In a dreamworld of competitions, we would be awash with aspiring musicians justifiably claiming our attention.

Dream seems more like reality these days as serial hopefuls accumulate as many prizes and awards as possible to stand out among their peers.

At 22, Mishka Rushdie Momen could profitably stop competing right now, though perhaps she’s after one of the really big accolades. She is the winner of the 2012 Kenneth Loveland Gift, a cash prize awarded annually to commemorate the distinguished former music critic of the Argus.

This was her winner’s solo recital, postponed because it would have clashed with the Gift’s 10th anniversary celebrations last year, at which she nonetheless performed with previous winners.

Her qualities in a programme of often restless music by Schubert, Janacek and Chopin were elegance and expansiveness; her slight defect, no doubt reversible, was the sacrifice of passion to meticulous refinement. The coolest of cool deliveries was sometimes accompanied by a drop in temperature.

Technically the contrasts that underpin the disquiet in this music were all there, particularly in Schubert’s Sonata in C minor (D.958) and Janacek’s diptych Sonata of 1905 commemorating the killing of a political demonstrator. They were also accounted for in Chopin’s Fantasy Polonaise Op 61 but to far less emotional effect, though the emotions here are muted, their source complex.

Her opener was Schubert’s Hungarian Melody in B minor (D. 817), which immediately indicated that in a concert hall with a small but appreciative audience an exquisite recitalist can sound somewhat distant.

Her postgraduate studies continue, aided by the Gift. She’s certainly one to watch.