FORTE FINGERS

WHEN the second round of the Guardian Dublin International Piano Competition is completed at the RDS tonight, the 12 semi finalists will have emerged. By last Monday night, 30 of the 54 competitors already knew they would not he challenging for the six places in the final at the National Concert Hail next week. John O'Conor, international concert pianist and director of the Royal Irish Academy of Music, is she artistic director and co founder of the competition which began in 1988 and has been held every three years since. It is unusual in that it allows competitors to select their own programme. "We adopted this policy of `freedom of choice' from the beginning and now other international competitions are following our lead."

"Competitions," he says, "are good for musicians, they are a showcase leading to concert engagements. Every young musician enters a competition for the confidence it gives. We become musicians to play and competitions give newcomers an opportunity to play which they wouldn't otherwise get. I enjoy competitions, I always have - they are exciting while it is also fascinating to hear several performers play the same piece of music, each bringing something different to it. No two performances are ever the same - that's what so unique about music.

Following the success of previous winners of the Dublin piano competition such as Philippe Cascard (1988) Pavel Elneressin (1991) and Davide Franceschetti (1994) the exposure for this year's winner will far exceed the £10,000 prize money and new Kawai piano.

Small, buoyant, plump faced, jolly and very chatty, John O'Conor appears to be one of life's optimists. Winner of the prestigious International Beethoven Competition in 1973, he knows the career value of these events. In 1975 he won the Bosendorfer Competition, also in Vienna, and his international career began with concert performances throughout Europe and Japan. By 1983 he had made his debut in the United States where he has recorded the Beethoven Sonata Cycle and Mozart piano concertos for the Telarc label. Considering the commercial emphasis on the marketing of classical music, O'Conor says he is weary of people complaining to him about the lack of availability of his recordings in Dublin. "I don't know if it's the distributors or what?"

Nothing about him appears to conform to the cliched idea of a pianist. He could as easily be a successful businessman or some one working in the communications world. His is the aura of a man who enjoys life and is unafraid of admitting to middle brow tastes such as West End musicals and Liberace, while not favouring the playing of Mitsouko Uchida. Then the conversation switches to Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin and John Field. The latter is central to O'Conor's career just as O'Conor singlehandedly revitalised, in fact, reintroduced Field (1782-1837)10 the musical repertoire. His recording of Field's Noctures, reached the Top 20 in the US Billboard charts in 1990. "Each time I go to Moscow, I visit Field's grave. He was a European composer, but he was also an Irish one."

Rather in the manner of a determined subplot, Irish melodies dominate Field's music which has a curiously hybrid classical romantic/Irish quality. "There was a nun from Limerick who had done an investigation into influence of Irish traditional airs in Field's melodies, but unfortunately she died before I could contact her. Field was a huge influence in his time. I remember reading a letter in which the young Chopin wrote home saying that he had done well, and had been told he was being compared with John Field."

Opinionated and concerned about the future of music, particularly in Ireland where he has been Professor of Piano at the Royal Irish Academy of Music since 1976, director since 1994, O'Conor's good nature, nonstop conversation, skilful reading of arts politics and apparent lack of personal torment, deflect the exasperation in many of his comments: uppermost in his mind is the poor quality of music criticism in Ireland. "We have critics who seem to learn the piece off whatever CD they happen to have and having decided this is the only way it can sound, are incapable of responding to live performance. It is a disaster as well as a scandal." As far as he is concerned "it is ridiculous applying the same critical criteria to a debut performance as one would to someone who gives 100 concerts a year.

Returning to Ireland in 1976 after five years studying in Vienna, he began calling for the establishment of a national conservatoire. He is still campaigning for one. "We need an Irish academy for the performing arts. I'd like to evict UCD out of Earlsfort Terrace and set up our conservatoire, catering for ballet and traditional music as well."

