Chloë Hanslip: Bennett, Duke

The Strad Issue: January 2026

Description: An album that irresistibly gets your feet tapping

Musicians: Chloë Hanslip (violin) Singapore Symphony Orchestra/Andrew Litton (piano)

Works: Bennett: Violin Concerto; Hexapoda. Duke: Violin Concerto

Catalogue number: CHANDOS CHSA5371

You might well ask: who is this Robert Russell Bennett, one time student of Nadia Boulanger, who produced this entrancing, tuneful Violin Concerto, and why isn’t there more? Well, he was busy providing some of the finest orchestrations for Broadway musicals, for South Pacific and The Sound of Music among many others (he was proud that Fred Astaire liked his saxophone parts).

His brilliance as an orchestrator is plain to hear in this concerto, which opens in upbeat mode, its wide-ranging solo opening lyrically and sweetly played by Chloë Hanslip, who proceeds in occasional dialogue with the orchestral violins before embarking on a cheeky ricochet theme. Her interplay with the orchestra is a constant delight, at one moment singing above, in busy moto perpetuo the next.

In her hands the second movement has melodic charm and simplicity at the outset, with a range of character shifts to come. After a Vivace third movement there is rapid-fire drama in the finale, not least from the brass.

After Hexapoda, a set of short, syncopated jitterbugs for violin and piano (with Andrew Litton in swinging accord at the piano), comes Vernon Duke’s 1941 Violin Concerto. Like Bennett’s concerto this is prevailingly lyrical, tonal but harmonically adventurous.

The second-movement waltz is played with seductive charm by Hanslip, who is ebullient and beautiful in the final theme and variations. The recording glistens, and the orchestra gets the clarity it deserves.

TIM HOMFRAY