Thomas Carroll - Reviews

 
‘The young Welshman, Thomas Carroll, amazed and inspired, and played with great luminous sound and intense feeling’.
Kronen Zeitung Vienna Konzerthaus/Schoenberg April 2001


‘With astonishing composure, the young cellist Thomas Carroll played the ridiculously difficult work [Schonberg Concerto]. (Pablo Casals refused to play the first performance!).
Wiener Zeitung Vienna Konzerthaus April 2001


‘How better for a venue raised in honour of the late cellist Jacqueline du Pré to welcome, at her birthday memorial concert last week, such a musician as Thomas Carroll? This artists’ sonorous cello was to be heard to much advantage after the interval, playing beside the resident Belcea Quartet in a gripping performance of the Schubert C Major Quintet, it had also held the stage solo by then in a remarkable account of Bach’s Suite No.3. So many artists play these Bach works as if intruding on some private rumination that Carroll’s brusque rhetoric, and thrilling projection, took one almost aback. Each phrase was sculpted with a definition and a generosity of line which surged and fell, its mobility assisted by exquisite shading of the volume. This local mastery of detail was never simply fitful either, it contributed unfailingly to mould strategic shapes. The arpeggiated figuration and flowing lines of the Preludes Fantasia structure pursued like the movements which followed, a unified and passionately individual quest. Here was Bach with more than style. He lived and breathed as well’.
The Oxford Times Jacqueline du Pré Hall February 2001


Vivacious Carroll full of promise
‘Thomas Carroll is a young cellist to watch. He has terrific skill and powers of communication to match. Shostakovich could have hoped for no more resolute interpreters of his First Cello Concerto than Carroll and the Sinfonia VIVA under Nicholas Kok.
Evening Post Sinfonia Viva March 2001


Young cellist steps in and shines
‘One minute Thomas Carroll was immersed in studying the cello in Vienna, the next he was on his way to Norfolk – and last night, he took a sell-out audience by storm…He displayed great stage presence and gave a virtuoso performance full of confidence and verve’.
King’s Lynn News Norfolk Symphony Orchestra May 2000


‘This concert received a special touch with the participation of the cellist Thomas Carroll. We will surely be hearing a great deal of this young string player in the future. The audience were enthralled’.
Wiener Zeitung Konzerthaus December 1998


‘…Carroll is the expert for melody, for the big expansive line, on which the instrument sings in all its registers. Carroll showed great artistry in the performance of Lalo’s Cello Concerto, with a full and projecting sound that never lost the shape nor the inner meaning of the piece’.
Salzburger Nachrichten Mozarteum January 1997 


‘On the evidence of this recital, Thomas Carroll is well on the way to becoming a great cellist. He gave us the cello, not only in its autumnal and laguid moods, but as the most decisive of instruments….Most attractive of all was a vigorous Spanish prelude and dance by Granados, played with irresistable panache. It was a wonderfully compelling performance all round from the musicians, with both power and humour’. 
South Wales Evening Post Gower Festival July 1998


Musician’s winning way with colour
‘What a long way Thomas Carroll has come since winning the strings section of the BBC Young Musicians in 1992. Playing Schumann’s Cello Concerto…he showed a new depth of personality, giving fervent lyrical colour to what can seem a pallid work.…He recognised the value of simple tenderness in the slow movement, and even virtuosity became an expressive weapon in the way he engaged the orchestra in dialogue in the finale’.
The News Havant Chamber Orchestra May 1999

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