Duo Sol at the Auckland Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

Miki Tsunoda and Caroline Almonte, the violinist and pianist of Duo Sol, were lavish with their compliments from the stage of the Town Hall on Tuesday night.

They liked our food, our wine and our city. Almonte was thrilled John Chen had won in Sydney, and held our Town Hall Steinway in considerable esteem.

Alas, by the time the pianist was giving us her assurances, we were halfway through a recital that already seemed less than many must have been hoping for.

The opening Dvorak Sonatina, a charmer from the composer's time in America, was simply drab. There were too many dead patches in Tsunoda's line; too many moments when bow control was suspect.

The Larghetto, one of Dvorak's freshest, was marred by peremptory portamenti that would become a liability throughout the evening.

On the positive side, the partnership between the two women was unfaultable, serving them well in a lively performance of Anthony Ritchie's Rhapsody, a fairly conservative work from the Dunedin composer, written six years ago for Wilma Smith and Michael Houstoun.

Debussy's Sonata, the only major work to be delivered from memory, once more showed enviable ensemble, although it was not without some strident lapses from Tsunoda. Still, there was poetry here, especially in the slow movement with the two women in ghostly union, creating music as Debussy had stipulated, "espressif et sans rigueur".

After interval, the duo's other memory piece, Korngold's Garden Scene from the Austrian composer's Much Ado About Nothing found them at their best.

Tsunoda played with a rich, broad tone and Almonte's piano supplied an appropriately sumptuous backdrop.

Finally, there was the piece de resistance, Richard Strauss' Violin Sonata, much of which I found eminently easy to resist.

Almonte, apart from one fluttering spell, was superb; Tsunoda marred the outer movements with intonation lapses, those troublesome portamenti and a general thinness of tone.

Only in the gentler clime of the Andante cantabile did Strauss' melodies float as they should.

What has almost become the inevitable Piazzolla encore was suitably sultry, although much longer than necessary; certainly after last weekend, when Steven Isserlis gave his audience such intense pleasure with encores a fraction of the length.