KEY POINTS:
An air of mild devilry was afoot on Monday when Bella Hristova set off on the last recital of her national tour, partnered by Diedre Irons.
Tartini's Devil's Trill Sonata gave us the Lord of Darkness through an intermediary in the form of Fritz Kreisler, who provided the violin and piano arrangement.
Some weeks ago, Hristova spoke vehemently about Baroque music benefiting from the superior balance of the two modern instruments in the concert hall.
But however assured the performance - and, apart from some slackening of intonation in the final Allegro, Hristova hardly erred - this work lights up only when violin shares devil's duties with harpsichord.
Ross Harris' Fanitullen presents a fiddling devil who forces hapless peasants to dance to their deaths.
The Hristova-Irons partnership was at its most rewarding in Ravel's Sonata, from the airy grace of its opening Allegretto to the sensual swing of the second movement with both women enjoying the French composer's special brand of jazz.
After interval, Jascha Heifetz's transcriptions from Porgy and Bess gave the impression that it was already encore time five times over, as we were taken from Summertime to It Ain't Necessarily So.
From the first phrases of Summertime which needed to be much, much fruitier, Hristova did not seem at ease with the idiom required, and one was left to contemplate the lamentable violence inflicted on Gershwin's originals by Heifetz's vulgar arrangements.
There must be few works more taxing than John Corigliano's 1963 Sonata and the adrenalin rush of its first movement brought an audible gasp from an audience member, prompting a bout of giggles from Hristova.
Twenty minutes later, sighs of exasperation might have been more in order, in an obstreperous finale that suggested Shostakovich rollicking away after a few too many vodkas.
If one accepted Corigliano's conservative voice, the two central movements revealed Hristova and Irons as a consummate duo, especially in the well-wrought Andantino.
