“It is not easy to give a distinctive performance of Bach’s suites for solo cello, something that makes these familiar pieces sound new. That is what baroque cellist Tanya Tomkins did Saturday afternoon in an insightful traversal of all six suites over two concerts closing out the Library of Congress’ Bach festival.”
With Eric Zivian
“The spare aspect of the piano in this work allowed Tomkins’ musical charms to bloom, especially in the final movement, where runs from the top of the neck to the bottom were tackled with surety — each note radiant, resplendent, and clear.”
“Tanya Tomkins recently delighted new and longtime SFCV fans with a ‘musical conversation’ held in a delightfully intimate space in the downtown area of San Francisco, where she played selections from Bach’s Cello Suites. So it’s no stretch to report that her Bach playing is at a level of deep-seated feeling and communion that most players can only dream of.”
“The second all-professional concert featured Tanya Tomkins on her 1780 English cello, in a solo suite by Bach; two fine sonatas by Vivaldi and Jean-Baptiste Barrière … and—the hit of the evening—a full consort of seven strings for C.P.E. Bach’s Concerto No. 3 in A Major, transcribed from harpsichord to cello.”
“If the evening had one star, however, it was cellist Tanya Tomkins, who played the Concerto in D Minor by Johann Heinrich Facius. She deftly handled the technical fireworks of the outer movements…But she displayed her artistry most prominently during a flawless rendition of the Romance, the concerto’s second movement, squeezing every drop of expression out of its juicy lines.”
“Acclaimed cellist Tanya Tomkins is equally at home with early music, the classics, and contemporary compositions…”
"She has that rare instinct for knowing the right millisecond for placing a note or adding a second string. She could vary interpretations when repeating a section. And she’s both a baroque and modern cellist, bringing a kind of cross-cultural richness to her playing. She studied and played for 14 years in Holland, where the Dutch masters taught her, but now she has a voice and style of her own: very clean, rhythmically alive, rich and transparent, unforced but expressively powerful. It was a superb performance.”
With Left Coast Ensemble
“Tomkins joined pianist Eric Zivian in an exuberant performance. The introduction took featured hearty melodies by Tomkins, the Polonaise clicked with virtuosic flourishes by Zivian, and the musical dialogue passed back and forth with an easy joy.”