New challenges for young pianists

ON Sunday night, at the announcement of the results of the semifinals of the Guardian Dublin International Piano Competition, a burst of cheering declared the audience's favourite to be the Italian, Massimiliano Ferrati.

He has clearly been a leading contender since Round 1, and unlike many of the competitors who essayed large scale Beethoven, he made every note count in his commanding and perceptive semifinal performance of the late Sonata in C minor, Op. 111.

The Beethoven of another Italian, Corrado Rollero, heard in the Diahelli Variations, was hardly less impressive for its rigour of thought and resourcefulness of delivery.

Two players opted to include music by living composers in their programmes, Katia Scanavi giving a scintillating account of Carl Vine's Sonata and Carlo Guaitoli bringing mercurial lightness to the Chorale and Variations from Henri Dutilleux's early Sonata. I had these four pianists heading my choices for the finals, but only the two Italians found favour with the jury.

Elisso Bolkvadze produced some of the warmest sounds heard over the two days from the NCH's Steinway, on which the treble seems to project too easily but too thinly. At no time, however, did she match the best of her playing in Round Two.

Technical finesse seems to be the least of the problems faced by Seiko Tsukamoto. Her handling of Chopin's Op. 25 studies seemed better cent red musically than her playing in earlier rounds, but still left me rather cold.

The two remaining finalists are Max Levinson and Adrian Oetiker, players I have found myself admiring more for their estimable technical accomplishments than for their views of the particular pieces they have chosen to play. Levinson stood out, however, as the only semi finalist to play Fergus Johnston's choppily layered The Oul' Winda Rag as his test piece. Everyone else tackled John Kinsella's altogether more straightforward seeming Reflection II, which consistently, and (to my ears) dully refused to yield up any secrets it may have.