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RTE National Symphony Orchestra / David Brophy
National Concert Hall, Dublin
Walton Violin Concerto
13 October 2006 |
A brilliant capture of the composer's every nuance
WHILE the cancellation, due to illness, of soprano Angela Gheorghiu's first Irish appearance on Saturday may have meant some of the glitter of the National Concert Hall's weekend programme being dimmed, it still left the glamour of English violinist Tasmin Little intact.
The petite figure of Ms Little belied the stature of her commanding musicianship. Her concerto choice, with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra conducted strongly by David Brophy on Friday, was Walton's sunlit essay of 1937.
Completed in Ravello, near to Naples, the music seemed to exude the atmosphere of its birthplace even if at times it anticipated some of the impending doom of its period.
With purity of tone, Tasmin Little's seductive interpretation captured every nuance of Walton's brilliant writing, particularly nimble fingered in the wildly pulsating scherzo, which also indulged elements of Neapolitan songs, Ms Little was unfailing in her service to the composer's often-capricious melodic lines. Besides, she invariably dismissed the work's technical demands with her inlaid virtuosity.
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Pat O'Kelly,
The Independent (Ireland), 16 October 2006
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BBC Philharmonic / Vassily Sinaisky
Royal Albert Hall, London, Prom 23
Glazunov Violin Concerto
31 July 2006 |
Two Listener's reviews from the BBC website:
Another successful Proms, this one had an all-Russian thread running throughout. The highlights were a charming, light footed performance of the Glazounov Concerto by Tasmin Little, whose performances have grown in their maturity. She was right on the money with this work, never losing sight of numerous details.
Richard Jessen
Some people agonise over the music they want played at their wedding. Some organised people even spend time thinking about the music they want at their funeral. I applied for my dream job this week. I'm getting quite twitchy about it too. But on hearing Tasmin Little's sparkling rendition of Glazunov's Violin Concerto at last night's prom, I'm convinced that the music I want playing in the event I'm offered the job is that very concerto. More than that, I want Tasmin Little to play it, accompanied by the BBC Philharmonic on a stage set on castors which can follow me around as I leap around like a mad thing celebrating. A fantastic performance.
Jon Jacob |
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"... this is a charming, bump-free concerto, and Tasmin Little's sparkling performance put everyone in the best mood for the later trials." |
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Stephen Walsh,
The Independent, 03 August 2006
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"The Concerto lulls us into a false sense of security by initially making us think we are listening to a flimsy exercise in pastoral, though the music imperceptibly glides towards something altogether more hard-edged and fierce.
The soloist was Tasmin Little - superbly articulate, her rich lyricism giving way to virtuosic double stopping and volleys of waspish pizzicatos." |
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Tim Ashley ,
The Guardian, 02 August 2006
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(After a comment about mobile phones in the Shostakovich)
"No pests bothered the violinist Tasmin Little, always ready with intelligence and a smile. The Glazunov concerto is not the world¹s greatest; but in the first part's sinuous, dark melodies and the happy, childlike finale she put her best fingers forward." |
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Geoff Brown,
The Times, 02 August 2006
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"Tasmin Little's playing explored the rich, mellow timbre of Glazunov's genial melodies, and in the virtuosity that surfaces just before the finale she produced an impressive arsenal of fireworks. But there was a constant sense of proportion.
The Glazunov is a concerto of beguiling charm, and the bravura in the playing did not distort or overshadow the music's lyricism.
Sinaisky found a shrewd palette of colours for the orchestral accompaniment, discreetly etching them in to keep the perspective." |
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Geoffrey Norris,
The
Daily Telegraph, 01 August 2006 |
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BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Rumon Gamba
St. George's Hall, Bradford
Delius Violin Concerto
1 July 2006
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"These days, Delius does not have a champion of the stature of a Beecham or a Barbirolli to bring that quality into focus. But Little herself clearly cares deeply about the music, and her performance of the rhapsodic Violin Concerto in St George's Hall had the clear-sightedness and confidence of long acquaintance. Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending was a happy choice of companion piece, again delivered tastefully and firmly, rather than with lingering hedonism." |
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David Fanning,
The
Daily Telegraph, 04 July 2006 |
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Little has constructed a programme that mixes work by Delius and his contemporaries with Indian classical music, jazz and DJ sets. ... Composed at the midpoint of the first world war, the Violin Concerto is a piece that seems to encapsulate all the best and worst aspects of Delius. On the one hand it is startlingly modern, with angular, Berg-like phrases suddenly leaping out of the lush, pastoral texture, like snares set in an English meadow. On the other, you could simply say that it is a bafflingly inchoate meditation with no clear idea when to stop. Little is as passionate an advocate for the piece as you'll find, however, and she delivers it with absolute conviction. |
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Alfred Hickling,
The
Guardian, 04 July 2006 |
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Tasmin Little and Piers Lane
Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Recital
June 2006 |
What on earth are we to make of Richard Strauss's Violin Sonata? This almighty torrent of purple... is probably best approached as a kind of adolescent concerto.
