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Chloe Hanslip, Wigmore Hall, London <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Annette Morreau
Tuesday 10 October 2006 00:00 BST
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Prodigies come; prodigies go. The latest British hope, violinist Chloë Hanslip, has been receiving a lot of publicity of late. At 19, she's now neither child prodigy nor the great performer she may yet become. But the omens are good. In a Wigmore concert promoting the vastly valuable International Music Seminar (IMS) Prussia Cove, Hanslip was among equals even if the programme was designed to show off her gifts.

The IMS was founded more than 30 years ago by the great musician Sandor Vegh to foster excellence in playing through inviting the greatest young talents to be coached by the greatest established talents, in particular in chamber music. Two sessions are held each year, master classes in the spring and an open chamber music seminar in September. After each session public concerts take place - mainly in Cornwall - the open chamber music is followed by a tour.

Hanslip has been a regular at Prussia Cove since she was 14, but as she started playing the violin aged two and had her first recording contract aged 13, she was almost a veteran by the time she came to this magical spot.

The chosen repertory for public consumption this year was both intriguing and unusual: Imogen Holst's String Quintet, Mendelssohn's lesser known C minor piano trio and Chausson's Concert in D major Op 21 for Violin, String Quartet and Piano. Holst wrote this muted and mournful string quintet in 1982, two years before she died, at the behest of Steven Isserlis (who is now artistic director of Prussia Cove). Such was the sympathetic playing of the Sacconi String Quartet with cellist Christoph Richter that the rarity of this work in performance seems extraordinary.

In the Mendelssohn, Hanslip was joined by the established talents of the pianist Ian Brown and cellist Richter in a performance of astonishing fluency, Hanslip holding back as "leader" in preference to a trio of equals - which is as it should be.

The Chausson is a hybrid, neither real chamber music nor real concertante music. With the Sacconi String Quartet and Ian Brown, this somewhat turgid and overlong work was delivered with panache. Hanslip could let loose her big, generous tone, radiating passion in long sensitive lines. Hanslip is happily neither flirtatious nor over-demonstrative but I'd like to hear her in something cheerful.

Chloë Hanslip plays Dorking Halls (01306 881717), 14 October; and Cadogan Hall, London SW1 (020-7730 4500), 19 October

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