Piers Lane
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SaleThe Best of Tasmin Little - Music of Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms & More
Chandos · Jun 20202 discsCD$21.99$10.99 -
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The Best of Tasmin Little - Music of Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms & More
Chandos
CD · 2 discs
$10.99
$21.99
Save 50%
Jun 05, 2020
Following the announcement by Tasmin Little of her intended retirement from the concert platform, we wanted to create an album that would stand as both a tribute to, and celebration of, her outstanding career as a performer. What better way to do so than ask her to select her own, personal favorites from her recorded career? An exclusive Chandos artist since 2010, Tasmin has made a series of recordings that have proved a cornerstone of the Chandos schedules for a decade, and feature a range of composers and styles of quite breath-taking variety. The first album concentrates on concerti, and features both Walton’s and Britten’s concertos with Edward Gardner, along with the slow movement of her award-winning Elgar recording with Sir Andrew Davis. The second features works from Vivaldi though to Shostakovich via Brahms, and includes (among many other gems) her recording of Vaughan Williams’s iconic The Lark Ascending. It also celebrates Tasmin’s recital partnerships with three outstanding pianists: Piers Lane, Martin Roscoe, and John Lenehan. As she writes in her booklet note: ‘I am very happy that this final, double-album set should reflect so many aspects of me as a musician; and I remain full of gratitude for the tremendous opportunities I have been given to play and record with the greatest musicians of today. I hope you all enjoy this final release.’
Brahms: Violin Sonatas / Little, Lane
Chandos
CD · 1 disc
$21.99
Mar 16, 2018
This Brahms album with the internationally acclaimed duo Tasmin Little and Piers Lane will stand as a landmark in their already highly praised discography of romantic chamber music repertoire. Standing amongst the summits of the genre, the three violin sonatas by Brahms, his only ever published ones, are a pure demonstration of radiant effusiveness and romanticism in that they call for great virtuosity as well as empathy from both instruments equally. Although written twenty-five years later, they have their origin in 1853 when Brahms made the acquaintance of the Schumanns and, above all, of the great violinist Joseph Joachim, who would remain one of his closest and most musically influential friends. From the profoundly lyrical Op. 78 and Op. 100 to the more pianistic Op. 108, this recording reveals Brahms at his most intense, poetic, and melodic. Faultless support is delivered by a duo that has now established itself as a major force in romantic repertoire.
Franck, Fauré & Szymanowski: Works for Violin & Piano / Little
Chandos
CD · 1 disc
$21.99
Apr 21, 2017
The indefatigable duo of Tasmin Little and Piers Lane returns with a unique recorded programme at the centre of which stand the violin sonatas of Szymanowski and Franck. Their joined expert musicianship reveals the intimacy and magic of these passionate, late-romantic works. The album encompasses the folk-like yet technically demanding Romance, Violin Sonata, and Notturno e Tarantella by Szymanowski, here more inspired by the German and French romantic tradition than by his native Polish one, as well as Franck's highly original Violin Sonata and Faure's Romance. It follows a much-lauded set of Schubert's complete works for violin and piano, and also marks the eightieth anniversary of Saymanowski's death. Tasmin Little will continue her tribute to the composer with a concerto album this autumn and with a series of concerts of his music, which will take her around the world.
British Violin Sonatas, Vol. 2 / Little, Lane
Chandos
CD · 1 disc
$21.99
May 27, 2016
Given Tasmin Little’s previous explorations in the studio, it must have been tricky to construct a well-balanced series of British sonatas to record for Chandos. She’s well-known for her Elgar, Delius and Bax, naturally, but there is a body of repertoire she hasn’t yet recorded and her contract has allowed her to investigate more widely. This second disc of her series shows the fruits of that search, not least in the case of John Ireland’s Sonata No.1, the big work here.