That was certainly how Tasmin Little and Piers Lane tackled it.
Little's magnificent, fluid stream of tone - sonorous in the bottom register, opening to a gleaming blaze of sound on the E string - and Lane's poetic, rich-hued and endlessly responsive piano, wrung everything possible from this near-miss masterpiece.
But virtuosity and panache are basic requirements for the Strauss.
What made Little and Lane's account so deeply enjoyable was the
imagination with which they illuminated its dustier corners. Little's veiled response to Lane's gentle arabesques in the Sonata's central
Improvisation made Strauss's tinsel seem, for a moment, like
genuine gold.
The same approach had earlier made a persuasive case for a true rarity - Paul Hindmarsh's reconstruction of Frank Bridge's unfinished 1904 Violin Sonata. While the melodic inspiration in this early fragment may not be vintage Bridge, the work's freshness, confidence and haunting tenderness all reaffirmed a long-held conviction - everything by this composer is worth hearing. Little and Lane's zestful performance served it nobly.
.... And in every note of this concert, both performers created a quality that's too easily undervalued - beauty. |
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Richard Bratby
Birmingham Post, 08 June 2006 |
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Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Gustavo Dudamel
Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool
Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto
14 May 2006
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...
He was joined by Tasmin Little for Tchaikovsky's Violin
Concerto, the radiance of which matched her exquisite turquoise
gown. Drawing a full tone from her instrument even in the
virtuoso passages, which in some hands can merely sound
scratchy, she was careful to bring out the lyrical qualities
of all three movements, never hurrying the themes, and delivering
a first movement cadenza of clarity and beauty. Orchestra,
conductor and soloist combined to bring out to the full
the wistful quality of the slow movement and the work was
rounded off with a virtuosic, but never scrambled, assessment
of the finale. The quality of the performance was illustrated
by the fact that one heard details that had never been noticed
before. On the strength of performances such as this, Little
can justly be regarded as Britain's finest violinist. |
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Read the full review (Pdf) from The Independent - 31kb |
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Christopher
Storey, Queen's Counsel, Wirral
The
Independent, 22 May 2006
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Royal
Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Gustavo Dudamel
Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool
Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto
11 May 2006 |
The
draw of the night was always going to be Little, tackling Tchaikovsky's
notoriously difficult Violin Concerto - a marathon and a sprint
rolled into one - with breathless ease.
Tchaikovsky
dedicated the piece to the 19th century violinist Leopold Auer,
but apparently he declared the solo part unplayable.
Auer
was obviously no Tasmin Little who was slight of frame but strong
of will. She made the lightening fingerwork look oh-so-effortless
without compromising on tone.
Coaxed
along by the clear conducting from Dudamel, a violinist himself,
the orchestra also rose to Tchaikovsky's challenge.
A
radiant Little showed her pedigree by producing the stamina
to spend the interval signing CDs for the Phil's excited patrons.
Rating: 9/10 Tas-mania
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Catherine
Jones, Liverpool Echo
12 May 2006 |
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BBC Symphony Orchestra/John
Storgårds
Homage to Yehudi Menuhin
Barbican Hall, London.
Elgar Violin Concerto
5 March 2006
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It is easy to take Little for granted, but her performance of the Elgar showed how she has developed into a player of a different league from most of her British colleagues. She took away the sentimentality that is always waiting on the sidelines in Elgar and replaced it with an intellectual facility that equalled her technical grasp of this physically gruelling, elegiac piece. The BBC Symphony Orchestra maintained a pace behind her, especially in the strings, that lent the piece a momentum often lost by the end of the fully scored cadenza. It was an elating performance that well illustrated the alchemy of combining both technical and musical virtuosity.
