Music in Peebles: No Borders Trio

The Church of St Peter, Peebles, 29/8/2026

No Borders Trio

The audience at St Peter’s Church last weekend was treated to a veritable box of delights of string music from No Borders Trio, the latest concert in Music in Peebles Summer at St Peter’s season.

The Trio, Frances Patterson (violin) Suzanne Godet (viola) and Joanne Stark (cello), all recent graduates of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, presented a programme with an interesting symmetry. It started with their own arrangement of parts of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, (written for the harpsichordist Goldberg to play for the insomniac Count Kaiserling - a possibly apocryphal story) with Frances playing while walking the length of the chancel to meet Suzanne emerging from the vestry through the choir to meet alongside Joanne.

And concluded with David Fennessy’s An open field, come closer come closer. “The story of how the Goldberg Variations came to be composed has always intrigued me”, says Fennessy. “The idea of Count Kaiserling lying in his bed, somewhere between waking and sleeping while Goldberg plays these incredibly lively pieces from an antechamber, has always struck me as the most curious circumstances for a commission. My piece too occupies this intimate setting in the dead of night—still but fidgety, on the cusp of dreams.”

In between was Leo Wiener’s String Trio, hailed as a masterpiece by leading critics when first performed in 1908 (“this trio belongs in the concert hall”). Wiener, dubbed the Hungarian Mendelssohn, was born in Budapest and studied at the Academy of Music there, later becoming a leading educator, with pupils including the conductors Antal Doràti and Georg Solti.

And to finish? A confection of Scottishness with Neil Gow’s Wife, King’s Barrows and Catherais, with The Deil’s Awa wi the Exciseman as an encore.

No Borders Trio, part of the Live Music Now programme, have recently returned from a tour of the Jura region of France and parts of the Hebrides. They were recipients of the Glasgow UNESCO award scheme for their work in the dementia unit of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the Chamber Music Scotland Small Venues Touring Fund to take their Soundbath concept across rural Scotland.

There’s a bonus concert at St Peter’s on 26 September at 12.30pm, when the Melrose Vocal Ensemble will lead the audience on a Madrigal Mystery Tour.

Tickets £10 from the Eastgate or at the door.

Photo credit: No Borders Trio