In a thoughtful booklet note Little recounts that she had only just got to know the Ireland – not such a surprise as the companion A minor is the preferred port of call. She negotiates its moods, reflections, and tempo adjustments with great skill, abetted by Piers Lane’s astute pianism, and he clearly enjoys the slow movement’s rolled chords and those moments in the finale that sounds like one of Ireland’s impressionist piano miniatures. Ireland himself probably wouldn’t have approved of their tempi - he was a curmudgeon about spaced chords and preferred loftier tempos. Listening to his own recording with Frederick Grinke in 1945 (Dutton CDLX7103) rather makes the point, as they are nearly three minutes slower than the Little-Lane duo.
The duo has known the early Bridge Sonata for a good while now – and it’s not to be confused with the larger and later work. The H39 Sonata dates from 1904 and survives as a torso with the second of its two movements completed by Paul Hindmarsh. The duo plays it with a rich tone. There are, in particular, some finely executed dynamics in the second movement. Arthur Bliss’s own early Sonata, written around 1914-16, was dedicated to Lady Elgar and was edited for performance by Rupert Marshall-Luck in 2010. He indeed gave it the first recording with Matthew Rickard (EMR CD001). The Little-Lane duo is a touch slower and brings out the music’s largely unsullied lyricism and nostalgia with great conviction. The little March motif and the VW-like songfulness coalesce in a sunset close of some real beauty.
RVW himself is represented by his Two Pieces, written at roughly the same time as the Bliss. The Pastorale is the pick, tender and folkloric. The disc ends with William Lloyd Webber’s The Gardens at Eastwell, a premiere recording. It’s a thorough charmer, dolce espressivo, as noted.
This is a classy disc, with fine booklet notes – except for the misspelling of Marjorie Hayward’s surname – and a generously warm acoustic, which precisely reflects the nature of the music-making.
– MusicWeb International (Jonathan Woolf)
In a thoughtful booklet note Little recounts that she had only just got to know the Ireland – not such a surprise as the companion A minor is the preferred port of call. She negotiates its moods, reflections, and tempo adjustments with great skill, abetted by Piers Lane’s astute pianism, and he clearly enjoys the slow movement’s rolled chords and those moments in the finale that sounds like one of Ireland’s impressionist piano miniatures. Ireland himself probably wouldn’t have approved of their tempi - he was a curmudgeon about spaced chords and preferred loftier tempos. Listening to his own recording with Frederick Grinke in 1945 (Dutton CDLX7103) rather makes the point, as they are nearly three minutes slower than the Little-Lane duo.
The duo has known the early Bridge Sonata for a good while now – and it’s not to be confused with the larger and later work. The H39 Sonata dates from 1904 and survives as a torso with the second of its two movements completed by Paul Hindmarsh. The duo plays it with a rich tone. There are, in particular, some finely executed dynamics in the second movement. Arthur Bliss’s own early Sonata, written around 1914-16, was dedicated to Lady Elgar and was edited for performance by Rupert Marshall-Luck in 2010. He indeed gave it the first recording with Matthew Rickard (EMR CD001). The Little-Lane duo is a touch slower and brings out the music’s largely unsullied lyricism and nostalgia with great conviction. The little March motif and the VW-like songfulness coalesce in a sunset close of some real beauty.
RVW himself is represented by his Two Pieces, written at roughly the same time as the Bliss. The Pastorale is the pick, tender and folkloric. The disc ends with William Lloyd Webber’s The Gardens at Eastwell, a premiere recording. It’s a thorough charmer, dolce espressivo, as noted.
This is a classy disc, with fine booklet notes – except for the misspelling of Marjorie Hayward’s surname – and a generously warm acoustic, which precisely reflects the nature of the music-making.
– MusicWeb International (Jonathan Woolf)
Schubert: Chamber Works / Little, Hugh, Lane
Chandos
CD · 2 discs
$21.99
Apr 28, 2015
The electrifying and long-standing collaborative partnership of Tasmin Little and Piers Lane returns to Chandos for this double-album featuring Schubert’s complete works for violin and piano, combined with the ‘Arpeggione’ Sonata and the Adagio in E flat for piano trio, all highly emotive masterpieces.They are joined by cellist Tim Hugh, ‘a musician with compelling insight into the creative urge behind the notes’ (The Times). Gramophone praised this duo’s album (CHAN 10749) for the artists’ ‘complete understanding and spontaneity’ and ‘moments of true musical virtuosity’.
