{TABLE} Fantasy in C Op 17.................. Schumann March............................... Kevin Volans Nocturnes Op 27..................... Chopin Ballade No 4........................ Chopin Isolde's Liehestod.................. Wagner/Liszt Rigoletto Paraphrase................ Liszt {/TABLE} STUART O'Sullivan (27), bone of the Irish competitors in next month's Guardian Dublin International Piano Competition, studied at the RIAM with John O'Conor. He is currently studying in Italy under the guidance of the great Russian pianist Lazar Berman at the Accademia Pianistica Internazionale "Incontri il Maestro" at Imola. He's a player whose style has developed interestingly over the years, an early wildness of musical temperament coming increasingly under the refining control of a developing technical discipline.

Schumann's Fantasy in the opening work of his John Field Room programme, is still not comfortably within his range. This is music which needs more breathing space than O'Sullivan is currently prepared to give it and the sharpness of his divide between foreground and background is at the moment too extreme.

On the other hand, his way with the two Nocturnes of Chopin's Op. 27 was very successful - direct, delicate and eloquent and his handling of the Fourth Ballade had quite an effective cumulative potency.

Liszt's Rigoletto Paraphrase and his transcription of the Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde seem to be exerting a Siren like pull on young Irish pianists at the moment. The fact that Liszt's primary interest was in the original music is something that needs to be taken into account more keenly by performers who wish to rise to these particular pianistic challenges.

O'Sullivan's programme also included the first performance, of one of this year's specially commissioned test pieces, a March by Kevin Volans, teasingly presented in irregular metres, which was here delivered with warmly romantic aplomb.