Gaping voids remain on the local music scene, but the inexorably expanding season is an encouraging sign. Not too long ago, Miami's classical season was over by April, and here we are in June with major artists still appearing.

Backed by pianist Angela Yoffe, violinist Vadim Gluzman was the protagonist for the season-closing concert by Sunday Afternoons of Music at Gusman Concert Hall.

Gluzman's family moved from Ukraine to Israel when he was a teen, but his style remains an exemplar of the Russian school of string playing: a big, ripe tone; stainless-steel technique; incisive attacks and a bold, interpretive profile. Gluzman is aided immensely by his magnificent instrument, the ''ex-Leopold Auer'' Stradivarius, which has a gleaming, burnished sound that is quite remarkable.

Leclair's Sonata in D major served as a worthy calling card for Gluzman and Yoffe, his wife. The couple display close musical rapport with fine give and take in Leclair's graceful music, the attentive Yoffe frequently turning to smile at her husband. While technically immaculate, with a scintillating take on the concluding Tambourin, Gluzman's Baroque approach is unabashedly old-fashioned, with emphatic accents and a forthright approach that made few concessions to period style.

There was no want of drama in Beethoven's Spring Sonata, with notably vital playing by the duo in the first movement's development section and an ebullient Rondo. Less apparent was the music's vernal charm with Gluzman's bluff approach a bit generalized in expression; dynamics rarely dipped below mezzoforte, and, though sensitively played, the Adagio stayed on the notes' surface.

One will rarely hear Bach's mighty solo Chaconne so well played, with such bite, firm bowing and contrapuntal clarity. Yet while the epic sweep and drama were manifest, Gluzman slighted the music's spiritual side with a literal rendering of the D-major middle section that missed the repose and glowing serenity.

After intermission, the Israeli violinist came into his own with repertoire in which his playing offered more consistent rewards.

Gluzman spoke with fondness of Eugene Ysaye's solo violin sonatas, the second in particular. Ysaye's extraordinary Sonata in A minor work is a tour de force in four short movements; its initial Bach quotation is angrily tossed aside in music that calls for an array of bravura effects and expression ranging from dark introspection in the Malinconia movement to the obsessively driven Les Furies finale.

Gluzman showed total sympathy with Ysaye's sonata. He clearly has the arsenal to surmount its tortuous complexities and put across the bleak despair and nerve-wracked brilliance in a fiery and commanding performance.

Yoffe returned for the final two selections. Gluzman said he had recently fallen in love with Wieniawski's Legende -- a substitution for Tchaikovsky's Meditation -- and his rich-toned, rhapsodic performance was fully in synch with the Polish composer's brand of impassioned yearning.

Ravel's Tzigane made an aptly exhilarating closer. The violinist's agility and big-boned virtuosity indicated these gypsies were camped by the Volga, yet Ravel's showpiece was thrown off with plenty of zigeneur swagger from Gluzman and Yoffe.

Lawrence A. Johnson is The Miami Herald's classical music critic.

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