HOW many concerts are there where one of the instruments played has its maker sitting in the audience?

Not many, but Saturday night’s concert at St Martin’s, Worcester, was one such event.

Most of the first half was devoted to music – early music – where the spinet was played by harpsichordist and pianist Rosemary Robinson.

All the hallmarks of baroque music were there; embellishments of the instrumental parts and imitation between instruments baroque violin, viola and recorders, piano and spinet.

The parts seemed to interweave at times and on other occasions supported each other along the way.

Apart from works by de Mondonville, Handel, Telemann and Bach, there was Bach’s Fantasia in G Major for Organ, which gave the spinet a well earned break.

Then for the second half, these musicians – Catherine Scott-Burt (violin), Laura Robinson (viola and recorders), Rosemary Robinson (piano) and Nicholas Scott-Burt (piano) – took the audience to a world that came as a shock after hearing the spinet... that of the 20th century.

And didn’t we feel it.

There was Francis Poulenc’s Sonata For Four Hands with Rosemary Robinson and Catherine Scott-Burt playing on one piano, Martin Ellerby’s River Dances, Martinu’s Three Madrigals for Violin and Viola with Laura Robinson and Catherine Scott-Burt providing playing that excelled.

There was also a piece by Nicholas Scott-Burt himself – A Little Bach Sonata in G – which was said to be a homage to no less a person than J S Bach. And yes, it worked.