|
The Ligeti concerto was quite outstanding. Tasmin Little first played it under Rattle in his previous incarnation with the CBSO, and now delivers it quite magisterially. Her cool, silvery tone is ideally suited to a work in which the solo violin frequently has to thread itself between scudding clouds of notes, whether it is the swanee whistles and ocarinas of the second and fourth movements or the cascading chromatic scales of woodwind and strings in the third. The technical command was glorious too, and Little's cadenza (genuinely hers, for she takes Ligeti's option for soloists to provide their own) gave the work its final frisson. There really was creative tension here, for the only time in the evening.
|
|
On to another Hungarian, Ligeti, whose brilliant Violin Concerto was receiving its first Proms performance as part of celebrations marking the composer's 80th birthday. The soloist, Tasmin Little, is steeped in this work, and the hushed thread of sound she spun as the music emerged from nothingness was as impressive as the virtuosic display later on. The haunting second movement, in which wind players take up a “chorale” on ocarinas, was no less mesmerising than the unstoppable force of what follows or the cartoon-like effects in the finale, where the soloist bravely supplied her own, seamlessly fitting cadenza. Little, Rattle and orchestra were at one in conjuring up this coruscating music.
|
|
The Ligeti concerto had obviously been prepared with loving care, and had a terrific soloist in Tamsin Little, who had written her own thoughtful but dazzling cadenza for the finale. The earlier four movements are bizarre, stranding the violinist with mechanical ostinati for pages at a time, or highlighting the winds lengthily (Ligeti's string-section is hardly more than chamber-size) while she remains silent, or making her play with exaggerated theatrical vibrato throughout the Andante - the heart of the piece - along with dissonant chorales of ocarinas and slide-whistles. Nonetheless the concerto got a rapturous, if bemused, reception: that nervous soul needn't have worried.
|
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
|
Once of the greatest living composers, Ligeti, made it into the series only in this final concert. But it was a triumphant entry, thanks to Tasmin Little's brilliant account of his Violin Concerto, a work that will surely establsh itself up there with other concertos like the Berg. Both as a commanding soloist and part of the virtuoso ensemble, Little was in total control, right from her opening motif which spread like tentacles through the orchestra. She caught the deep melancoly of the melody that uncoils throughout the second movement and is picked up by wailing ocarinas and recorders. Under Rattle everyone evoked the mysterious allure of this score, and played through to the spiky close as if their lives depended on it.
|
|
Tasmin Little was a dazzling soloist in this reinterpretation of the
virtuoso concerto, where every convention of form and gesture is thrown
under new, brilliant light, achieving miraculous synthesis with Ligeti's
microscopically focused language and technique.
|
|
Amid a fabulous programme, one work naughtily romped away with the show: Ligeti's Violin Concerto, right from the extraordinary lilting organum of its open-stringed opening, of which Tasmin Little gave an endearing performance. The brilliance of Little's personality and playing is that one adores her but falls for the work. The sucession of nervy string ostinati with supporting marimba; the kind of Hungarian wistfulness that echoes Hary Janos or Erkel's bereft Melinda on the banks of the Tisza, with the woodwind section puffing on eerie ocarinas; or the near-actionable poaching from Szymanowski's atmospheric Song of the Night - they mesmerised everyone. You could have heard a pin drop.
|
|
The young English violinist, Tasmin Little, introduced herself as a very
competent soloist. She produced transfixing colours.
|
|
There is not a violinist in Britain
today who could hold a candle to
Tasmin Little. To judge from her
recital in Glasgow last night she is
just getting better all the time. For
a long time now the maturity of her
playing has been a particularly
impressive component of her musical armoury.
But it seemed to me
last night, and right across the wide
range of repertoire she played, that
this quality has developed further
and is one of her greatest strengths. Allied to the power of her playing, that maturity informed every corner of her probing account of Beethoven's Fourth Violin Sonata, a demanding work with the subtle drama of its opening movement, the need for discretion and understatement in its Andante, and the control required to turn its tempestuous finale into its uneasy close. But if that was good, her playing of Faure's First Sonata - in which the concerto·abilities of her fabulous pianist,Piers Lane were outstanding, was profoundly impressive. Few violinists can sustain a stream of lyricism so fluidly, or so exquisitely gauge a climactic point as Tasmin Little did throughout this glowing, radiant performance. And if anything, it was this element - Little the songstress - that characterised her second half stream of beauties by Janacek, Szymanowski and Delius, (the last with a ravishing coda that sprayed a gentle cloud of musical stardust) before she played her trump card in a display of musicianship and violin playing with Ravel's Tzigane. Glorious. |
|
Forget Delius, Arnold Bax is British music's answer to the French impressionists. Tintageland The Garden of Fand are familiar enough explorations of light and space, but many of his lesser known orchestral and chamber works resonate with echoes of Debussy and his followers. Shamefully, Bax is still not played as much as he deserves to be (how often, if at all, do the seven symphonies get an airing?) so the inclusion of his Sonata No 2 for violin and piano as the center piece of Tasmin Little and Martin Roscoe's recital was doubly welcome. Not only is it a great piece, powerfully evocative and colourful, but it was given with spellbinding commitment and technical aplomb. What a wonderfully mature performer Tasmin Little now is, sweet and rich in tone, and blessed with a technique that both looks and sounds faultless. She and Roscoe, whose skills as an ensemble pianist are almost without equal, really got to the heart of this sonata, yielding to it's romantic imagination and impetus, and fully capturing its quixotic spirit.
|
|
REMARKABLE ALREADY AND COULD BE GREAT At Günther Herbig's concert with the Hall, Tasmin Little played Walton's Violin Concerto, which can certainly stand alongside Elgar without embarrassment. In addition to rivalling Anne-Sophie Mutter in the haute couture department, she is that class as a violinist, the finest we have in Britain, I would say, (and I haven't forgotten Mr. K). Only very occasionally deficient in strength of tone, she projected the brilliance, vivacity, romanticism and Italianate languor of this concerto with complete assurance. Walton, I can assure her, would have loved everything about her performance. |