British Violin Sonatas, Vol. 1 / Little, Lane
Chandos
CD · 1 disc
$21.99
Jun 25, 2013
FERGUSON Violin Sonata No. 2. BRITTEN Suite for Violin and Piano. WALTON Violin Sonata. Two Pieces for Violin and Piano • Tasmin Little (vn); Piers Lane (pn) • CHANDOS 10770 (61:39)
Here we have the first in a series of British works for violin and piano. Presumably all will feature the excellent team of violinist Tasmin Little and pianist Piers Lane. They are a team in the true sense of the word: Lane well known for his sensitive work in chamber music (he curates and performs in an annual chamber music festival in Townsville, Northern Australia), and Little highly regarded for her performances of British music. Full marks to them for not calling themselves the Little Lane Duo. The series gets off to a fine start with this diverse program of rarely heard and stylistically contrasting works.
The Suite for Violin and Piano op. 6 is among Britten’s earliest pieces (post-juvenilia), when the composer was consciously following continental trends. Its five movements include stylistic pastiches such as a march, a moto perpetuo, and a concluding waltz. Two years later Britten would revisit these forms with even more assurance in his Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge for string orchestra. The piano part in these short pieces is brilliant (as in the composer’s Piano Concerto, another early work), and very French in places; the ghost of Debussy is present in the rippling arpeggios accompanying quiet sections of the finale. In the 1930s Britten’s music was regarded as superficial—playfulness being a quality that sat uneasily with English composers—but the main attribute of this music is its focus. Britten knew what he wanted to say and employed the most precise means with which to say it. This never changed throughout his career, although his aims obviously did. Little brings an equal precision and poise to her playing of the gentle Lullaby that forms the fourth movement, and both musicians revel in the high spirits and punchy accents required elsewhere. Theirs is a performance that makes you wonder why the work is not played more frequently.
Walton’s days as an enfant terrible were over by the time of his Violin Sonata, which came a decade after the highly successful Violin Concerto of 1937. It is in two movements: the first, rhapsodic and lyrical; the second, a theme and variations—a form the composer increasingly turned to in his late music. Each variation in this movement is in a key a semitone higher than its predecessor. In both movements the writing is fulsome, certainly in comparison to Britten’s spare textures, with the violin part displaying yearning lines and wide intervallic leaps that recall the earlier concerto. The piano was not Walton’s instrument and he wrote little for it, yet its colors are effectively exploited in the variations, notably in the Fifth Variation ( Allegretto con moto ) where the keyboard plays in octaves in its high register against the violin’s pizzicato.
On a Chandos recording of Walton’s Violin Concerto the companion piece is an orchestral version of this Sonata, arranged by Christopher Palmer. Palmer’s recreation of the composer’s orchestral style is perfect, but Walton knew best: it is clearly music conceived for two instruments. Little and Lane’s performance leaves no doubt of that. They also unerringly tap the vein of nostalgia in the first of the Two Pieces, titled Canzonetta , and are suitably frisky in the concluding “Scherzetto.”
The disc opens with a major work by the rarely played Irish composer, Howard Ferguson (1908–1999). It was composed in 1946, as Walton was working slowly on his own Sonata. Ferguson was even more meticulous; he later abandoned composition altogether, so out of touch did he feel with the Modernist wave of the 1950s and 60s. His Sonata No. 2 has a traditional three-movement structure, but again within that there is a tendency to rhapsodize. It takes a few hearings to recognize the economy of means that Ferguson uses as a basis for his emotionally charged music.The underlying tone is one of anxiety and sorrow—even anger in the tougher third movement—no doubt due to the work’s wartime provenance. Both musicians are securely on the composer’s wavelength.
