Tasmin Little plays Bowen, Ireland,
Alwyn, Brown, Coates

Tasmin Little, vln, Piers Lane, pf

Tasmin Little plays Franck, Faure & Szymanowski

Tasmin Little, vln, Piers Lane, pf

Tasmin Little plays Franck, Szymanowski, and Fauré
A powerful, strongly performed recital from an outstanding duo

To sound its finest, Franck’s chromatically charged, sensually alluring Sonata requires playing of devoted intensity, and that is precisely what it receives from Tasmin Little and Piers Lane. Throughout the languorous opening allegretto, they entwine their phrases with a pulsating seductiveness that is shattered by the second movement’s explosive, hurtling momentum. Here, Lane’s fearless and headlong negotiation of Franck’s notoriously tricky writing allows Little to soar aloft with captivating emotional abandon. Rarely has the explosion of A major radiance that crowns the finale been sounded with such life-affirming incandescence. Fauré’s Romance, which tantalises with its noble restraint, forms the interlude before Szymanowski’s distinctive brand of intoxicating exoticism takes hold.
The Franck-inspired Sonata shows the 22-year-old composer flexing his creative muscles with gleeful exuberance, and here Little and Lane hurl themselves into the fray with carefree delight, achieving a beguiling frisson seldom captured under studio conditions. By 1910 (when the op.23 Romance was composed) Szymanowski had developed into an Scriabinesque expressionist with a penchant for ecstatic melody, a tendency developed still further in the Notturno e Tarantella, which rethinks the Sarasate–de Falla prototype with a Debussy-like flair. It receives another gripping performance from this outstanding duo, captured in luxuriant sound of bracing physical projection.
Julian Haylock

Tasmin Little plays Franck, Szymanowski, and Fauré
It occurred to me while listening to this sensitively planned programme that the vintage violinist who Tasmin Little most reminds me of is Alfredo Campoli in his prime, by which I mean parallel degrees of warmth, tonal bloom, agility and a feeling of oneness with the instrument that spins the illusion that for the duration she is the violin. These are wholesome, red-blooded performances, direct and deeply satisfying, with no lack of imagination, the Szymanowski Sonata (1904) audibly reflective of both Brahms and Schumann, though the ethereal glitter that fills the composer’s later output edges around much of the canvas.
Little’s rapport with the superb Piers Lane strikes home right from the sonata’s passionate opening. As a team they pull out whatever stops are necessary to make the music work, although no one could claim that this D minor essay is on the same artistic level as, say, the Mythes or the mysterious Notturno e Tarantella of 1917 that ends the programme. Here Little adjusts her approach to accommodate the other-worldly aspects of Szymanowski’s more mature muse, switching to a slim, sinewy sound for the introduction then digging deep for the main body of the piece, navigating the textures with plenty of sensual tone.
Franck’s Sonata was a wedding present from the composer to the violinist-composer Ysaÿe and once again Tasmin Little and Piers Lane chart love’s course from the sophisticated romance of the opening Allegretto ben moderato to the near-operatic candour of the Recitativo-Fantasia with conviction, the finale opening with an appropriately breezy smile. The Franck is tailed with Fauré’s barcarolle-like Romance of 1877, music infused with a deep sense of nostalgia, whereas the Szymanowski sonata is followed by a rather darker and more expressively outreaching Romance (1910), which he dedicated to his friend the violinist Paul Kochanski and which Little invests with considerable intensity.
As to a final reckoning, I’d still recommend Alina Ibragimova with pianist Cédric Tiberghien as prime representatives of the numinous in Szymanowski’s violin chamber repertoire but the disc under review achieves a fine balance of interpretative qualities and is much to be recommended. I note with interest that Tasmin Little is scheduled to record Szymanowski’s two violin concertos and on the evidence of what we have here I’m confident that we shan’t be disappointed, provided she’s granted top-notch orchestral support.
Rob Cowan

View on Gramophone Magazine website

The selling point here may be the Franck Sonata for violin and piano, but the less familiar repertoire – Fauré’s Romance Op 28 and three works by Szymanowski – makes its own case in these impassioned performances by violinist Tasmin Little and her regular pianist Piers Lane. All their discs for Chandos include duo works that deserve to be better known. Szymanowski’s Sonata Op 9 (1904), expansive and romantic with some of the grandeur of Franck’s sonata, has energy and poetry. The second movement, with its yearning melody and mawkish pizzicato interventions, beguiles and charms. Little is one of the most open-hearted players around, with a watertight virtuosity to match. These are direct and generous performances to savour.
Fiona Maddox

Such dazzlingly assured, unflinchingly communicative music-making, this, vividly captured by the microphones.

