Stephen Kovacevich’s masterclass given at the Verbier Festival Academy is dedicated to Beethoven and to music central to his own repertoire. His manner, warm and sympathetic, thinly disguises a volatility and an anxiety to draw on his students’ character rather than impose his own. First, there is Claire Huangci (Curtis-trained but now studying in Germany) in the Waldstein Sonata. And moving straight to the point (though never to the jugular) Kovacevich starts with the “bad news”. “Your tempo is too slow. Allegro con brio is radically different to, say, the Allegro opening of the Emperor Concerto.” Time and again he begs her to step outside the confines of good piano playing of the sort suitable for the exam room or the competition circuit. “Try to achieve a greater sense of line, energy and impetus”; “let some dirt into the sound when you open the finale”; “yours is too clean and correct”; “yes, I’ve experimented with glissandi octaves but on a modern instrument you can easily end up with blood on the keys”; “it’s still good-girl, very good-girl piano playing; now I want something more.”

Much the same advice confronts Pavel Kolesnikov in the greater complexities of Op 110. Here, after initial congratulations (“a very high level of playing”) Kovacevich winkles out a greater sense of subtlety, character and finesse. “Try not to clip Beethoven’s opening expressive line, its not a French Overture”; “I hear you as a pianist when what I want is eloquence. True, Beethoven is not La bohème, but there must be that sense of singing and speaking”; “the second movement is marked Allegro molto, not commodo. Yours is too safe”; “again you make Beethoven’s beloved sforzandi too legal – they dont put the listener under sufficient stress or discomfort”; “the first Arioso dolente is parlando, but the second must be like a last gasp; someone dying”.

And so here briefly but in essence is Stephen Kovacevich, the least laissez-faire of pianists, inspiring his students to dare, to reach out towards a sense of ultimate musical values. The ascent to the summit of Mount Olympus may be fraught with hazards but it is surely worth the effort.