{TABLE} Violin Sonata in D, D384 .............. Schubert Sonata in A, Op 100 ................... Brahms Violin Sonata ......................... Debussy Violin Sonata in A .................... Faure {/TABLE} MIXED parentage (Japanese mother, American father) explains the unusual name of Californian violinist Anne Akiko Meyers. This young player (born in 1970) sipped at some of the most bountiful founts of fiddlers' wisdom in her native land (Josef Gingold at Indiana, Dorothy DeLay in New York) and has already established something of a reputation for distinctive repertoire couplings on CD.
For her Irish debut, at the National Gallery on Saturday (as part of the AIB Music Festival in Great Irish Houses), she chose to precede a French second half with music from the far side of the Rhine.
Meyers's lightish, rather sweet tone and supple phrasing made for an agreeable account of Schubert's Sonata in D, the first of three written early in 1816 and still widely known as "Sonatinas".
Brahms's A major Sonata proved less amenable to the performer's delicate touch or her hidden reserves of steel; the music was not helped by the pattern of musical subservience followed by her partner, the fluent but woolly toned Chinese pianist, Li Jian, who seemed unduly preoccupied with preserving a balance which favoured the violin.
Both players sounded altogether more at one with the Debussy Sonata, Myers spinning some gorgeously sinuous lines, which were particularly effective in the opening movement. She showed good flair, too, for subtle inflection in Faure's First Sonata, though here, as in the Brahms of the first half, there were some moments of hoarse sounding overdrive and instances of a tendency, when excited, to swell or create an accent at the end of a phrase.
The duality of her approach was well displayed in her two encores: a seductively shaped arrangement of Debussy's Beau soir and an absurdly angular Salut d'amour by Elgar, drilled out with an almost martial insistence.