César Franck's adorable Violin Sonata comes up as fresh as new paint in this urgently expressive and memorably flexible performance by Tasmin Little and Piers Lane. It's the opening item on their latest disc for Chandos and is followed by a no less sympathetic rendering of Gabriel Fauré's Romance in B flat major, a charming morsel completed in 1877. The rest of the programme is given over to three works by Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937), the most ambitious of which comprises the early (1904) D minor Violin Sonata, a big-hearted creation, like the Franck cyclical in form, and boasting an especially endearing, gorgeously songful slow movement with a deliciously playful pizzicato interlude at its heart. The soaringly lyrical Romance (1910) evinces a strong kinship with the composer's Second Symphony from the previous year, while the Notturno e Tarantella (1917) serves up an intoxicating feast of heady voluptuousness and headlong virtuosity. Such dazzlingly assured, unflinchingly communicative music-making, this, vividly captured by the microphones. Excellent news, too, that Little has already set down both of Szymanowski's glorious violin concertos with Ed Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra – a mouthwatering prospect!
Andrew Achenbach

British Violin Sonatas,
Volume 2
Tasmin Little, vln, Piers Lane, pf

BRAUNFELS, Walter
Vol.3

info & reviews

SCHUBERT Chamber Works

info & reviews

BACH, MENDELSSOHN, DEBUSSY, MARTINU etc

LORNA McGHEE, Flute
"The Hour of Dreaming"
with Piers Lane, piano

BEEP Records B00NHREL3K

LOUIS VIERNE
String Quartet in D minor Op 12
GABRIEL PIERNÉ
Piano Quintet in E minor Op 41
Piers Lane and the Goldner String Quartet
Hyperion CDA68036

MOZART

Piano Concerto No 22 in E-flat major, KV482

Mozart: Piano Concerto No 22
Piers Lane (Piano)
Queensland Symphony Orchestra / Johannes Fritzsch, conductor
ABC Shop PLU 348182

MOZART

Piano Concerto No 24 in C minor, KV491

Mozart: Piano Concerto No 22
Piers Lane (Piano)
Queensland Symphony Orchestra / Johannes Fritzsch, conductor
ABC Shop PLU 348190

PIERS LANE goes to town

IRR 'OUSTANDING' AWARD

Piers Lane goes to town
Piers Lane (Piano)
Hyperion / CDA67967

BERLIOZ - Harold in Italy

The Berlioz, is a tour de force of both arrangement and execution. © BBC Music Magazine

LISZT, F.: Berlioz - Harold en Italie / Romance oubliee / ROGER, K.: Viola Sonata (P. Dukes, P. Lane)
NAXOS 8.573011

The Romantic Piano Concerto - 42
Alnæs & Sinding
PIERS LANE piano
BERGEN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
ANDREW LITTON conductor
Hyperion / CDA67555

Taneyev: Piano Quintet in G minor Op 30
Arensky: Piano Quintet in D major Op 51
Piers Lane with the Goldner Quartet

Hyperion / CDA67965

Piano Transcriptions, Vol. 8 – Eugen d'Albert

Hyperion / CDA67709

read Gramophone review here

read BBC Music Magazine review here

BLOCH

ERNEST BLOCH (1880-1959)
Piano Quintets
GOLDNER STRING QUARTET
Piers Lane, piano
Hyperion / CDA67638

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Three String Quartets & Piano Quintet
PIERS LANE piano
THE NEW BUDAPEST STRING QUARTET
Hyperion / CDD22018

BRIDGE

JUNE 2009 BBC Music Magazine
RECORD OF THE MONTH

British Violin Sonatas,
Volume 1
BRITTEN

Piano Concerto No 1 in B minor Op 2
Piano Concerto No 2 in E Op 12
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by
Allun Francis
Hyperion / CDA 66747

Sonata in F sharp minor Op 10
Scherzo & Intermezzo from Klavierstücke Op 16
Acht Klavierstücke Op 5
Serenata
Capriolen
Hyperion / CDA 66945

DELIUS


"Quite exceptional performances"
Classic CD 9/97

Piano Quintets
Goldner String Quartet, Piers Lane (piano)

Piano Quintet No 1 in A major, Op 5
Piano Quintet No 2 in A major, Op 81

Hyperion / CDA67805

GRAINGER

Rambles and Reflections

Grainger's concert transcriptions of music by other composers
Hyperion / CDA67279

STANFORD

STRAUSS / RESPIGHI

Richard Straus: Violin Sonata, Op. 18 (TrV 151) (1887)

Ottorino Respighi: Violin Sonata, P 110 (1917) and
from Sei pezzi, P 31 (1901-05)

CHANDOS / CHAN 10749

T K MURRAY
Rannoch Moor

Chamber Music with Piano
Play Acting
Rannoch Moor
Piers Lane (piano)

PANDA / PP0205

THE VIRTUOSO CLARINET

Michael Collins (clarinet) - Piers Lane (piano)