Conor Linehan (piano), John Field Room, National Concert Hall

{TABLE} Variations in F minor.................... Haydn Piano Pieces Op 118...................... Brahms Kreisleriana............................. Schumann Sonata No 4.............................. Scriabin {/TABLE} THE fourth and penultimate of the Foley Bursary recitals by the Irish entrants to the forthcoming Guardian Dublin International Piano Competition was given at the John Field Room on Monday by Conor Linehan.

The word that comes most immediately to mind with respect to Linehan's choice of programme and his manner of delivery is musicianly. There was, one felt, no serious mis-match between the technique demanded by the music and the performer's ability to deliver it.

Unusually for a young performer's programme, all but the last work, the short Fourth Sonata of Scriabin, ended softly, and this could readily be taken as a statement of intent for the evening as a whole. There was nothing for the sake of show only, and the focus was successfully maintained on the music itself, away from the outward trappings of demonstrative pianism.

Linehan displays a welcome sensitivity to style. Haydn's Variations in F - minor were paced with that essential underlying nobility which can make this music so gripping. The highlight of Brahms's Op. 118 was the final, darkly probing piece in E flat minor, the misjudgment of the set being the over-reaction to the "agitato" marking of the fourth piece.

The high point of the evening, however, was the playing of the closing Scriabin, nervy (as it should be), fantastical, exciting, harmonically acute, quite the best performance that I've yet heard in this pre-competition concert series.