Chloë Hanslip

Chloë Hanslip

What kind of person can bounce back from being dropped by a top record label only to become one of the most critically acclaimed young artists in the country a few years later?

Only someone like Chloë Hanslip. This is a girl who practises until four in the morning, learns languages in her spare time, exercises every day, turned down a place at Oxford to focus on the violin and reads The Economist and Simon Sebag Montefiore in her spare time. And she really does bounce, too - the phrase 'bundle of energy' doesn't even come close. She's unstoppable.

Hanslip was signed to Warner Classics after being spotted playing the Paganini Violin Concerto at St Martin-in-the-Fields when she was 12. When Warner dropped her just two albums into the five-album deal, many thought the bubble had burst for the former child prodigy. But last year Hanslip came back with a stunning interpretation of Corigliano's Chaconne from The Red Violin and the John Adams Violin Concerto on Naxos. 'The richness and clarity of her tone is beyond learning and she demonstrates such profound empathy,' wrote Philip Clark in Gramophone. 'This is the sort of performance that secures a reputation for life.'

'You only have one body and you have to look after it. On concert days pasta and chocolate are the order of the day'

'So this is where I practise,' she says as she leads me through a carpeted corridor into the concert hall at the Royal Over-Seas League, where she stays when she is working in London. 'I can spend all day in here. I can carry on until three or four in the morning.'

It's not surprising that she has to make use of the small hours. In the seven years she has been on the professional music scene Hanslip has accumulated 32 concertos ('10 of which I could probably pick up within two days') and in November alone she was scheduled to perform six - the Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Sibelius concertos and Mozart 3, Prokofiev 1 and Prokofiev 2. 'It's a lot of concerti,' she admits.

And it doesn't stop there. Somehow Hanslip also manages to shoehorn in a daily exercise regime, going swimming and to the gym on alternate days and even squeezing in the odd bit of Pilates. 'You only have one body and you have to look after it,' she says. 'I don't drink a huge amount of alcohol and I try and eat as healthily as possible. On concert days pasta and chocolate are the order of the day but other than that I try and eat healthily and generally look after myself.'

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