Tasmin Little Plays Clara Schumann, Dame Ethel Smyth & Amy Beach

An undervalued composer could hope for no better champions than the British violinist Tasmin Little and pianist John Lenehan. It’s not just a matter of Little’s fearless virtuosity and lustrous, silvery tone. It’s the wholehearted commitment and communicative warmth that she brings to everything she plays—never more compelling than in music that has waited foo long for top-level advocacy, like these miniatures and sonatas by Amy Beach, Ethel Smyth and Clara Schumann. Smyth’s and Beach’s sonatas are full-blooded late-Romantic epics, filled with big gestures and grand passions, and both Little and Lenehan respond in kind. But they’re equally sincere in the tender, fireside world of Clara Schumann’s Drei Romanzen, making this a recording that can be savoured piece by piece—or enjoyed in one glorious sweep.