Tasmin Little

2002-2001 Reviews

Little/Watkins/Roscoe - Fishguard Festival

When chamber music brings together performers who are considerable solo artists in their own right, the collective satisfaction at the meeting of musical minds is discernible. There was clearly considerable affinity here between violinist Tasmin Little, cellist Paul Watkins and pianist Martin Roscoe. And, in the otherwise unprepossessing context of Sir Thomas Picton School in Haverfordwest, the intensity and quality of intimacy in their programme of 20th-century French music made of this concert something remarkable.

Debussy's Violin Sonata, Ravel's Piano Trio and Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time were written within a space of 27 years, all in the shadow of war. Here, the logic that linked the three pieces brought an overall freshness and luminosity that was revealing. For Debussy, writing towards the end of the first world war, the battle was also with the cancer soon to defeat him. Little and Roscoe gave the work a valedictory air: wistful without being sentimental, each matching the other in subtlety of tone-colour. Even the more bravura style of the finale had a hauntingly graceful restraint.

Roscoe played the opening of Ravel's Trio with a quiet radiance that seemed to belong to another world. Subsequently, the urgency and passion with which the music was taken up by violin and cello mirrored the composer's eagerness to complete the piece so that he could go and fight for his country (as it turned out, he was too puny to be enlisted). In retrospect, it seemed the radiance and finesse of the sonata and the trio - its slow passacaglia given a joyously arching form - had met and merged with the translucent sound world of Olivier Messiaen.

Little, Watkins and Roscoe were joined by the clarinettist Joan Enric Lluna for the quartet, which was written in the Goerlitz prisoner-of-war camp in 1941 and first performed there by Messiaen and three fellow prisoners. The composer's aim from early in his career was to transcend the tyranny of time in musical form, hence in part the title of this piece. In this exemplary performance, time did indeed seem to stand still. It was testimony to the extraordinary capacity of the human spirit to overcome adversity and aspire to the divine.

Rian Evans, The Guardian, July 29 2002

Walton Centenary Anniversary Concert
South Bank Centre, London

Tasmin Little's lush tone and gift for the most sensitively drawn lyricism lifted this concert into the realms of the sublime.
Walton's magical Violin Sonata, written in 1948 at the behest of Menuhin, made a glorious opening. Little gave a sparkling yet tender account, capturing its romantic fervour and the bleak melancholy which infuses its cloudy harmonies. Pianist Piers Lane gave impeccably judged support, anticipating Little's every move, particularly in the fiendishly spiky, whistle-stop variation of the second movement, where both players moved as one.

Two pieces from Walton's music for Henry V followed. The blithe Canzonetta and the skittish Scherzetto are based on 13th-century French troubadour melodies; the players danced through both with effortless elegance. This gentle mood was swept away with the searing emotion of Elgar's Violin Sonata in E minor. Little's sincerity made for a gripping performance, her playing well-controlled yet touched with a hint of abandon which Lane artfully reflected. Elgar's Salut d'amour made a touching encore.

Catherine Nelson, The Strad, June 2002

Elgar Violin Sonata & Bax Violin Sonata No. 2
Review of Compact Disc GMNC 0113

Tasmin Little surely now ranks alongside the truly great performers of recent years. She has everything: strength of delivery, eloquence flawless technique, a brilliantly controlled, often quite wide vibrato, assurance, personality and, above all, a stunning power of communication. Her delightful stage presence provides the icing on the cake.
The elusive Elgar Sonata is never the easiest of works to handle, yet she and her supportive accompanist Martin Roscoe bring it straight into the Elgar mainstream, revealing if anything its symphonic proportions. The Bax (1915) is a glorious discovery: the middle movements in particular - the rapt Lento expressivo and the extraordinary Grey dancer in the twilight - merge those glowing qualities of late Romanticism and impressionism with which Bax's wartime works are so richly endowed.

Roderic Dunnett, The Strad, May 2001