I cannot praise Lane and Little highly enough. They face tough competition in the Walton: Daniel Hope and pianist Simon Mulligan recorded it, coupled with the sonata by Elgar, in 2001; Fanfare ’s Robert Maxham wrote that Hope’s “lyricism in the Walton has a strong, perhaps ironic, pungency.” The young Nigel Kennedy also recorded the piece, and there are older performances available by Aaron Rosand and Yehudi Menuhin. Competition is scarce in the other works. Lydia Mordkovitch taped Ferguson’s two violin sonatas for Chandos in the mid-1990s. I have not heard that disc but I tend to prefer Little to Mordkovitch in other repertoire (such as the Walton Concerto).
The version of Britten’s Suite in the newly released Decca Britten box is by LSO violinist Alexander Barantschik, taken from a single EMI disc of Britten’s chamber music from the mid-1990s. Barantschik’s performance also turns up in a recent EMI collection of Britten’s chamber music. Interestingly, his pianist is named as John Alley on the original release, but John Adey on both the reissue boxes. I presume this is a typographical error that neither EMI nor Universal picked up. Barantschik and Alley treat the Suite to a dry Stravinskian attack, making it sound even more starkly modern, and are recorded in a less resonant acoustic that suits their approach, but Little and Lane have great authority and their program is substantial. The new disc is strongly recommended, and promises much in the forthcoming issues from these fine artists.
FANFARE: Phillip Scott
Violin Sonatas: Strauss, Respighi / Little, Lane
Chandos
CD · 1 disc
$10.99
$21.99
Save 50%
Nov 13, 2012
R. STRAUSS Violin Sonata, Op. 18. RESPIGHI Violin Sonata in b. Six Pieces: Melodia; Valse caressante; Serenata • Tasmin Little (vn); Piers Lane (pn) • CHANDOS 10749 (65:50)
Violinist Tasmin Little has amassed a very respectable discography on a number of different labels, though of late, she seems to have settled in as one of Chandos’s house artists. Her recent recording of Delius’s Violin Concerto received an urgent recommendation from me in 35:4, so I really looked forward to receiving her latest release of these two late romantic sonatas.
On the surface, Richard Strauss and Respighi may not seem to have a lot in common, but their respective violin sonatas have been paired on disc before, notably by Kyung-Wha Chung and Krystian Zimerman for Deutsche Grammophon and by Frank Almond and William Wolfram for Avie. Strauss composed his sonata in 1887 at the age of 23. It’s an inspired outpouring of youth hardly recognizable as music by the composer that Strauss would become. Respighi’s B-Minor Sonata—an earlier sonata in D Minor dates from the composer’s teens—was written in 1917, exactly 30 years later than Strauss’s sonata, by a more mature composer of 38.
Strauss’s sonata will no doubt be permanently associated with Heifetz, not because he championed it and twice recorded it, but because of his callous and stubborn determination to perform the piece in 1953 before an Israeli audience that still considered Strauss a Nazi collaborator and whose emotions were still raw from the Holocaust. That little stunt nearly cost Heifetz his career when an assailant attacked him outside his hotel, striking his right arm with an iron bar. While I don’t condone the death threats and violence against him, I understand the intensity of feelings that were aroused. Heifetz had no one to blame but himself for his own arrogance and intractable insensitivity. He canceled his last concert and departed Israel post haste, not to return there again until 1970.
The shame of it all is that Strauss’s sonata was written half a century before Hitler rose to power, and the piece is a passionate and deeply touching reflection of the late 19th-century German musical culture in which Strauss came of age. Unsurprisingly, Liszt and Wagner, both recently dead, appear as frequent ghosts throughout the sonata’s pages, but another guest one meets, less frequently perhaps but still very much alive when Strauss wrote the piece, is Brahms.
Respighi is not an easy composer to categorize. Some see him, as they see Strauss, Puccini, Rachmaninoff, and Sibelius as manifestations of a resistant strain of late romanticism that persisted well into the 20th century, while others have referred to Respighi as an Impressionist. I think one could support either view. There’s no question but that Respighi’s sonata is the more modern of the two works on the disc, at least in terms of its approach to harmony and tonality, but it remains an essentially romantic work in its gestural language—i.e., in its sweeping vistas and appeal to the emotions, both public and private.
