'Improvisation rocks" was the message of Beyond The Score, Robert Levin's illustrated talk at Killaloe Music Festival. Levin, a leading exponent of improvisation in 18th-century music, played a Mozart piano concerto in the festival's opening concert.

He also offered a 90-minute "lightning survey" of the issues surrounding embellishment and improvisation in Mozart's piano music.

Levin, pictured below, has painstakingly gathered evidence from the music, comparing pieces that survive in different versions to deduce the rationale for embellishment and the techniques it calls on. And he has deconstructed Mozart's cadenzas, reducing his genius to quantifiable phenomena, as he put it, to master the art of improvising cadenzas himself.

He talked with a zealous passion, drawing attention to sparsely filled melodic lines in Mozart that were intended as frameworks for embellishment and that, he pointed out in a tone of exaggerated incredulity, some performers still play without altering a note, as bare as they were printed. Levin encourages anyone playing Mozart to take up the quest for filling out certain passages in the score, and it's a call many performers have taken up, but in a toe-dipping way rather than through the full immersion Levin relishes. To show how far this endeavour could be taken, Levin closed with an extended 18th-century-style improvisation. It was a hair-raising fairground ride - demonstrative, brash and clever.

The talk steered clear of one of the major issues surrounding embellishment and improvisation, that of quality. For all the skill it displayed, its speed of thought and finger, Levin's improvisation wouldn't get a moment's attention, unless for a quick dismissal, were it presented as a composition. The awareness of its being an improvisation was essential to its acceptance. And even Mozart, as Levin frequently pointed out, wrote out embellishments and cadenzas for those who couldn't supply their own. So the case for following a given text, as well as the case for improvising, can be supported by 18th-century practice.

Levin interestingly touched in passing on the practice, which survived into the middle of the 20th century, of performers in public concerts improvising links to connect pieces in different keys. Composers as diverse as Albéniz and Elgar recorded improvisations. But the most important forum for improvisation is now a private one. It's still a primary way for many composers to try out ideas. More's the pity there's not a composer around who is willing to deconstruct his or her own activity with the patience and passion of a Robert Levin.

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan's final Killaloe review appears tomorrow