THOUGH his appearance in Glasgow on the same day as Isaac Stern could

have been deemed a misfortune, Leon Spierer drew a good house to the

RSAMD's Stevenson Hall for his lunchtime performance yesterday of

Grieg's C minor Violin Sonata, a work which, when passionately played,

is always a joy to those who enjoy it.

Spierer, with Jack Keaney as his pianist partner, played it

passionately. His tone, while

never plump, and occasionally squeaky, had more than sufficient glow

for the big melodies which are the work's major strength; and his

agility in the first movement and finale enabled him to disguise the

rigidity of structure which can make

less adept performances seem leaden.

The slow movement -- part Lyric Piece, part Norwegian Dance -- was

delicately done. Yet neither here nor in the finale's moments of elfin

grotesquerie did the players allow the music to slide into the

whimsicality of the composer's expressed hopes that one day it might be

played by someone he described as the ''little fiddle-fairy on my

troll-hill''.

Being someone who (as leader of the Berlin Philharmonic) is made of

stronger stuff, Spierer never lapsed into tinsel. Later he brought

similar assurance to Stravinsky's Italian Suite which, in its orchestral

guise as Pulcinella, must be very familiar to him. Even if neither he

nor his partner could capture all the effervescence and wit of the

latter, they made the most of their opportunities in the finale.

A more inconsequential piece of neo-classicism -- a wartime sonata,

economic to the point of non-existence, by Boris Blacher -- opened the

programme.