Pianist Nuron Mukumiy was injecting a lot of fireworks into Chopin’s Four Scherzi, but he was soon interrupted. “Too showy, you must love every note,” pronounced the lady sitting beside him. Then followed a question that visibly threw 15-year-old Mukumiy: “Have you ever been in love?”

Perhaps the shock wasn’t entirely caused by the question itself, but also because it had been asked by a nonagenarian: Dame Fanny Waterman, co-founder of the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition exactly 50 years ago, and one of the most influential piano teachers this country has ever produced, was in Oxford to give a masterclass at this year’s Philomusica International Piano Festival.

“She doesn’t miss a trick,” said someone sitting behind me, who clearly knows Dame Fanny well. As the masterclass proceeded, this was very plainly true. “If you start a phrase too soon, you clip off the end of the previous phrase — lots of people do it,” Dame Fanny was soon pointing out in her direct manner, which is laced with a strong Yorkshire accent, and an equally strong sense of humour: “You’ve only played 12 notes, and I’ve given you about 20 things,” she chuckled. Not only the pupils themselves but also aspiring pianists in the audience would surely love to have a video of the proceedings, to study over and over again.

One of the things Dame Fanny was very keen to stress was the importance of making the piano sound as if it is singing. And that’s exactly what pianist Stephen Kovacevich did when he gave this year’s final Piano Festival recital in the Sheldonian.

From the opening bars of Beethoven’s first four Bagatelles from Opus 126, the music sang gently. Unannounced, the Bagatelles replaced the advertised Sonata No 5, Opus 10, which must have puzzled many members of the audience, myself included.

Next Kovacevich played Beethoven’s penultimate sonata, No 31, Op 110. This work is commonly regarded as the warm-hearted member of the composer’s last great trio of sonatas, and again Kovacevich emphasised its gentle, songlike qualities, as well as finding desolate, sad territory in the music. The occasional fireworks in this sonata were all the more effective for being clearly differentiated. Schubert’s late Sonata in B flat, D960, received more percussive treatment, but with songlike stillness returning in the Andante.

The final two movements were played with pin-sharp clarity, although with perhaps less variation in tone-colour than you would expect from, say, Paul Lewis. This was a magisterial recital, topped by a memorable encore: a delightful, skipping, Bach Sarabande.