The number of young Asian pianists winning major prizes at piano competitions all over the world has risen dramatically in recent years, to such an extent that it makes one wonder exactly what, after all these years, European and American pianists are suddenly doing wrong. Take the winners of the Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition: Nobuyuki Tsujii, 20, of Japan and Haochen Zhang, 19, of China shared the Gold Medal; Yeol Eum Son, 23, from South Korea, won the Silver.

This CD is of live performances from the preliminary and semi-final rounds. It is difficult not to be impressed by Nobuyuki Tsujii’s technical accomplishment. His well drilled fingers make light work of the first six studies of Chopin’s Op 10. The Hammerklavier, too, holds no terrors for him – resolutely brisk tempi, by and large exemplary textual clarity and a sound grasp of structure. The emotional depth of the work is beyond him at present. In the mesmerising section that prefaces the fugue, for example, all we get are the notes and dynamics, illustrative of a general lack of musical imagination throughout. Liszt’s digitally demanding La campanella is tossed off with great brio and machine-gun repeated notes, while John Musto’s piece, one of four new American works from which competitors could choose, is dispatched with marvellous fluency and not a little impish delight. Though it should have no bearing on the matter, the fact that Nobuyuki Tsujii has been blind from birth adds an extra dimension to his achievement.