The British violinist Tasmin Little has announced her retirement at age 55. She has played most of this repertory in the past, and one suspects that the album -- featuring not unknown, but not terribly familiar music by female composers -- was a project she had personally wanted to realize before that date. These works have been played before by others, but probably not together, and almost certainly not as songfully. The Violin Sonata in A minor, Op. 34, of American composer Amy Beach, is probably the most-explored piece ...
Read More
The British violinist Tasmin Little has announced her retirement at age 55. She has played most of this repertory in the past, and one suspects that the album -- featuring not unknown, but not terribly familiar music by female composers -- was a project she had personally wanted to realize before that date. These works have been played before by others, but probably not together, and almost certainly not as songfully. The Violin Sonata in A minor, Op. 34, of American composer Amy Beach, is probably the most-explored piece of the group, but Little brings great sympathy to it. Sample the end of the "Largo con dolore" slow movement and the unusually integrated, truly Brahmsian way it leads into the finale: Little gets the excitement here and carries it all the way to the end. The work makes a good pairing with the rather similar and slightly earlier work by Britain's Ethel Smyth, whose music is returning to the recorded repertory just as Beach's did about 10 to 15 years ago. There are also the three...
Read Less