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The Polish Violin
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‘Jennifer Pike’s exceptional sensitivity to tonal inflection and temporal flexibility works wonders in Szymanowski’s Mythes , whose bar-line-free invocations of Greek mythology create the impression of profoundly inspired extemporisations. Pike intoxicates the senses.. via a captivating range of tonal colours, dynamic inflection and articulation. Lustrously inspired works which Pike sends soaring aloft with radiant allure. Pike invests it [Karlowicz Impromptu] with such open-air freshness and gentle affection that it emerges as though hot off the press.’
Chamber Choice
Julian Haylock, February 2019
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…what a climax! Jennifer Pike approaches the Mythes with a tone of glistening, succulent sweetness, coupled to a generous vibrato, swooping, sensuous phrasing and intense, often dazzling radiance. Her intonation even in harmonics and double-stops, is superbly assured. Then it’s on to the Nocturne and Tarantella: by turns smouldering and positively incendiary. With virtuoso playing of ferocious bravura, it almost felt like a fourth Mythe…a simply ravishing disc, thrillingly played
Richard Bratby, February 2019
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Brilliant and personal exploration of a violinist’s cultural heritage…Jennifer Pike has a bloodline to this repertoire via her Polish mother but hasn’t simply rested on genealogy, absorbing Polish culture and travelling to the Tatra mountains for this disc. Her affinity with Polish expressionistic melancholy is evidenced by deep, personal playing at low registers and a striking harbouring of the sort of ecstatic rapture Szymanowski brings to the high ones. Pike’s engagement with his scented world is made more of rapt rather than neurotic intensity, with touches of fragility, idiosyncratic little glissandos and some exceptional instances of focus. There is every challenge in the book…but in none of those technical challenges does Pike sound anything other than lost in the music.
Andrew Mellor, April 2019
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