Borletti-Buitoni Trust
BBT Artists
Rewarding Musical Excellence
BBT Project: From ONE to SEVEN concert series at The Forge Venue, Camden
“The penultimate concert in The Aronowitz Ensemble’s residency at The Forge, Camden, took the listener from the dazzling pop and spit of Salvatore Sciarrino’s Notturni brillanti for solo viola (Lily Francis) to the night-scented arpeggios of Schubert’s Notturno (Tom Poster, Guy Johnston and Magnus Johnston), and on to the fretful stirrings of Bartok’s Fifth String Quartet and Schoenberg’s shame-drugged idyll, Verklärte Nacht. Boccherini’s rowdy Variazioni sulla Ritirata notturna di Madrid offered comic relief, while Poster’s arrangement of Strauss’s Morgen brought all seven players together for a cheesy sunrise… such an absurd abundance of talent in this ensemble”
Anna Picard, Independent on Sunday 6 March 2011
“Imaginative programming, high-calibre performances, convivial atmosphere. What more could one ask for?”
Barry Millington, The Standard 18 April 2011
BBT Project: Climbing The Skies, CD on Sonimage
“this enterprising CD debut breathes sensitivity and purpose. The programme is a beautiful one, linked by a clearly identifiable national image.”
Financial Times, 8 May 2010
“This is an auspicious debut for both the label and the septet of performers. There are spacious accounts of Vaughan Williams’ Phantasy Quintet and Elgar’s piano quintet, the smoothness and subtlety of playing surrendering little in emotional intensity”
Classical Music, 13 February 2010
“On the Sonimage label, newly founded by Paul Segar, the Aronowitz Ensemble… here demonstrates not only the players’ superbly polished ensemble and intensity of performance but their flexibility too….superb playing and finely honed recording.”
Edward Greenfield, Gramophone March 2010
“The premiere recording of Huw Watkins’s Sad Steps (2008) – wistful yet lean and supple, written for pairs of violin, viola and cello with piano – complements the melancholy late-romanticism of Vaughan Williams’s Phantasy Quintet (1912) and Elgar’s Piano Quintet in A minor (1919). The players’ exuberance keeps English nostalgia at bay and all stays in keen, bright focus.”
Fiona Maddocks, The Observer, 31 January 2010