Midori (violin)/Robert McDonald (piano)

{TABLE} Sonata in A, D574 ..................... Schubert Sonata No 3 ........................... Enesco Praeludium and Allegro ................ Kreisler Sonata in A ........................... Franck {/TABLE} IN her earlier recitals in Ireland, Midori included works by Bartok, Szymanowski and Schnittke. For last night's NCH Irish Times Celebrity Concert she ventured violinistically even further afield, to the Third Violin Sonata of the Romanian composer Georges Enesco (1881-1955), a multi faceted musician who worked with equal facility as composer, conductor, violinist and pianist.

The Third Sonata was written in the mid 1920s "dans le caractere populaire roumain", though the creation of Romanian flavour was carried out without any recourse to actual folk material. Few works in the violin repertoire carry such a plethora of minutely detailed markings for the performer. And Yehudi Menuhin, one of Enesco's most famous pupils, has remarked: "I know of no other work more painstakingly edited or planned. It is correct to say that it is quite sufficient to follow the score for one to interpret the work."

Menuhin's idealistic statement, I suspect, has something to do with his closeness to the work's creator, for, in spite of the detail of the instructions, the exotic shimmering of the fantastical melodic foliage and the warm glow of the harmonic centres of gravity are hard to convey with the air of improvisatory self reinvention that the composer seems to have had in mind. Certainly, in the performance by Midori and Robert McDonald, the sharp edged playing rarely translated into convincingly long spun melismas of Romanian flavour.

The Enesco, at least, had the attraction of its rarity as a concert piece. Schubert's Sonata in A, D574, done with rather too much steely aggression, had no such appeal, and heavy rubato in Kreisler's Praeludium and Allegro did not work well.

It was perhaps through a sense of contrast via understatement that Franck's Sonata in A seemed to feature much the most effective music making of the programme proper. But, in an evening during which Midori was far from her best, it was the gentle contouring of the first encore, Kreisler's Schun Rosmarin, which sounded best of all.