2006 Reviews
 
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.

Pat O'Kelly,
The Independent (Ireland), 16 October 2006

 
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
BBC website
05 August 2006

"... this is a charming, bump-free concerto, and Tasmin Little's sparkling performance put everyone in the best mood for the later trials."

Stephen Walsh,
The Independent, 03 August 2006
 

"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."

Tim Ashley ,
The Guardian, 02 August 2006
 

(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."

Geoff Brown,
The Times, 02 August 2006
 

"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."

Geoffrey Norris,
The Daily Telegraph, 01 August 2006
 

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Rumon Gamba
St. George's Hall, Bradford
Delius Violin Concerto
1 July 2006
"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."

David Fanning,
The Daily Telegraph, 04 July 2006
 
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.

Alfred Hickling,
The Guardian, 04 July 2006
 
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.
Richard Bratby
Birmingham Post, 08 June 2006
 

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Gustavo
Dudamel
Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool
Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto
14 May 2006
... 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.
   
Read the full review (Pdf) from The Independent - 31kb

Christopher Storey, Queen's Counsel, Wirral
The Independent, 22 May 2006
 
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


Catherine Jones, Liverpool Echo
12 May 2006
 


BBC Symphony Orchestra/John Storgårds

Homage to Yehudi Menuhin
Barbican Hall, London.
Elgar Violin Concerto
5 March 2006


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.


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.


Robert Maycock, The Independent, 10th March 2006

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.


Hilary Finch, The Times, 9th March 2006

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.


Edward Clark, classicalsource.com, 6th March 2006
 


Britten Sinfonia/Tasmin Little

Queen Elizabeth Hall, London.
25 January 2006

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)

Robert Maycock, The Independent, 31 January 2006
 

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra/Vassily Sinaisky
The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester.
Benjamin Britten Violin Concerto
14 January 2006

" 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. "

Lynne Walker , The Independent, 18 January 2006
 


... 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 ....

Richard Morrison , The Times, 17 January 2006
 

... " 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. "

Tim Ashley, The Guardian, 16 January 2006
 

... ... 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....

Geoffrey Norris, The Daily Telegraph, 16 January 2006
 
 
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