The 2016 Sydney International Piano Competition launched in style last night with a gala concert featuring seven of the jurors whose job it will be over the next two weeks to judge the 32 finalists. Competition Artistic Director Piers Lane introduced the event, which was the first free live stream made possible by the generous support of the Friends of the Competition and an anonymous donor.

The competitors, flown to Sydney from all around the world, were on hand to witness their judges, who gave eloquent demonstrations of dexterity and poetics, ranging from the delicacy of Sa Chen and Noriko Ogawa to heavyweight technicians like Lane himself, Nikolai Demidenko and Orli Shaham.

Polish virtuoso Ewa Kupiec had the honour to open proceedings to the obsessive strains of Schubert’s famous Impromptu in C Minor, D899, taken at a compellingly relaxed tempo and combining playing of enormous lightness of touch with firm, clear dramatics. Sporting masses of rubato, Serbian Mira Yevtich, followed suit with the Brahms’ Op. 79 Rhapsody in B Minor, her hands arching like spiders as she played a veritable game of cat and mouse across the keys.

The British came next, Hamish Milne’s...