Zoffany Ensemble. Photo: Patrick Allen
There’s nowhere I’d rather be early on a Sunday evening than the Conway Hall, and the sight of its wood-panelled stage brought a pang of nostalgia even before the Zoffany Ensemble took to the stage. Sound and camerawork on the hall’s channel were rather homespun compared to rival London venues, though if anything they heightened the sense of music made among and for friends.
The programme was one that might have delighted a London audience at any time in the last two centuries, opening with a beautifully sprung account of Boccherini’s C major Quintet. The microphones didn’t flatter violinist Manon Derome and violist Lydia Lowndes-Northcott in Beethoven’s Serenade, where flautist Karen Jones led the line with graceful early-Classical phrasing.