Prom 24 – Tasmin Little shines in Elgar’s Concerto

The (Elgar violin) concerto is a challenge on many, many levels; a gigantic piece, a real concerto of Brahmsian proportions. It demands complete virtuosity in the fiery passages, but also extreme musical sensitivity, and the various interpretations available tend to emphasise the brilliant at the partial expense of the quietly emotional, or vice-versa.

Fortunately for us, there were no disappointments tonight; Tasmin Little has already recorded the concerto and clearly knows it backwards. Her playing was completely confident, and not just technically so – she handled the gorgeously romantic passages with a marvellously warm tone, always expressive but never sentimental, and her tempi seemed, to this listener, just right. If anything, she majored on the introspective, but this is not to suggest that her command of the difficult, dramatic passages was ever less than brilliant.

In all this she was partnered quite excellently by Sir Andrew Davis who drew from the BBC Symphony Orchestra strength in the more robust orchestral passages, as well as a touching tenderness in the quieter moments. The slow movement was a pure delight – not too slow but simply hushed and softly expressive – and it rose to its impassioned climax perfectly naturally. For me, the heart of the work lies in the extraordinary cadenza towards the very end of the work, as the violin remembers themes from earlier and the strings of the orchestra throb with ‘pizzicato tremolando’.

It is one of Elgar’s most touching, original, and effective passages, and tonight it was utterly spellbinding. What superb music making.

Link to full review here

Signal problems on the Cross City Line meant that we missed the entire first half of the Sutton Coldfield Philharmonic Society’s first concert of 2011.

That would be maddening under any circumstances, but on this occasion it meant that we lost the chance to hear a rare performance of Delius’ second violin sonata played by two of the composer’s greatest living interpreters: Tasmin Little and Piers Lane.

Booking Little and Lane was a genuine coup for the SCPS, and it was encouraging to see a suitably packed house. The pair responded – in the second half – with an effortlessly virtuosic performance of Beethoven’s Kreutzer sonata; a generous, big-hearted reading to give the “historically informed” purists a fainting fit. The rest of us simply enjoyed the glorious tone, lyrical phrasing and sensitive but unfussy detailing – and the delicious lollipops with which Little and Lane rewarded a cheering crowd.