Triple treat decides the winner

Michael Hill with the finalists. Back: Liana Gourdjia, Hill, Feng Ning, Andrew Wan, Yvonne Lam. Front: Wen-Lei Gu and Bartosz Woroch.

I arrive in Queenstown to find the Brahms Violin Concerto wafting from speakers outside a cafe. Inside, Charlotte Wilson, with her Concert FM Upbeat! Team, are Information City. The energetic host is interviewing a stream of guests involved with the semi-finals of the third Michael Hill International Violin Competition.

These include the generous Hill himself, who modestly hopes his "baby" will become a little bit like Aspen, judge Pierre Amoyal, Auckland Philharmonia general manager Anne Rodda and three competitors, including Felipe Rodriquez-Garcia. Later, at the launching concert, the young Spaniard is designated to accept the challenge when a local kapa haka group instigates a powhiri. Only Paganini at his most demonic could really compete, but 18 young violinists singing a tender waiata is the perfect response. Hearts are warmed and ice is broken.

The concert features the New Zealand Trio and guests turns from two judges. Mark Kaplan plays Bach, assuring us that "the fact that some of us are a little older and called judges, and others are younger and called competitors, doesn't mean that we are not just colleagues, making wonderful music on the violin".

Pierre Amoyal storms through a Brahms scherzo with pianist Bernadette Balkus. This was the man who had told Charlotte Wilson how Hill's competition was "much more human and close to the heart" than the highly regarded Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels at which he had just done jury service.

"You cannot just keep young people playing louder, faster and cleaner for ever," Amoyal says. "One day the audience is looking for something better than that, they are looking for a real artist, someone who speaks music with his heart, his soul, his culture, his sensitivity."

Loud and fast are not necessarily priorities in the first round of Bach and Mozart. A praiseworthy move, Kaplan says. "It doesn't automatically give players the chance to dazzle with their pyrotechnics but explores the completeness of the musician."

Nevertheless, I am pretty dazzled by some of the playing, even from musicians who don't make the final six. Rodriquez-Garcia's languorous Bach and hip Mozart are cases in point. And our own young Eugene Lee acquits himself extremely creditably in formidable company.

Another round of gruelling virtuoso would follow, each contestant tackling a specially commissioned New Zealand piece, David Farquhar's earth, air, water, where furious double-stopping, strummed chords and ricochet bowing suggest the player is to add the missing fourth element.

By Monday, six finalists are chosen - Russian Liana Gourdjia, American Yvonne Lam, Canadian Andrew Wan, Poland's Bartosz Woroch, and China's Wen-Lei Gu and Feng Ning.

The young musicians divulge a few secrets in their excitement. Yvonne Lam, a closer runner in 2003, says "gesture" is very important in a work such as the Farquhar, "because if it sounds like a foreign language to me it's going to sound even more foreign for an audience".

Wen-Lei Gu is smitten with our country, saying, "I just want to move here now."

Andrew Wan, who wins the prize for the best Farquhar interpretation, is proud of his New Zealand connections, having been taught by Martin Riseley who "knows what cuts it in the concert hall".

As to how the competition rates, Lam probably speaks for all six when she says how "pleasant it is to feel like I just have to make music, which is what I want to do. I feel like I'm giving a performance and the audience is so receptive".

All will be decided in three Auckland concerts. Tonight and tomorrow, the six will take turns in one of three trios with pianist Sarah Walker and cellist Ashley Brown. Three will go on to Saturday's final with a full concerto with the Auckland Philharmonia. Works include Brahms, Shostakovich, Stravinsky and Sibelius. The concert promises to be a triple treat.

* Town Hall Concert Chamber, semi-finals tonight and tomorrow, 7pm; final, Saturday 7.30pm