Hiro Kurosaki & William Christie, Wigmore Hall, London

"Composers should avoid symmetries, but may construct in parallelisms," Stravinsky once remarked. And programme-planners? This Wigmore Hall recital by the young Japanese period violinist Hiro Kurosaki and the veteran harpsichordist William Christie, the founder of Les Arts Florissantes, was almost symmetrical.

The first half sandwiched a Handel harpsichord suite between two Bach violin-and-harpsichord sonatas; the second enclosed a Bach solo-violin partita between two Handel violin-and-harpsichord sonatas. Furthermore, both the suite and the partita were in E major, a sharp key relating to the various keys of the other pieces – except for the second Bach sonata, which, like a spanner in the works, proved to be in the remote, flat key of F minor.

No doubt in these post-tonal times, we are less sensitive to key sequences than our baroque forebears. On the other hand, the Viennese-trained Kurosaki, with his vintage 1690 instrument, could hardly have proved more exquisitely sensitive to baroque style – or indeed styles. This was playing that not only drew a remarkable range of tone and colour from varied speed or pressure of bowing alone, but that nicely distinguished between the traditions evoked by his chosen composers.

Bach's Sonata No 5 in F minor, BWV1018, is in his more Germanic manner, in which the violin tends to be just one part in a densely contrapuntal texture sustained mainly by the keyboard. This Kurosaki characterised by a subdued, inward tone; whereas the French-style Loure in the Partita No 3 in E major, BWV1006, he dispatched with just the right combination of languor and finesse. Handel's more melody-led Italianate manner drew a correspondingly broader, singing style with freer use of vibrato.

Christie's contribution, sovereign musician though he is, proved a little more variable. His double-manual harpsichord, a modern copy of a Blanchard original, sounded lovely, especially in its serenely sonorous bass. But it seemed to go off pitch perilously quickly in the hothouse of a packed hall, perhaps prompting, in turn, the occasional finger-slips in Christie's playing, and requiring a frantic retune in the interval.

His approach to Handel's Suite in E major, HWV430, was, in any case, unusually meditative, mollifying the flamboyant proclivities of the florid Prelude and reserving the fireworks for the famous final variations on the "Harmonious Blacksmith" tune. But elsewhere, in the relentless partwriting of the Bach sonatas and the spacious continuo figurations of the Handel, the impetus, flexibility and grandeur of his playing were all that could be desired.