Leading the way to his office at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, O'Conor agrees that this late Georgian building on Westland Row remains impressive despite its shabby splendour having a somewhat tragic quality. "Ah yes, this is a beautiful building, but it is falling down before our eyes. Don't be fooled by my office, it's the best bit. You know", he says pointing to the doorway surround, "that's pressed pewter, I never knew that. I was only told recently. There's a wonderful fireplace in the organ room. I'll show it to you.

The academy's premises at Westland Row now occupies three houses. The result is a sprawling, friendly labyrinth of sorts. The sounds from music lessons drift out from various rooms. In spite of our poverty, there's great atmosphere here and a wonderful buzz amongst the students." The main building at No 36, was built in 1771. O'Conor's office dominated by a detailed Adamesque ceiling was formerly the drawing room. The Royal Irish Academy of Music was founded in 1848 and moved here in 1870. How difficult is it for O'Conor, a musician involved with a most isolating and self contained instrument, to balance the administrative aspects of the academy? "I'm pretty good at it. I like it. And I have always liked teaching." He has five full time students, and a further 20 which he supervises through monthly session, while Dearbhla Collins, his assistant, sees them weekly.

Two of his students have qualified to the second round stage of the Guardian Dublin International Piano Competition; Maria McGarry performed at the RDS yesterday, while Finghin Collins is playing today. By this evening they will know if they will be appearing in the semifinals. Late last week, the scene in the RDS library was slightly more casual, as the competitors set about deciding which piano they would play, the Steinway or Kawai.

In contrast to their formal concert dress, the competitors at 15 minute intervals take turns in playing snatches of pieces, testing the two instruments, deciding which would best suit their individual playing as well as their respective programmes. Many seem tense, all are preoccupied and some appear even studiously dishevelled. The atmosphere quivers with nerves and ego. An Israeli entrant stands outside, in the evening sunshine, in surroundings more evocative of the Dublin Horse Show. She is doubting the choice she has made. "I went for the Kawai. I think I have made a mistake, can I go back and change my choice?" she asks no one in particular. She says she was having trouble with an octave. Back into the library she goes and changes her selection, then changes back. The entire business is that exact.

Back at the academy, it is all so relaxed by comparison. Outside the relative elegance of O'Conor's office with its big desk and a sideboard featuring a large modern lamp, its ironwork base in the shape of a treble clef, the academy looks quite grim. He leads the way down a staircase and points out the lumpy plaster and dirty yellow walls. "Think what could be done with some money. We get a million a year from the Government, but what we really need is a million and a half." There are 1,000 fee paying students, ranging from six to 40 and a teaching staff of 75.

John O'Conor the pianist enjoys a special place in Irish music in that he was the first pianist to establish himself in the public imagination as an international performer. Charles Lynch (1906-84) of course, came before him, but Lynch's career was conducted in a vastly differently world, an Ireland in which there was no orchestra, no formal classical music structure and many of his recitals were confined to unsuitable, overly modest venues, including restaurants and hotels.

Most devastatingly of all, Lynch's career never recovered from the wider upheaval caused by the second World War. Nor did the disorganised Lynch, who gave his first public recital at the age of nine, have the advantage of O'Conor's comfortable, accommodating personality which has certainly contributed to his accessibility. If ever an individual has shrewdly managed to balance his aspirations with practicality and realism, it is O'Conor. Myths do not interest him, nor does elitism. "I love music, I love performing."

Admitting to being nervous before a performance, he quickly adds, "but you have to be, if you're not, there's something missing." While Barry Douglas and Hugh Tinney are pursuing international careers from London bases, O'Conor appears able to balance his teaching and administrative work here, availing of international tours as a way of escaping from the pressures of finding funding and organising students and events. Increasingly O'Conor, although he has a high public profile in Ireland, mainly performs elsewhere, particularly in the United States.

By the end of this year, he will have completed a series of three engagements there, and will also perform in Canada, France, Belgium, Austria and Italy where he is also directing a two week international music school at Positano in June. He has already started working on the demanding Brahms Second Piano Concerto which he will perform for the first time in his career next year.

