Hugh Mackay is a prizewinning young Scottish cellist with an exciting future. He and Junyan Chen, both graduates of the Royal Academy of Music, have put together a powerful programme that encompasses a wide range of styles and moods, culminating in the visceral, heart-on-the-sleeve emotion of Shostakovich’s sonata, composed in 1934, not long after the premiere of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Sally Beamish paints sound pictures of four friends in her sonata while the motoric rhythms of Gareth Farr’s exuberant piece have their roots in Balinese gamelan music.

"...there is probably no more inspirational musician working today…"  Gramophone