Classical review: Wallace National Junior Piano Competition, University Music Theatre

Delvan Lin was the indisputable winner of the Wallace National Junior Piano Competition. Photo / Kelly Eady Loveridge

Beethoven sonata with attitude alone enough to win competition for 15-year-old.

The 2014 Wallace National Piano Festival had been resonating around the University's School of Music for three days with masterclasses, celebrity recitals and the exhaustive elimination rounds for the inaugural Junior Piano Competition.

Now it was time for the six young finalists to play for adjudicators Christopher Elton and Read Gainsford.

Standards were high and, as Elton later commented, all had already achieved success by making it to this final selection.

Delvan Lin was the indisputable winner. The first movement from Beethoven's Tempest Sonata alone would have secured victory for the 15-year-old.

This was Beethoven with attitude. Expansive chords rolled out like thunderous omens, interspersed with streaks of Allegro lightning. Bold pedalling sometimes blurred textures to a lingering impressionist fog.

Runner-up Lixin Zhang had opened the evening with extraordinary aplomb for a 12-year- old.

He relished the spiky counterpoint in Arvo Part's Partita (one of only two works of the evening to date from after 1949) and the Finale of Ravel's Sonatine was a galvanic shimmering.

Raewyn Huang, in third place, chose Mozart, but the linear intricacies of his K 533 F major Sonata were not always clear.

Full marks, though, for a beautifully reflective second movement from Lilburn's First Sonatina (the only New Zealand work of the evening, alas).

Musical rewards were not restricted to the three place-getters.

We had thoughtful takes on Bach from Chenxiao Chen and Siyu Sun, with the latter in splendid form for a vertiginous rush through the final Etude from Chopin's Opus 25.

And who could forget Max Tang's highly imaginative programme, moving from mercurial Beethoven Bagatelles to an exultant voyage to Debussy's L'Isle Joyeuse?

In his closing speech, Elton hailed these musicians as the most important pianists in New Zealand at the moment, as they would be in the future, eventually going abroad to represent their country.

All of which would be inconceivable without the support of the Lewis Eady Charitable Trust, the Wallace Arts Trust and indefatigable organiser Rae de Lisle - not to mention all the country's piano teachers who open up viable cultural alternatives to the sports field.

What: Wallace National Junior Piano Competition
Where: University Music Theatre
When: Saturday