Review: North York Moors Chamber Music Festival *****

Two world-class piano trios appearing in one concert is the luxury that this remarkable festival can afford to offer to its capacity audiences.

As an appetiser Classical Brit award winner, violinist, Jack Liebeck, joined the celebrated cellist, Jamie Walton, and pianist, Adam Johnson, in Beethoven’s simple one-movement trio composed for “a little friend”, before embarking on Shostakovich’s technically daunting Second Trio. It is a score where those willing to take risks get to the heart of the score, and here they went to the brink in the frenetic moments, in a highly charged and excellently played account.

High on octane the dynamics were taken to extremes, the many effects vividly captured as bows dug deep into strings.

Concert pianist, Daniel Grimwood, joined another Classic Brit winner, Guy Johnston, and the brilliant young violinist, Min-Jin Kym, in Tchaikovsky’s Trio, an ambitious work of epic proportions whose symphonic strength makes heavy demands on stamina.

With Grimwood as the unfailingly accurate powerhouse, the cello could sing out in passages of lyric beauty, before Kim embarked on pure virtuosity in the central movement’s variations. You may never hear a more passionate performance.

Jamie Walton is the soloist with the Orchestra of Opera North at Ripon Cathedral tomorrow night.