Concert review: Johan Dalene (violin) Christian Ihle Hadland (piano)

Johan Dalene opened his Sunday morning recital with Grieg’s Second Violin Sonata. After the stern, wrong-footing opening in G minor, his playing of the main theme, in the ‘proper’ home key of G major, was creamy and captivating, and he tackled the folk dance element with energetic relish. There was graceful lyricism in the Allegretto tranquillo, sometimes feather-light, with touches of heated tone up the G string, and the Allegro animato finale was amiable and nimble, full of striking character and good old-fashioned charm.

Dalene skipped through the rapid will-o’-the-wisp writing in the opening movement of Lutosławski’s Partita, chirruped neatly through the birdy noises of the Ad libitum and later produced outbursts ofI ferocity.

Dalene played two of Sibelius’s Six Pieces for violin and piano op.79 from memory, showing lightness of touch in the ‘Tanz-Idylle’ and gently caressing the ‘Berceuse’. He then dispatched Ravel’s Tzigane with the uninhibited passion of a man who knows his way around the G string and can rattle off the composer’s catalogue of technical challenges with aplomb and in vivid colour. Throughout, he was wonderfully partnered by the subtle pianism of Christian Ihle Hadland.

Tim Homfray