The last time I reviewed a recording of Strauss’s violin sonata was in 32:3. That Atma CD also contained violin and piano works by Elgar and Ravel in performances by Jonathan Crow and Paul Stewart which I called “a desideratum of indescribably beautiful music matched by indescribably beautiful playing.” Pardon the pun, but Tasmin Little brings more than a little of Crow’s eloquent and elegant playing to the Strauss, but I would also have to say that in some of the sonata’s more technically taxing passages, she can sound ever so slightly flustered; and while the notes never actually get away from her, one senses she’s making an effort to stay on top of them. Next to Crow’s Strauss, another performance I’ve long liked is that by Dmitri Sitkovetsky on Virgin Classics. He has the technical chops to pull it off smoothly, but I don’t find him quite as emotionally engaged as either Crow or Little. Whatever the reason, Respighi’s sonata seems to suit Little a little better, both technically and temperamentally. Her performance of the piece is lithe and fully responsive to the score’s rapidly shifting moods and colors. In my opinion, it easily outclasses Tanja Becker-Bender on Hyperion, whose reading I find somewhat flighty and rudderless.
Overall, this has to be rated a very fine effort, and not just by Little, but also by Piers Lane who partners her most excellently on the piano, and by Chandos, which provides its usual deep and vivid sound. This may not be the absolute best Strauss out there, but it’s definitely among the very best of the Respighis, and the extra three encores from Respighi’s Six Pieces for Violin and Piano make for a most enriching program. Easily recommended.
FANFARE: Jerry Dubins
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Chandos have prided themselves on having a deep and long-term available back catalogue. Though distantly separated in time the present CD can be seen as an adjunct to two of the grand Chandos series of the 1980s and 1990s. The first was the Respighi orchestral music edition built around the Edward Downes BBCPO symphonies and concertos but supplemented by earlier discs conducted by Geoffrey Simon - still truly splendid - and later ones from Hickox and Noseda. The Downes and Simon discs would shine anew if issued in a box or boxes. The second comprised the half dozen discs they issued in the 1980s golden days of Järvi conducting the then SNO in the major orchestral works of Richard Strauss.
These two violin and piano works have previously appeared - although separately - on Chandos. There were in fact two CDs of the Strauss Sonata – one from Lydia Mordkovitch and the other from Sasha Rozhdestvensky. It comes as no surprise that the Respighi was also recorded by Mordkovitch. She contributed so much to the label that I have every reason to expect that, one of these days, there will be a complete Mordkovitch Chandos Edition. It’s certainly deserved – at least as much as a Takako Nishizaki edition for Naxos.
Little and Lane’s Strauss Sonata is flooded with melodic light and surges and muses with all the eruptive and serenading romance of the same composer’s Don Juan. Both Tasmin Little and Piers Lane are obviously up for it and flatter the 1887 Strauss with a most inward reading which makes it appear a greater work than perhaps it is. The stormy romance of the outer movements of the 1917 Respighi Sonata is emphasised by the utterly peaceful and romantically centred Sargasso calm of the Andante second movement. It stands head and shoulders above the other sonata movements on this disc, masterfully treading that febrile line between poetry and self-conscious sentimentality. Both Little and Lane have every right to be proud of their achievement here. Speaking of that mood we have three movements from the salon-destined and designed Sei Pezzi. I lament that the other three Kreislerian movements were not included – there was space. A puzzling and regretted omission.
With thanks to Chandos for commissioning a liner-note from the inspired Jessica Duchen. Such a fine writer and one whose Korngold book (Phaidon Press) has been unjustly eclipsed by the ‘major definitive biography’. The Duchen is much more than a valid alternative. Indeed, Korngold is a far from irrelevant comparison in the company of the two composers so nobly represented on this disc.
– Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International
