This is the final volume of British Violin Sonatas. Tasmin Little and Piers Lane conclude their three-disc series in fine style. The program includes a spectrum of compositional styles, ranging from the serious and introspective to the light-hearted and diverting. The album opens with York Bowen’s majestic Violin Sonata in E minor. Though written in […]
Piers Lane
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Tasmin Little Plays a Favorite
In a Violin Channel interview, Tasmin Little named Brahms as her favorite composer. I think that affection is evident in this release. There’s an easy familiarity in these performances I find quite appealing. The Violin Sonata No. 1 was developed from two earlier songs by Brahms. The lyrical nature of the material is at the […]
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Tasmin Little and Piers Lane – Franck, Szymanowski, Fauré
In my previous reviews of Tasmin Little/Piers Lane recordings, I remarked on their chemistry, and how that transformed the music. It’s still in effect. Little and Lane perform as equal partners, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. César Franck’s Sonata is given an evocative and yet sometimes understated reading that seems well-suited to the […]
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Tasmin Little – British Violin Sonatas Vol. 2
You don’t have to be Czech to play Dvorak, Spanish to play Rodrigo, nor British to play Vaughan Williams. And yet an artist who shares the composer’s nationality often brings a deeper understanding to the music, a certain authenticity to the performances. That thought occurred to me as I listened to British Violin Sonatas, Volume […]
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Tasmin Little – British Violin Sonatas
Tasmin Little’s off to a great start with her survey of British violin sonatas. Volume One features Howard Ferguson’s quintessentially British Violin Sonata No. 2, Benjamin Britten’s cosmopolitan Suite for Violin and Piano, and three works by William Walton that fall stylistically somewhere between. Tasmin Little plays them all with an expressive yet precise manner, […]