Youthful vigour in check

{TABLE} Allegro Op 8......................Schumann Sonata No 2.......................Brahms Pictures at an Exhibition.........Mussorgsky {/TABLE} ON Thursday, the AIB Music Festival in Great Irish Houses moved for the first time to the lovingly-restored 18th century splendour of Emo Court, in Co Laois. The occasion was a recital by Davide Franceschetti, winner of the 1994 Dublin International Piano Competition.

Around the time of his competition success, I described Franceschetti as "a young player with exceptional technical equipment and hair-raising temperamental inclinations to test it to its limits".

The first part of that assessment remains valid. But, on the evidence of his playing at Emo, the young Italian seems a player altogether more concerned to convey a sense of deliberation in his musical outlook. The hard-hitting climaxes remain but his choices of tempo now bespeak circumspection and any tearaway inclinations he still has are well kept in check.

The 21-year-old Schumann's rarely-heard Allegro, Op 8, and the second of Brahms's three youthful sonatas (written when the composer was still a teenager) are dangerous works to attempt without an injection of impetuosity. Franceschetti's impressive marshalling and control did not on this occasion compensate for the lack of momentum, which was often compounded by a use of rubato which inclined the pulse of the music to stall.

The detailing of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition was more enjoyable but, even here, the music did not always flow easily.

After straining for the maximum of volume at the end of the Mussorgsky, Franceschetti went to the other extreme for his encore, an arrangement of Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. Here he achieved a serenity of mood and simple fluidity which made this short piece the highlight of the evening.