Jansen, Golan

NCH, Dublin

Brahms

– Sonata in G Op 78.

Bartók

– Sonata No 2;

Janacek

– Sonata;

Beethoven

– Spring Sonata.

Re-tellings are often more eventful and dramatic-seeming than first tellings. It’s as if people need a little bit of exaggeration to feel sure that they can still capture the essence of the original moment.

At her National Concert Hall début on Thursday, Dutch violinist Janine Jansen communicated like someone still in the first flush of experience. She handled everything she played in a way that seemed clear in perception and simple and effective in delivery. It was as if the four sonatas by Brahms, Bartók, Janacek and Beethoven were so immediate to her that she had no need of special pleading. She could just pass things on, as it were, unmodulated.

That’s not to say that her music-making was plain or her interpretative approach non-interventionist. Her nuancing even seemed to take her partner at the piano, Itamar Golan, unawares from time to time.

But, from the moment she started playing, with an exceptionally quiet and serene opening to Brahms's G major Sonata, she conveyed a sense of freshness, of wonder almost, in the unfolding of the music, and a willingness to take unexpected routes as if they were the most natural and straightforward of undertakings.

Her tone is smallish and sweet, though there are reserves aplenty of power, and her vibrato fast and light. But unlike many another virtuosi she seemed to make no show of her sound for its own sake.

The things that stood out were the long arches of her phrasing in the Brahms, which often managed to carry her listeners' minds and hearts well beyond their anticipated destinations, the disarming lucidity in the way she treated Bartók's knotty Second Sonata, and the exceptional ease in her blend of comment and afterthought in Janacek's often conversational seeming Sonata. And she capped everything in the spirit-lifting lightness she brought to a joyful account of Beethoven's Springsonata.