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Beethoven Concerto
Michael Gray, Chelmsford Weekly News, 7th July 2005
"Ruth Palmer was a confident soloist in a forceful reading of the Violin
Concerto. She is a young player of poise and presence who produced her most expressive
phrasing in some of the simplest melodies such as in the central section of the
Allegro, and the Larghetto was pure delight, the violin line soaring effortlessly
over gently-moving orchestral chords."
Financial Times, 11th November 2004
"Brilliant Young Violinist"
Plymouth CMT
Philip R Buttall, Plymouth Evening Herald, 29th November 2004
"Ruth Palmer is an absolutely superb young violinist with an exceptional
technique, allied to a highly expressive delivery. Her playing in Bach's B
minor Partita for solo violin was flawless, projecting the quicker contrapuntal
textures with great aplomb, while sensitively crafting the slower movements."
Wigmore Hall
David Alker, Musical Opinion, July/August 2004
"With firm commitment from the start, violinist Ruth Palmer,
in partnership with the fine pianism of Katya Apekisheva, brought
intelligent and convincing contrasts to the first movement of Elgar’s
Violin Sonata at their Wigmore Hall recital on 28th March. While
the second movement offered extraordinary emotional breath with
deeply sonorous sound, everything proved to be finely poised throughout
the third. Debussy’s Violin Sonata was quickly immersed in
an admirable style, the subtleties of its intermittently diaphanous
landscape being carried imaginatively, while Palmer’s wonderful
use of rubato in the Tres animee kept the drama flowing and poetically
charged.
The second half was equally challenging, opening with Vytautas
Barkauskas’
mesmerising Partita for Solo Violin, in which the capricious use
of different violin techniques in the most modern musical dialect
produced a deep and thoughtful work which deserves to become a staple
of the violin repertoire. Ruth Palmer was a worthy champion. The
contemporaneous mood continued with an awesome display of violin
and piano virtuosity. Schnittke’s Second Violin Sonata Quasi
una Sonata is loaded with unpredictability; the drama explodes
and implodes as heavy chords, loud enough to wake the dead, are
meted out. Here was a fabulous performance showing truly outstanding
pianism against Ruth Palmer's liberating violin playing of great
stature."
Wigmore Hall
Anna Picard, The Independent on Sunday, 4th April 2004
"Brilliant, bold and absorbed, Palmer played with glamour,
engagement and entitlement; commanding her physical, and musical
space, unfolding Barkauskas’s dazzling sequence with absolute
tonal connection, rock-solid spiccato, taut pizzicato, muscular
double-stopping, and a sure sense of drama. Strident, shocking,
imperious and beautiful, this was a riveting performance and one
that Palmer and Apekisheva built on in their visceral account of
Schnittke’s Sonata No.2 “Quasi una Sonata”: an
account of tremendous control and impact that flung Schnittke’s
harmonies across the hall like cans of paint on a vast canvas. Palmer
may look demure, but her musical heart is not."
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Frome Times
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