The Korros Ensemble
The Korros ensemble are a trio with a very special musical sound – the sympathetic but contrasting timbres of the flute and clarinet with the etherial sound of the harp. However, they have no music to play. Hardly anyone has written for this combination of instruments, but, for them, this isn’t an obstacle, but a challenge. They can roam over the whole range of music from rural England to Winter in Buenos Aires and from grand opera to American jazz and it can all be moulded to demonstrate the versatility and range of their particular sound.
Falla’s Spanish Dance offered rhythmic Iberian colour. Debussy’s early Arabesques were written for piano but proved very attractive with the flute’s clear melody supported by the clarinet and with the harp offering sweeping arabesques in the way only a harp can.
The music that had most character was composed for the instruments. Elizabeth Poston’s Trio used their contrasting timbres to very English effect as she lamented the loss of the rural Hertfordshire of her childhood. Most affecting was the second movement which she referred to as Pastorale nostalgica.
Dance Macabre, which Saint Saens had transformed from a song for voice and piano into a colourful orchestral show-piece, was challenging and colourful, but on a winter’s night in a shadowy church, it failed to evoke the devil.
After the interval Eliza Marshall on flute and Camilla Pay on harp played Ian Clarke’s mesmerising Hypnosis and then Stuart Eminson, who had stood in for Korros’s regular clarinettist, joined them for an energetic Blue Rondo a la Turk, by Dave Brubeck. This showed the instruments in yet another dimension, before we were whisked off to experience a very different winter in the tango bars of Argentina, courtesy of Astor Piazzola in a very evocative arrangement, by the group’s regular clarinettist, Nicholas Ellis.
Finally the Korros Ensemble gave us a Carmen Rhapsody that had all the energy, vitality and passion of Bizet’s opera.
It had been a long and entertaining journey on an unusual but delightfully versatile vehicle. But we weren’t quite finished because, as an encore, we straddled the globe from Russia to America via Vienna with the Waltz from Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite.
Steve Matthews