The Brant International Piano Competition has marched triumphantly well beyond a third of a century, and the late Miss Gladys Lily Brant, who founded and funded the event in memory of her parents, would have been gratified at the way the competition has been taken forward by the Trustees based at Birmingham Town Hall and Symphony Hall.

Saturday’s final showcased the cream of this year’s worldwide entrants (they all need to be based at British colleges), and we heard a generous display of offerings from many of our greatest composers for the keyboard - though no Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn or Liszt, and a gimmicky Beethoven offering (the Op.77 Fantasia) which scarcely counts anywhere.

So our finalists beguiled us with other works, beginning with Alexander Paniflov skirting the Beethoven, giving us a well-balanced Rachmaninov Etude-Tableau, and a technically brilliant Stravinsky Petrushka, all from memory.

Krysztof Moskalewicz gave us some thoughtful Brahms. some well-considered Debussy which did its best to make us forget how wet is much of this composer’s piano-music, and a Chopin Ballade, one of the world’s greatest piano composers who made no impact here.

We ended with Grace Yeo, well-coloured in Ravel’s techincally-demanding Ondine, finding out the orchestral textures of Sibelius’ B minor Impromptu (a strange piece to offer when we are talking about world-class piano music), then witty, slick, but with little thought to content, in Schumann’s Carnaval, one of the greatest pieces in the piano repertoire.

Panflilov, after long deliberation from the judges, was the winner. But instead of dull recitals, we need a concerto final (plenty of orchestras around) to inject the monkey-gland into what has become rather a wan competition.