In the last concert of SIPCA’s 18th Century Concerto round, the second group of finalists showed off their Mozarts in another exciting concert. Kazakh pianist Oxana Schevchenko opened proceedings on the Fazioli with Mozart’s penultimate piano concerto, No 26 in D Major K.537, nicknamed “Coronation.”

Schevchenko held her arms during the tutti, absorbing the orchestra’s music, swaying and responding to musical contours with a smile or lift of her eyebrow. She dove into the solo with fluid motions and mouthed along to the notes of the bright second subject. Compared with her first performance in the competition, almost two weeks ago, Schevchenko seemed less at ease on the stage, and some of her turns felt slightly brittle. Nonetheless, there were moments of soul-shredding beauty in her performance as she poured her whole body into each phrase. Mozart left no cadenzas for this concerto – in fact, he wrote this work strictly for his own use and much of the manuscript is sketched in shorthand, which later editors and performers have had to flesh out. Schevchenko’s cadenza in the first movement was tinged with Romantic gravitas without being overly heavy. Her second movement...