Chlo? Hanslip’s previous budget release on Naxos, featuring Americana from John Adams and others, immediately zoomed into second place in the UK classical charts: no mean feat. Will the young British violinist’s follow-up tread the same dizzy path?
I suspect not, though if so, it won’t be the fault of Hanslip. Previously caught in the child- prodigy trap, then the whirlwind of adolescence, she’s finally emerged at 20 as a mature, individual artist with a firm grip on her instrument, much musical curiosity and no hint of hollow tricks. If punters dither, it’ll be because of the composer’s name, Benjamin Godard.
Who he? Late 19th-century music-lovers in France would certainly know him; admirers of salon piano music, too; plus all the singers and weak-kneed listeners who’ve succumbed to the lilt of his Berceuse - Godard’s one lingering hit, plucked from his opera Jocelyn. But his romantically minded violin concertos are little known.
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Hanslip, backed partly for economic reasons by the Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra of Kosice, makes a good advocate of these pieces. Listen to her muscular chords at the start of the second concerto, or the open, generous tone displayed in its slow movement; just what the music needs. And all her solo sprints are exhilarating. Glissando dashes, double, triple and quadruple stopping - nothing gives her pause.
What lies beyond her power, beyond anybody’s power, is to make Godard a great composer. At best he writes attractively, in the disarming Mendelssohn manner. But his powers of self-criticism are as lowly as Victoria Beckham’s: he often writes sloppily and clumsily, with a weakness for chugging accompaniments. The less ambitious the structures, the more he succeeds: the Canzonetta from the Concerto Romantique glows with a light, gracious charm, especially in Hanslip’s hands. It’s a pity she didn’t fish for a violin arrangement of the Berceuse as an encore, rather than the watery nothings of Scènes Po?tiques, the disc’s orchestral filler.
The recording, I suspect, makes the Slovak musicians appear stodgier than necessary. There’s no question who is the friskiest musician. It’s Hanslip, darting with both fire and elegance, putting class-A effort into making silk purses from pigs’ ears.
(Naxos)