Holywell Music Room has wonderful acoustics: where better, then, than here to listen to 3 very different but beautiful pieces of music chosen and performed by the delightful Pixels Ensemble.

The first piece was by Rebecca Clarke, an English-born virtuoso viola player (her tutor Stanford recommended that she switched from violin to viola to be ‘right in the middle of the sound’) and composer. She was one of the first female students at the Royal College of Music and the first woman to study composition there and her Three Movements for two violins and piano was written while she was still a student. The Prelude is a mournful piece, the two violins talking to each other in mellow harmony. The Danse Bizarre is a great contrast but then the Nocturne brings the two together, rising to a crescendo before calming into a gentle farewell. It is an astonishingly sure-footed composition for a young woman who then went on to break boundaries for women in music, touring widely especially in all-female ensembles throughout her long life (she lived to 93).

When Mozart wrote his Piano Concerto in E flat, K 449, he was still writing for harpsichord, but he already knew about the new instrument, the fortepiano, so it is assumed he was thinking of this instrument when composing. However good a recording of this piece you may have at home, there is nothing like seeing and hearing it live: to see the string quartet harmonising with the piano, the way the instruments talk to each other. In the first movement, 'Allegro vivace', the strings introduce the theme for a long time before the piano makes its dramatic appearance. The piano and strings complement each other in this first lively movement: the andantino starts in similar fashion, with the strings in gentler, more sombre mood, and the piano’s entrance is quieter, developing the theme in conjunction with the strings. The final movement is altogether livelier, with the piano and strings echoing each other, playing with each other’s melodies. A real joy to watch as well as listen to.

Elgar wrote his Piano Quintet in A minor in 1919. World War I had depressed him immensely, so his wife moved them down to a remote cottage in Sussex and this move brought on a burst of energy and creativity: here he wrote several pieces including this one before going on to write one of his most famous pieces, his cello concerto. He was said to have been influenced by ghost stories and certainly the first movement seems to reflect this sinister mood. The second movement though, the Adagio, is beautifully lyrical, melancholy yes but gentle and harmonic. The third movement is stronger and more positive, coming to a bold finish. It is interesting to note how much more integrated piano and strings are in this piece, working together rather than echoing as the Mozart piece did.

The Pixels Ensemble, formed in 2016 by the pianist Ian Buckle, is made up of players who are all established soloists in their own right: their aim is to bring variety into their programmes, mixing old and new, and this they certainly did in this faultless performance of three very different pieces.