The Kosmos Ensemble
Meg-Rosaleen Hamilton, on viola, wore a large red rose in her hair. The violinist, Harriet Mackenzie, swathed in a red dress, had her hair secured by one turquoise and one ultramarine butterfly and Milos Milivojevic sat on a white stool, as he played his classical accordion, like a benign Puck.
The viola was dark and full of a passionate intensity. The violin rose and fell with those butterflies of imagination and Puck enabled the Kosmos Ensemble to “place a girdle round about the earth/ In forty minutes.”
Milos played the accordion as though the instrument were possessed of magical sounds. Sometimes it breathed gently like the warm breeze moving a boat to a Greek island wedding and sometimes it could murmur as though it were the troubled English earth itself as the violin soared upwards like a lark in the clear air, but it also knew the passionate rhythm of a tango dancer in a crowded Buenos Aires night club.
And though the violin might screech, and whistle and whine when required, Harriet could also express the sweetest of lyrical sounds on an instrument that responded to her every imaginative touch. Meg knew the power of her viola and understood its dark soul.
Such a trio could take us where they would. The viola trembled in the bitter darkness before the dawn felt by Serbian girl whose love lies beneath the earth. We went to Ukraine and Sweden, Scotland, Spain, France and Argentina and we heard Piazolla, and Satie, Corelli and Sarasate and, if you listened carefully, you might even have heard Philip Glass
It was music unrestrained by genre or convention as the trio explored the riches of music’s infinite variety, be it Classical or folk, ethnic or jazz; and the music grew to become their instruments as their improvisations grew out of their superb classical technique. So often unusual combinations of instruments distort the music to match their instruments, but tonight the music became their instruments as they drew on their musical enthusiasm and awareness and responded to each other so very closely.
It was an evening of musical transport.
Steve Matthews