This is what happens when a trio spends a decade learning to finish each other’s sentences
Four Mondays running now, Upstairs at Ronnie Scott’s has now become a standing appointment for me. Classical Mondays sits a little oddly against the club’s usual late-night jazz pulse but never fails to shine.
Ben Goldscheider, Callum Smart and Richard Uttley have been playing together since 2017, almost a decade of creating an authentic and smooth dynamic. They opened with Mozart’s Horn Quintet in E-flat, reworked for their line-up which almost became a quiet tribute, as we learnt Mozart himself once lodged across Firth Street during his London years.
Matthew Peterson’s Winning Isn’t Everything, It’s the Only Thing, receiving its UK premiere here, was the evening’s conversation piece. Written for the trio’s Swedish tour by an American composer based there, it drew an persuasive line between the discipline of elite sport and the discipline of chamber music. The violin climbed and dropped with urgency while the piano scattered underneath it like rain, the horn punctuating everything with soft, insistent taps. At points horn and piano seemed to fall into a low, private dialogue, with the violin answering in close imitation as though eavesdropping and repeating what it heard. It closed on a held breath of anticipation, highlighting the moment before winning or losing is decided.
From there, two hushed pieces for violin and piano alone, Tabakova’s Nocturne chief among them, pulled the room into a whisper. Smart and Uttley traded phrases with a tenderness that made the packed programme feel briefly weightless.
John Adams’ Road Movies broke that spell in the best way with three movements of interpreted groove and swing. Brahms’ Horn Trio closed the evening, the ideal piece suited to this combination of instruments. The first movement was all warmth and charm before the final movement kicked into a full gallop, reminding us why this odd little trio of instruments has endured as a format at all.
This was, without question, one of the quietest nights I’ve had at Ronnie’s, but if anything, the intimacy did the music favours that a fuller room might not have allowed, and the trio held the stage with a confidence that needed no crowd to validate it. Four Mondays in, and it’s still a genuine pleasure to climb those stairs.
Ben Goldscheider, Callum Smart and Richard Uttley performed at Upstairs at Ronnie Scott’s, London on Monday 10th August.