A Haslemere audience met an exotic instrument – the baryton – at an HHH concert given by the Valencia Baryton Trio on October 1.

A viola and a cello completed this ensemble, which has Spanish and American as well as English associations. Benjamin Birtle stood in seamlessly for their regular cello player at very short notice.

Compositions for this choice of instruments are chiefly those by Josef Haydn, who was kapellmeister at the Esterházy court. Around 1765 his boss, Prince Nikolaus, acquired a baryton and learned to play it. He insisted on having trios in which he could participate and Haydn wrote 126 of them.

Valencia’s barytonist, Matthew Baker, came to the instrument via the double bass and explained how it resembles a baroque viola da gamba but with an extra set of strings. Its bright, singing tone gives a dreamlike quality to the trio’s sound.

The concert began with Haydn’s Trio 113 in D major from about 1773. Haydn and the prince both had more experience of the baryton by then and its solo tune in the first movement adagio shows what it can do.

Valencia performed three further Haydn trios, interspersed with pieces written for them. In John Pickup’s Prelude No 1, the baryton starts alone, in conversation with itself. Eventually a wistful tune emerges and the other instruments slide in, layering up the melody as the viola weaves variations across a yearning, swaying lullaby.

The next Haydn trio, No 6, was written, like all the early baryton trios, in A major. Its precise rhythms had some of the simple charm of the andante in his Clock Symphony.

A repeated five-note melody carried Steve Zink’s The River flowing along below the surface glitter of the baryton. The concert ended with a world première for Spanish composer José Zárate’s challenging Berceuse Rouge. At first moving from one instrument to the next, it built up and fused into a tutti of urgency and excitement.

This was a memorable concert, the pleasure greatly enhanced when Valencia, pictured by Alex Baker, discussed their instruments and music-making with an intrigued audience.