Tasmin Little Makes Convincing Case for a Szymanowski Rarity

Tasmin Little joined the orchestra to play the Second Violin Concerto from the other end of Szymanowski’s career, and immediately made an impression with her red-blooded delivery of the opening phrase. The folk-dance-influenced music was well captured throughout this performance, even when Little threatened to disappear under the sheer weight of Szymanowski’s expansively romantic orchestration; and her extensive passages in double-stopping were always perfectly tuned, as was the fiendishly difficult central cadenza.
It is interesting to note that this cadenza was not the work of Szymanowski himself but of the first soloist Pawel Kochanski, who then rather ungratefully and unfairly complained that the difficulties of the part had contributed to his illness and death three months after the first performance. But if towards the end of the concerto Little was clearly seen to be working much harder than the aural results sounded, that is clearly the composer’s fault rather than hers. Again this work is a rarity in the concert hall, and one was most grateful for the chance to hear it.

Little came upon the stage slowly, a glittering sheath, an ultra turquoise gown, an auger of the edge she’d create, a soaring complex violin against an orchestration insistent upon its warning of conditions held otherwise.

The concerto is not a program music — it holds as much of a demonstration of a mid-century aesthetic as it creates an awareness of what other than art was happening in the world right then.

And it is just that indeterminacy which summons the need for an intentional presence from the soloist — fully a part of the orchestra, attentive and obviously appreciative of its entries, commanding the complexity of the solo part against the insistent drive of the first movement and thereafter weaving the most extraordinary song, its dolorous melody a piquant presence in the midst of clangorous sounds of alarm.

We are held transfixed by this irresolution.

Britten’s second movement races madly into the breach, an urgency to ready the position, an urban expectancy and agitation, the soloist on a high-wire tension, now a part of the anxiety. This could be the broken glass — it is a defiant ride — until Little opens a window through a brilliant cadenza to look into the heart, in search of a sonic hope that might ease the tension.

The third movement, like the first, is at a slower pace, though always punctuated by the madness, building to a threatening inevitability, in hopes of solution from the solo violin, yet never realized. Ending like the flutter of a bird, high in F, brilliantly irresolute, and left there for the longest moment by Maestro Domenech, still in his pose, a very long breath before lowering the baton for intermission.

"...Tasmin Little brought us two treasures. One was the Introit for Solo Violin and Small Orchestra by Gerard Finzi. Originally conceived as a movement in a larger work never completed, it is typical of this underrated British composer’s genial and endearing style. A gentle, delicately beautiful lyric effusion, it was given a loving rendition by the soloist, who is a champion of English music, but also by Sewell, who has been a local advocate for this composer. (So when will we hear Finzi’s splendid Cello Concerto?)

Little’s other gift was Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto. Augustin Hadelich gave us a superb performance of this very work a little more than a year ago, with the Madison Symphony Orchestra. This time, the work was cast in a different light. Aided by the WCO’s smaller-scaled ensemble, Little avoided the boldness and bravura, and devoted herself to what struck me as a kind of “Classical” (in the Mozart sense) conception of the work, carefully structured and emphatically lyrical. Her tone is not big and aggressive, and she is blessedly free of accompanying athletics (à la Joshua Bell). With technique to burn, she concentrates on careful articulation and a truly beautiful elegance of playing. Appealing also was her obvious manner of collegial involvement with the conductor and the orchestra players. Hers is a warmly human personality, and her artistry is truly refined. Her performance really moved me."

Tasmin Little has long been one of the composer’s most passionate advocates, and opened this recital with her regular duo partner Martin Roscoe with the earliest of Delius’ four violin sonatas. Little’s enthusiasm proved infectious throughout, her breezy, joyous delivery ensuring that the music, despite its tendency towards excess, never overstayed its welcome.

Two early works by Britten – a nod to his centenary – followed. Little made easy work of the often unwieldy writing in the Suite, Op. 6, a mostly sardonic send-up of the traditional suite of character pieces, but all too often Britten’s music felt like the product of facile wit rather than real ingenuity. The closing “Waltz” proved more effective, Little and Roscoe savouring every grotesque slide and lurching rhythm, whilst “Lullaby”, the work’s emotional heart, allowed them to explore a broader emotional palette.

The mood of the duo’s final offering could not have been further removed from Britten’s youthful insouciance; Elgar’s knotty and uncompromising Violin Sonata is a work consumed with doubt. After the Delius and Britten both musicians seemed to relish the opportunity this work gave them to dig deep emotionally, Little bringing a muscular weight to the tumultuous opening, flinging herself at the melody’s wide, searching intervals with great aplomb. Moments of tenderness and respite were savoured, too, intensifying further the movement’s unstable nature.

The pair brought poise and mystery to the opening of the second movement which, with its strange, fragmentary allusions to a dance, seemed strikingly similar to the world of the Britten suite. The expansive arc of the movement’s central section was brilliantly captured, Little finding the most tender and private of pianissimos with which to begin a perfectly judged build-up. The climax was devastating, whilst Roscoe’s sensitive interlude skilfully prepared for the return of the opening music, now made even stranger through Little’s use of a mute. Their account of the finale, if a little hurried, displayed substantial insight into its many shifting moods. The cathartic return of the haunting melody from the second movement was judged to perfection, and the subsequent emotional lift and breakthrough to the blazing E major of the sonata’s conclusion was both exhilarating and deeply felt.