Strad Magazine

Concert Reviews

Alexandra Soumm (violin)
Adam Laloum (piano)

Wigmore Hall, 16 October 2012

Alexandra Soumm holds a London Music Masters award, which provided her among other things with this concert and the loan of a Guadagnini violin of c.1785. Soumm, with her marvellous fiddle, launched into Grieg’s Second Violin Sonata in G major with fire and passion: she got up a good head of steam at the start and pretty much maintained it. She lovingly caressed the soft and lyrical elements of the second movement, but the ravishing power-play soon returned. The last movement was delightful, with some skittishness and humour along the way before the big finish.

In Prokofiev’s Five Melodies op.35a, originally conceived as wordless songs for soprano, Soumm produced delicate lyrical shaping, controlled and expressive. The great Romantic swagger familiar from the Grieg was back in spades for Strauss’s E flat major Sonata, tempered with a broad and subtle range of mood and colour. The slow movement had tenderness and poetry, with fine playing too from her sensitive partner Adam Laloum, before the fireworks of the last movement, with Soumm technically dazzling, and smiling with the fun of it all.

Tim Homfray, The Strad – January 2013