Violin and piano duo do justice to sonatas

8:18am Wednesday 27th February 2008

ELGAR'S Violin Sonata is more like an equal duet for violin and piano. Violinist Louise Vale and pianist Alan Maclean are one performing combination that did the work a great deal of justice.

Though tone quality was sometimes questionable on the violin, there was a huge amount of imitative musical dialogue between the violin and piano.

During Beethoven's Sonata in D major the musical dialogue often felt as though they were taking over each other's musical gestures.

Some moments did seem slightly awkward either because of Vale's loss of tone control or because of the loss of finger work clarity in Maclean's piano playing.

Both Prokofiev pieces - the Five Pieces from Cinderella and the March from The Love for Three Oranges - had the violin in a more dominant role and the vigorous Russian violin sound matched expectations. When the playing was not so vigorous, muted violin sound was dreamy enough. Lucas Ball

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