Same sonata but few similarities

The Waterford Tourism International Masterclass Festival, with participants from 15 countries, will run in the city until the end of the month.

This event, with tutors of the calibre of Dutch violinist, Herman Krebbers and Hungarian-American pianist, Gyorgy Sebok, held its opening concert in the large room of Waterford City Hall last night, when the programme was shared between two 25-year-old violinists, Natsumi Tamai from Japan and Catherine Leonard from Cork, both taking part in this year's course.

They each performed to the same format, a sonata from the standard repertory (played from the music) and a violinistic showpiece (from memory). But there the similarities ended.

Tamai is a violinistically well-bred and musically well-schooled player. But her Brahms - the Sonata in A, Op. 100 - was narrow in expressive range, temperamentally tame. Think of some great lines of Shakespeare delivered by an impeccable elocutionist rather than a stirring actor, and you'll know what I mean.

There was a greater sense of purpose and propulsion to the A major Polonaise Brillante by Wieniawski, where the resourcefulness of her technique was displayed to better advantage.

Catherine Leonard presented Ravel (the Sonata in G) and Sarasate (the Carmen Fantasy) in a manner altogether more flexible and fluid. The softness of much of the opening movement in the Ravel was a revelation after the more even-keel dynamics of Tamai (and posed a challenge, too, for the control of the festival's responsive pianist, Albie van Schalkwyk).

But, for all her apparent ease and looseness of manner, Leonard is a musically focused player whose shaping and scaling control rewardingly long perspectives. She's quite prepared to take risks and suffer some accidents. But the rewards from this most interesting of younger Irish violinists, both in the Ravel and the acrobatics of the Sarasate, offered compensation that was more than ample.