The Kettle’s Yard concert series is another one of those little known cultural gems that crop up in Cambridge. Set in the main atrium of art collector Jim Ede’s former house, the performance of chamber music here feels more like an informal gathering of music enthusiasts than a ticketed concert in a university-owned museum. The series is far from amateur, however. Scanning down the season programme reveals an impressive array of big names, including Young Musician of the Year winners Lucy Landymore (2010) and Laura van der Heijden (2012), and the star operatic tenor Mark Padmore. It’s also heartening to see that the venue is keen not to fall into the trap of endlessly programming the classics, dedicating seven of the 16 concerts to new music, ranging from turntables and dancers to Frank Zappa percussion. The Nash Ensemble, arguably the best chamber ensemble in the country, was no exception to the high calibre of art that Kettle’s Yard promotes.

The group opted for a 20th and 21st century set , with Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for String Quartet, followed by the premiere of a Richard Causton piece, and ending with Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet. The first movement of the Stravinsky, Danse, thrust us immediately into the world of 1910s Paris. From the opening drone played over the bridge of the viola, to the final synchronisation of the folk-like melodic cellos, the quartet generated an intensely savage sound.

The middle movement, Eccentrique, was inspired by the clown Little Tich, and required an almost transient level of self-awareness on the part of the players, rapidly switching between nostalgic lyricism and comedic glissandi. The highlight, however, was the final movement, Cantique, a meditative piece whose ethereal block chords evoke a similar pagan mystery to that found in sections of the Rite of Spring. Causton’s Night Piece, performed by Tim Horton, displayed a postmodern composer’s attempt to pay homage to the past. The past in question is Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, from which Causton borrows the clarinet’s melody line, coating it “in harmony and blurred resonance beneath a layer of dissonant bell-like sonorities”.

Towards the end, this modern ‘veil’ is lifted, and the clarinet melody emerges in its original harmonisation. As well as being sonically beautiful, the piece makes a deeper statement about how we experience art, distorting it with modern preconceptions and ultimately making us unable to experience it as it was first conceived.

The opening minor triad of the Shostakovich Piano Quintet brought us firmly back to the midst of the 20th century and WWII. The Prelude exhibited the Nash Ensemble’s remarkable ability as soloists, with cellist Bjorg Lewis offering moments of impassioned lament before being swept into the inevitable dissonant crisis typical of Shostakovich.

In total contrast, the Fugue’s dispassionate counterpoint was brought out by a hauntingly dead sound in the violins. The next movement, a Scherzo, showed a return to the savagery which the group had proved capable of in the Stravinsky, filling the packed atrium with chugging chords and virtuosic piano runs. The final Intermezzo and Allegretto are written in a more naïve, neoclassical mode, perhaps in an attempt to reclaim the lost innocence of a war-torn Europe so clearly evoked by the previous movements.

Though short, this was a very enjoyable, well performed concert in brilliant surroundings. If you haven’t been – go.