In Ireland, however, he has no difficulty about blatantly using his reputation as a way of pushing for improvements for young musicians. "I think it is the responsibility of an established musician to make life easier for young musicians. I also think we are winning. The possibilities are better than when I was a student. It is a fault of music education that people in the lower middle class are not taught to get to know classical music."

Convinced of the class barrier which still stands between classical music and many listeners, he says, "more and more people are going to classical music concerts because they actually discover they like it. They may have gone to the first one out of a sense of social occasion or curiosity, but then, they go because they have discovered for themselves how wonderful it is."

He was born in Dublin in 1947, the second son and youngest of four children. He grew up in Eaton Square, Terenure. There was no family musical tradition to draw on. O'Conor's father, a remarkable man, had been orphaned and from the age of four had lived in St Vincent's Orphanage in Glasnevin. Henry O'Conor, who died in 1984, spent his working life in T. and C. Martin's, a Dublin builders' providers. John's mother Kathleen, now 93, has always lived by a policy of trying everything. "She never put pressure on us. It was a case of trying something, and if we did well, it was fine. If we didn't it wasn't the end of the world either."

WHEN he was three John was introduced to the piano by his sisters, Carmel and Joan, both of whom are music teachers. His first teacher was a Miss Sheila Rumbold whose policy was based on unusually high levels of support. "She pampered us (her pupils), and let us feel we were very important." His early schooling was at the Presentation College Terenure, before moving to the Christian Brothers at Synge Street where he had an unhappy time and experienced bullying. When his mother discovered his terror, she sent him to Belvedere College where he did well academically.

By 17 he had won the first of his Feis Ceoil medals and was a prize winner for three consecutive years, "although in the middle year, I did very badly in one competition and wasn't even placed, it was good for me. I had thought I was God's gift." At that stage he was studying under Dr J.J. O'Reilly. At Belvedere, O'Conor was on the tennis team and also played rugby he was a winger. Noticing my surprise, he says heroically. "I was leaner and swifter then." He also stresses he was not on the school cup team or the on the seconds. "It was more of a gentleman's approach, we played with some flamboyance." Aware that most of his classmates regarded playing the piano as cissy stuff, rugby for him was more about personal credibility than sporting achievement.

From Belvedere, he attended UCD where he took a degree in music. While there he also acted with Dram Soc. O'Conor, claims he is a frustrated singer, "If I'd had a voice, I would have loved to be a singer. But I'm not even good enough for the bathroom." His wife Mary, a sex therapist, is as outgoing as O'Conor. Their elder son, Hugh, has established himself as a gifted actor. O'Conor's younger son, Keith studies trumpet at the academy.

It is difficult to balance O'Conor's easy going, friendly personality with the determination required of a performer in what must be an extraordinarily demanding career. How can he find time to rehearse? He laughs. "Oh I do." As he says, "no one becomes a classical musician to make money." He speaks about the public's enduring fascination with child prodigies. "I really fear for a prodigy. They are created by the marketing people and the playing can often be all technique and no feeling. It is very unfair on everyone. But it is a simple fact, there is more interest in a 17 year old than a 37 year old.

Continuing on the theme of public interest, does he feel the dramatic power players tend to overshadow the more lyric interpreters such as himself? O'Conor thinks about the question but stresses, "I think you can have intensity without drama and intensity is important." Who are his favourite pianists? Murray Perahia and Alfred Brendel. But he also mentions other musicians. Above all, O'Conor simply loves music.

Speaking about the deliberation the competition pianists bring to their choice of instrument O'Conor remembers finally buying his own Steinway about 10 years ago. "It lives in the dining room. I love it." Ever the teacher, he says, "I encourage students not to pick the piano, it is a solitary instrument, you play on your own, it has its own harmony as well as melody. Why don't more people play the double bass?" His face assumes the expression of a zealot, "I'd be delighted to recruit some big rugby players, an injured rugby player and encourage him to pick up the double bass." O'Conor also refers to the shortage of viola, oboe and bassoon players. "These are the instruments I want young people to try."