`Violin and voice" is the pleasantly alliterative title of Music Netork/ESB's current tour of Ireland. This is less than fair to the pianist, Andrew West, who accompanies Catherine Leonard in all her violin pieces and Franzita Whelan in all her songs and faithfully mirrors the wide range of styles and moods in the joint recital: songs and arias by Schubert, Chausson, Dvorak, Puccini, Verdi, Catalani and Harty; works for violin by Brahms, Debussy, Kreisler and Ian Wilson.

In the second stage of the tour, in The Coach House, Dublin Castle, one might have expected the performances to have been scaled down to match the intimate atmosphere of the venue, but the recital opened with a larger than life reading of Brahms's Scherzo in C Minor (FAE Sonata) and the operative excerpts were delivered with full theatrical punch. In fact, the music that most burst the seams of the venue faired best, Brahms's Hungarian Dance in B Minor (No.2) and an aria from Catalani's La Wally.

It was the more reflective pieces that suffered from overemphasis. Schubert's Gretchen at the Spinning-Wheel is quite operatically conceived, but paradoxically, it needs a restrained, unoperatic treatment, if the innocent young girl's heartbreak is to be fully realised. And Debussy's Sonata for Violin and Piano is not so much a rhetorical declaration as a carefully nuanced display of fantasy.

I fear that the marked enthusiasm of the performers may have led them to disregard the less obvious aspects of the music.