Trio Balthasar to pay tribute to nurses at Harrogate International Sunday Series performance

Classical musicians, Trio Balthasar, will pay tribute to nurses at the second of this year’s Harrogate International Sunday Series concerts on Sunday 12 February.

The ensemble will launch their recital with Joan Trimble’s Phantasy Trio, which was written during the Second World War, in which she played an important role working fulltime as a nurse for the Red Cross.

Hosted by Harrogate International Festivals and staged in the Old Swan Hotel, the Sunday Series “coffee concerts” have been an annual fixture on the spa town’s classical music calendar since 1991.

Consisting of pianist Iain Burnside, violinist Michael Foyle and cellist Tim Hugh, Trio Balthasar is a new chamber group, committed to imaginative, diverse programming.

Former Harrogate International Festival Young Musician Michael Foyle was crowned winner of the 2016 Netherlands Violin Competition, whilst Tim Hugh is the principal cellist of the London Symphony Orchestra, and Iain Burnside is an acclaimed pianist.

Since their launch last year at Wigmore Hall, the musicians  have appeared at the City Music Foundation’s Wigmore Hall Gala, the Rye Festival and Petworth Festival.

The name of the ensemble, who take to the Harrogate International Sunday Series stage at 11am on Sunday 12 February, was initially suggested as a homage to the architect Balthasar Neumann, though eventually accepted when it was pointed out that it was also the name of one of the Three Wise Men.

Iain Burnside said: “Nurses are very much in the headlines these days, and the first piece we will be playing was written by a nurse, at least she was at the time.

“It’s by Northern Irish composer, Joan Trimble, who in 1940 was doing wartime nursing on a full-time basis, when her composition teacher, Ralph Vaugh Williams, suggested she entered the Cobbett Prize for Chamber Music.

“The result, which was written in some ten days, was Joan Trimble’s Phantasy Trio, which is an amazing, very condensed one movement, with which we will be opening our programme.”

The Trio will also play Brahms’ Trio No. 2 in C major, Haydn’s Trio in E minor, concluding their concert with an exciting adaptation of Debussy’s La Mer, a well-known orchestral piece which has been skilfully adapted for piano, violin and cello by Sally Beamish.

Tickets can be purchased via our website here or through the Box Office on 01423 562303.