano Trio gave an involving traversal of its three movements.

The gentle melody and rocking accompaniment opening Shostakovich’s Cello Sonata (1934) formed a neat link to earlier watery evocations. Gemma Rosefield and Horton were ideal collaborators here, underlining the first movement’s gentle lyricism (both resolute and reflective), and tender secondary theme, the latter exquisitely played. The brusqueness of the succeeding Allegro, with its rustic manner and burlesque wit, was sharply defined, so too the plaintive meanderings of the Largo, Rosefield’s expressive cello bringing hints of heartbreak that would soon be a regular hallmark of the composer. She and Horton picked out the insouciance and impulsiveness of the finale, both its carefree spirit and muscular writing played with affection and fire – a fine conclusion to a superb afternoon.