Pianist Nikolai Demidenko's recital at the Llandeilo festival was a mixed affair. His programme seemed designed to pay homage to the founders of 19th-century keyboard technique but, however fluent his own formidable technical prowess, some of this repertoire was less than scintillating.

Muzio Clementi led a colourful life; his friendship with Beethoven may have illuminated scholars and his exercises limbered a billion fingers, but his sonatas hardly constitute great music. Demidenko's advocacy of the Sonata in B flat, Op 12 No 1 was not particularly persuasive and, while there was charm in the slight Larghetto, the finale's theme and variations were all frills and no spills. Equally curious was the choice of three early Chopin works: the Rondos in C minor, E flat and C major. With many incipient Chopin trademarks, the glimpse into the future artist may have been insightful, but the long meanderings betrayed the as yet undisciplined compositional process.

By the Andante Spinato and Grand Polonaise of Op 22, Chopin had tempered the balance of content and display, and Demidenko, perhaps cooler after the interval, was most convincing here. He went on to power his way through three Hungarian Rhapsodies by Liszt - 12, 13, and 14 in C sharp minor, A and C minor respectively - where the massive weight and authority of the virtuoso episodes was countered by the playfully fleet delivery of the gypsy dances.

It was tantamount to acknowledgement of the rather narrow emotional dimension of this concert that Demidenko gave an encore which ran counter to everything thus far. In the arrangement of Gluck's Dance of the Blessed Spirits, his playing was deeply poetic, a potent reminder that virtuosity and fireworks, no matter how impressively achieved, risk being heartless and mechanical. If the piano occasionally seems like an exercise treadmill, perhaps Demidenko needs to remind himself of that too.