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MALVERN CONCERT CLUB |
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Tasmin Little She
studied under Pauline Scott at the Yehudi
Menuhin School and later at the Guildhall School of Music, coming to
prominence as a string section finalist in the 1982 BBC Young Musician of the Year
competition. Her father is George Little, the English
TV actor.[1] In
1988 she made her professional solo debut with the Hallé
Orchestra. In
1996 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bradford, where its music
centre is named after her. She
has now established an international reputation, and has recorded violin
concertos by Bruch,
Brahms,
Sibelius
and others, giving some their first recordings — or second, as with Edmund
Rubbra's. She has premiered works, including Stuart
MacRae's violin concerto at the 2001 BBC Proms. Robert
Maycock of The Independent newspaper wrote "Tasmin Little was ideal
to represent the Menuhin School's alumni. She is a true successor: international
star, enthusiastic chamber player, and now conducting, too".[2] In
addition to a flourishing career as violin soloist which has taken her to every
continent of the world, Tasmin Little has further established her reputation as
Artistic Director with her hugely successful “Delius
Inspired” festival, which was broadcast for a week on BBC Radio 3 in July
2006. The festival, which comprised events ranging from orchestral concerts and
chamber music to films and exhibitions, also reached 800 school children in an
ambitious programme designed to widen interest in classical music for young
people. In
the 2005–2006 season, Tasmin performed concertos in Sweden, Slovenia,
Iceland,
Denmark,
Spain,
Belgium
as well as London
(including the BBC Proms). Her recent chamber
music tours have ranged from a UK tour in Manchester’s
Bridgewater
Hall, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall to Brazil, Colombia
and Peru. She
now plays/directs orchestras such as the Norwegian Chamber, Britten
Sinfonia and Royal Philharmonic. During her recent tour
with the Britten Sinfonia, her 1000th professional performance at London’s South
Bank Centre resulted in the following review in The
Independent: "The second half evinced an extraordinary
quality of sharing, as you expect to find in a trio or quartet... with both
Little and Outram at the front for Mozart's Sinfonia
Concertante. Usually this work feels like a double concerto, but here
the lead role passed around, with soloists determined to cooperate rather than
compete. All the performers succeeded, not only in placing the work before its
public but in drawing listeners into its heart". In
2006, Tasmin made her fourteenth appearance at the BBC Proms in a performance of
the rarely heard concerto by Alexander Glazunov and in 2008 she performed the
Concerto for violin and horn by Dame
Ethel Smyth. She continues to champion seldom-performed repertoire
and during the 2006–7 season she played Max
Bruch's second violin concerto with the London Philharmonic, the Korngold concerto in Symphony Hall,
Birmingham. She is one of the few violinists to have tackled Ligeti’s
challenging violin concerto — according to an interview on BBC
Radio 4, only four violinists in the world currently have this in
their repertoire. During her 2003 tour she played the work with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon
Rattle at the BBC Proms, in Berlin, at the Salzburg
Festival, New York’s Carnegie Hall and in Philadelphia. In 2006–2007 she returned
to the work by performing it with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and at the Concertgebouw,
Amsterdam. In
2007, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Edward
Elgar, she performed his violin concerto on a major tour to Southeast
Asia and Australia. Orchestras
she has played with throughout her career include the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, Berlin Symphony, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia,
London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, Thorington Players, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Stockholm Philharmonic and
with conductors including Kurt Masur, Simon
Rattle, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Neeme
Järvi, Leonard
Slatkin, Rostropovich, Daniele
Gatti, Rozhdestvensky, Gerard
Schwarz, Tadaaki Otaka, Charles
Mackerras, Yehudi Menuhin, Andrew Davis and Roger
Norrington. In
1996 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bradford,
where its music centre is named after her and has subsequently received further
Honorary degrees from the Universities of Leicester, Hertfordshire and City of
London. Tasmin
plays a 1757 Guadagnini violin and has,
on loan from the Royal Academy of Music, the 1708
"Regent" Stradivarius. On
Sunday June 15, 2008 Tasmin and the Naked Violin project featured in the South
Bank Show on ITV1[3]. |
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