Violinist with a difference

{TABLE} Sonata in G minor, BWV1001(exc) ............................. Bach Sonata in D, Op 12 No 1 ..................................... Beethoven Sonata in A minor, Op 27 No 2 .............................. Ysaye Violin Sonata ............................................... Janacek Havanaise ................................................... Saint Saens Tambourin chinois ........................................... Kreisler {/TABLE} CATHERINE LEONARD His among the most successful of young Irish violinists and among the most daring. The successes include the £15,000 Ulster Bank music bursary and third prize in the 1994 Kulenkampff International Competition in Cologne.

The construction of her programme at the RDS last night gave a good flavour of her daring opening the evening with two movements from a Bach solo sonata and rounding off the first half with one of the demanding solo sonatas by the great Belgian violinist, Eugene Ysaye.

The Bach sonata showed incisiveness of tone and declamation, though in the Adagio the freedom of rhythm at times sounded a little meandering (a procedure for which, unfortunately, many eminent names could be cited as models).

The first of Beethoven's Op. 12 violin sonatas was handled with affirmative directness and the second of Ysaye's solo so natas (the one with the obsessively recurring Bach quotation which knots itself around the Dies Irae) was delivered with impressive aplomb.

Even finer was the playing of Janacek's late sonata. Here, the young violinist and her probing partner at the piano, Jan Cap, responded keenly to the emotional charge of the music's motivic patchwork, gauging its needs as well in moments of delicate pathos (how potent these can be in Janacek) as in the climaxes.

The final two bon bons ended the evening on a lighter note, with extrovert virtuosity the primary and well served concern.