The Musicians of all Saints is a professional group founded to bring live music to Lewes although they also play elsewhere. I had heard their strings section before in a Brighton church so I was interested to hear them on home turf. The All Saints Centre is an imaginative church conversion within which the main space has a warm and clear acoustic along with good sight lines.

The trouble with that clarity is that you can hear every note from every section and the occasional, inevitable bit of raggedness or scratchy playing resounds as strongly as the excellent passages. And it was a distinctly bijoux chamber group on this occasion – four first violins, three seconds, two violas, three celli and one double bass – so there was absolutely nowhere to hide.

We began with the ever-charming Mozart’s Divertimento in B flat K137. I really liked the sparkiness that Andrew Sherwood found in the central allegro and the third movement used dynamic contrast attractively but there were woolly moments in the opening andante until it settled.

There was some confusion about the playing order which then departed from the printed programme giving us three works before the interval and one after. So next came Elgar’s Serenade for Strings – pleasingly rhythrnic in the opening movement and a larghetto with plenty of Elgarian plangency. In many ways the middle movement here was the high spot of the concert. It’s much harder to control than the outer movements but it was beautifully played here with some fine work from the violas.

I’m a sucker for bassoon concertos – I love that mellow reediness. But this one was new to me. Lev Knipper, a Russian, died in 1970 the same year that this concerto premiered so it must have been one of his last works. Although Ian Glen seemed to play it well enough, I found it a rather dreary, samey work apart from the lively second movement which has some delightful 3|4 melody from the bassoon with strings underneath – and the sound was nicely balanced. Glen is, we were told, recovering from a serious cycling accident which probably accounts for his very nervous start in duet with the principal cello. All credit, to him, as Sherwood observed to the audience, for being back at work so soon.

Finally, after the interval, we got Janacek’s Suite for Strings with its six short contrasting movements. I particularly enjoyed the plaintive lyricism Sherwood brought out in the second movement and the precision of the deceptively simple folk dance-like melody in the third. The fifth movement is an adagio but was played at lento in this performance. Its very exposed legato passages were warmly played and pretty tight. Shereen Godber is evidently a strong leader.

On a personal note, I’ve been attending classical music concerts for many (best not to count) decades and have been reviewing them for 30 years. This was the first time I’ve ever been “told off” by a fellow audience member for unacceptable behaviour. The person in front objected to the sound of my turning an occasional page in my notebook. She barked “shhh” at me while the music was playing and then said in the interval, “”Stop rustling those papers, I can’t stand it”. I’m still reflecting on whether or not she was justified. Thoughts, anyone?

Susan Elkin