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Caroline Gill, The Strad, May 2006 |
Tasmin Little was ideal to represent the Menuhin School's alumni.
She is a true successor: international star, enthusiastic chamber
player, and now conducting, too. She played the Elgar Concerto,
with which Menuhin made his name in his teens, and put her own
forthright, unhesitant stamp on the music. With the fearless
Finnish conductor John Storgards willing to put clarity of counterpoint
and forward movement before introspective lingering, a momentum
developed that made the quick music uncommonly exhilarating.
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Robert
Maycock, The Independent, 10th March 2006
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Tasmin Little's tried,
trusted and four-star Elgar Violin Concerto was a fit consummation
for the evening: admirable in its soul and its stamina, her
playing also drew the very best from the orchestra, conducted
gamely throughout by John Storgards.
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Hilary
Finch, The Times, 9th March 2006
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Tasmin Little has
her own wonderful soundscape. Her playing of Elgar's
Concerto was a fitting end for this Homage evening.... Tasmin
Little's
playing was eloquent and technically secure throughout. This
is surely Elgar's masterpiece with the violin solo woven into
the fabric of the orchestral sound in an entirely original way.
It requires a superb technique on the part of the soloist to
stand out against such full and lush scoring.
Tasmin Little was unperturbed by the enormous demands of this
glorious work and led the emotional drama with gusto and panache.
The cadenza in the finale was played to a spellbound audience,
testimony to Little's
playing.
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Edward
Clark, classicalsource.com, 6th March 2006 |
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Britten Sinfonia/Tasmin Little
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London.
25 January 2006
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Billed
as "Tasmin Little directs Bach and Mozart", the Britten
Sinfonia's programme was really a showcase for teamwork. The
orchestra's leader, Jacqueline Shave, and its principal viola,
Martin Outram, who played solo throughout the second half, also
had key roles, but everything sprang from focused listening
throughout the orchestral string section.
Two performances
of Shostakovich by strings alone shared good balance and ensemble.
Little proved a dominant solo voice in the Prelude and Scherzo
for octet. Fully scored passages held together securely while
remaining fleet. With Shave directing, the Chamber Symphony
began fuller-toned and stayed forthright.
Best in
this half was the A minor concerto by Bach, done in a 1960s
way with the period elements consisting of light tone, a springy
pulse, and harpsichord. Little's conducting supported her playing
with results that sounded alert and precise.
The second
half evinced an extraordinary quality of sharing, as you expect
to find in a trio or quartet.... with both Little and Outram
at the front for Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante. Usually this
work feels like a double concerto, but here the lead role passed
around, with soloists determined to cooperate rather than compete.
All the performers succeeded, not only in placing the work before
its public but in drawing listeners into its heart.
This was Tasmin's 1000th professional performance.(webmaster)
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Robert
Maycock, The Independent, 31 January 2006
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BBC
Philharmonic Orchestra/Vassily
Sinaisky
The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester.
Benjamin Britten Violin Concerto
14 January 2006
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"
Earlier, Tasmin Little gave an engaging and superbly controlled
account of the Violin Concerto by Shostakovich's champion and
admirer Benjamin Britten. Confident even at the extremes of
the violin's range, and eloquent in the work's elegiac ending,
she matched faultless technique with sheer beauty of sound.
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Lynne
Walker , The Independent, 18 January 2006
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... Earlier, like Beauty leading in the Beast, Britten's 1939
Violin Concerto - another political statement, but much more
lyrical - was delightfully played by Tasmin Little ....
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Richard
Morrison , The Times, 17 January 2006
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...
" Its companion piece was Britten's Violin Concerto, another
political
work from the 1930s, its lyricism undercut by intimations of
war in the nerve-ridden ostinati of its opening movement and
the lamentation of its closing passacaglia. Tasmin Little was
the faultless, intense soloist in a performance that exposed
the score's ambiguities before coming to
rest in a mood of querulous, hard-won peace. "
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Tim
Ashley, The Guardian, 16 January 2006
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...
... with an absorbing performance by Tasmin Little in Britten's
Violin
concerto ...
... it's finesse proved a fascinating foil to the Shostakovitch
symphony's white-hot almalgem of volcanic emotion and chilling
anxiety....
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Geoffrey
Norris, The Daily Telegraph, 16 January 2006
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