Mieczyslaw Karlowicz Archive

SZYMANOWSKI: Violin Concertos; KARLOWICZ: Violin Concerto – Tasmin Little, violin/ BBC Symphony Orchestra/ Edward Gardner – Chandos 

by Audiophile Audition | Oct 27, 2017 | Classical CD Reviews

SZYMANOWSKI: Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 35; Violin Concerto No. 2 in a minor, Op. 61; KARLOWICZ: Violin Concerto, Op. 8 – Tasmin Little, violin/ BBC Symphony Orchestra/ Edward Gardner – Chandos CHSA 5185, 73:18 (9/1/17) ****: Tasmin Little embraces the early 20th Century Polish violin concerto tradition with an easy and articulate grace. Just preceding the First World War, Karol Szymanowski traveled extensively around the Mediterranean, including Italy and North Africa, whose respective influence combined with the composer’s long admiration of French music, particularly of Debussy and Roussel. The Violin Concerto No. 1 (1916) testifies to the composer’s new-found lyricism and unified sense of form: in one, extended rondo movement, the music falls into five identifiable sections. The poem “May Night” by Tadeusz Micinski invokes many of the effects of the music: fireflies, nereids, fairies, and other ephemeral beings close to Shakespeare’s Queen Mab. Pan plays his pipes in the woodlands, and Szymanowski means to capture a delicate majesty in the richly fertile scoring of his concerto. The composer wrote the work with Paul Kochanski in mind, and that fine instrumentalist helped conceive the cadenza. A kind of ecstatic virtuosity marks Tasmin Little’s solo part, with its improvvisando elements, […]