This most recent Sheffield concert under the auspices of Music in the Round saw local performers Ensemble 360 very much playing second fiddle to the exceptional young trumpet virtuoso Matilda Lloyd. Though one might question whether a programme billed as ‘Americana’ should choose to feature pieces by Honegger, Hindemith and, erm, Haydn, there was no doubting Lloyd’s engagement with the music, and indeed with the audience, whom she addressed with enthusiasm and insight during the concert. It’s worth noting that of the nine musicians sharing a stage with her only three were actually members of Ensemble 360, but given that the other performers recruited for the occasion were leading figures in major British orchestras and chamber ensembles, it seems churlish to complain.
For the most part, the music on offer made relatively gentle demands on its listeners, as befitted a Saturday matinee concert attracting a rather younger audience than is usually present at this venue. Only the first two pieces, by Honegger and Hindemith, might be described as in any way astringent. Honegger’s Intrada offered Lloyd a taxing workout, its spiky initial trumpet cadenza and later its thrilling Allegretto middle section showing something of why she won the Young Artist category at the 2026 RPS Awards. Tim Horton offered his familiarly reliable support at the piano. Then the larger ensemble, including the excellent Flo Plane on bassoon, performed Hindemith’s Concerto for Trumpet, Bassoon and Strings, the strings here reduced to five performers only. There were some issues of balance as a result, especially in the Agitato opening movement, but there was droll humour in the Allegro pesante second and the quicksilver finale sparkled before disappearing in a kind of conjuror’s puff of smoke.
Hindemith was at least living in America when he wrote that concerto, but almost all the rest of the programme explored music by mainstream American composers of the 20th century. Copland’s Quiet City, the string backdrop scaled down again to five players, emerged as a compelling dialogue between Lloyd’s trumpet and guest Amy McKean on cor anglais. It’s a score the broods darkly on the theme of urban desolation, and in this performance it struck a convincingly sombre note.
In this artfully structured programme, one piece in each half featured only permanent members of Ensemble 360. In the first half, Bernstein’s early Clarinet Sonata was performed with verve and skill by Robert Plane and Tim Horton. If the first movement shows fingerprints of composers Bernstein had been studying, its lively 5/8 finale sounds convincingly like the composer he was to turn into over the following decades. After the interval Ben Nabarro on violin, again accompanied by Horton’s piano, gave a sweetly tender performance of Amy Beach’s Romance for Violin and Piano, staying just this side of the boundary that would separate these musicians from a palm court orchestra.
Finally, all musicians crowded the stage for new arrangements by George Morton of Gershwin’s Promenade – Walking the Dog and his Three Preludes (and a brief encore, Summertime), made for the occasion. Though at times one yearned for the simple textures of the Preludes in their original piano form, they sent the audience out into the late afternoon sunlight with a smile.
And, in the midst of all that mostly American 20th-century music, we had Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto. Its place in this concert seemed incongruous, but the performance itself was lovely: transparent and fleet-footed, helped here by the trumpet’s backdrop of only five string players, and radiating a palpable sense of joy. Perhaps that is justification enough.
