The Oxford Piano Festival has again started up - this is the third year running - with its delightful mixture of inspired teaching during the day and magnificent recitals every evening, writes Hugh Vickers.

Which to prefer? On Monday I felt I learnt more from Prof. Yablonskaya's remarks on Beethoven's opus 110 - to a not specially gifted student - than from Filippo Gamba's Holywell recital.

An unfair comparison, no doubt. Yablonskaya was relaxed, Gamba full of nervous anticipation. I felt, during his performance, of Schubert's Momentes Musicaux Op 94 that he was not just playing the music, he was determined to tell us something about it. True, this revelation was little more than how Artur Schnabel, or one of his German contemporaries, would have played it on a particularly good day. But what's wrong with that? It forced us to stop and think - to sense Schubert's tragic vision, to remember the hair's breadth that separates joy and pain in the Winterreise songs, for instance.

Gamba relaxed a lot in Schumann - an early work, the Arabeske Op 18 - but worked himself up into the right sort of frenzy for Bartok's Suite Op 14, one of those mould-breaking works in which Bartok added the sounds of north Africa to his Hungarian/Gypsy palette. Really, it diminishes Gamba to refer to him (as in the programme) simply as "winner of the Geza Anda Competition" or indeed any other competition. Executant ability of this order always has this effect - the sense of awe at the technique vanishes, all that remains is the music itself, seen afresh, ideally as if for the first time.

Which brings me right back to Oxana Yablonskaya and her masterclass. She is one of those intuitive teachers whose most casual remarks make you wish you were wired for sound. "Listen to the humour in the Beethoven Op 110 Fugue" (I must confess I'd never thought of that). And - wonderful advice to any aspirant musician - "Don't try to play loud. Learn to play big."