Prom 22: Evgeny Kissin/BBC SO/Andrew Davis <br></br>Prom 23: Jane Eaglen/Royal Liverpool Phil/Gerard Schwarz, Royal Albert Hall, London

Lighten up man, it's a grown-up thing

Who would want to be a former child-star? For every Kylie, there is a Sonia. For every Vengerov, a Kennedy. For every Jodie Foster or Ron Howard, a phalanx of failed film-star prodigies to push the carousel of confessional chat-shows. It's a world of extremes; of snap-judgements by tabloids and taste-makers, rash recording deals and A- or C-list appellations. But somewhere between the famously celebrated and the infamously eccentric lie those who simply promised more as children than they can deliver as adults. One such – or so it currently seems – is Evgeny Kissin.

Though never a noticeably warm Brahmsian – lacking the comforting bear-like earthiness of Garrick Ohlsson or the sequinned voluptuousness of Maurizio Pollini – Kissin's slightly glacial playing has hitherto shown three very valuable qualities: receptiveness (to conductor and orchestra), clarity, and serenity. But a recent critical backlash has suggested Kissin's otherwordly poise has been exchanged for "mechanistic vulgarity". Surely not? Sadly, much as I'd been rooting for him to come up trumps with a performance of sweetness and maturity in Monday night's Prom, I left Kissin's performance of the B flat major Piano Concerto with the reluctant conclusion that he had proved his harshest critics at least half right that night. Vulgar it was not – or no more so than many concerto performances – but mechanistic? I'm afraid so.

That the still waters of the D minor concerto are a more natural habitat for Kissin than the combative baroquerie of the B flat major is self-evident. Where Brahms calls for democratic debate between soloist and orchestra in his second concerto – its soloistic virtuosity, though considerable, is secondary to the musical dialogue – Kissin offers an autocracy. And despite a radiant Andante solo from cellist Susan Monks, Sir Andrew Davis – normally a stylish proponent of those works where Romantic sonorities meet Baroque principles – and the BBC Symphony Orchestra could not compensate for Kissin's lack of communication. After a smartish account of Elgar's take-it-or-leave-it overture Froissart, and a polished premiere of Anthony Payne's revisionist seascape Visions and Journeys (a beautifully wrought work which, if heard blind, one would date as early 1950s), their Brahms was littered with early entries, wrong notes and indistinct ensemble. The instrument Kissin was using – surely not the Albert Hall's normal piano? – was sourly tuned and nastily abrupt in its attack too. Perhaps the felts were worn? That would knock any pianist's serenity. Nonetheless it strikes me as worryingly arrogant to apply more heart and meaning to Rachmaninov's transcription of the concerto's Scherzo – Kissin's second encore – than to the give and take of the Scherzo itself.

We do, of course, expect much from former prodigies. Maybe too much. Were Kissin a conductor rather than a pianist, he would be still in his musical infancy; allowed to stumble and waver. And much of the backlash thus far has, I suspect, been fed by his stiff manner as much as his increasingly idiosyncratic playing. But if the doomsayers are to be disproved, it's time for Kissin to roll his sleeves up and get down and dirty with some chamber music alongside some other equally strong-minded musicians and learn to laugh a little. Maybe even at himself. Arrogance has no place in real music-making.

Unless you're composer/philosopher/librettist Richard Wagner, that is; highlights of whose most unremittingly histrionic works, Tristan und Isolde and Götterdämmerung, were played by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in their Proms debut under their new music director, Gerard Schwarz. On paper, this concert looked like my idea of musical hell (the other works were Strauss's only partially successful Symphonic Fantasia from Die Frau ohne Schatten and Panufnik's Sinfonia sacra). In the flesh, I adored it. Unashamedly vast, slow-burning and glossy – from the first brassy blaze of the Panufnik to the final tumbling embers of Brünnhilde's Immolation Scene – Schwarz had designed a debut that would show his orchestra (and himself) off to their very best advantage: big, bold, well-blended, dynamically versatile, brilliantly controlled and tightly-focused with much focus on a superbly meaty brass section. And though I've consequently no idea what the RLPO's Beethoven or Stravinsky or Adès might sound like, how refreshing not to be left reeling from the change of pace, period and style involved in the usual high contrast Proms programme. Alas, my question over whether the Immolation Scene can ever be sung beautifully or whether Wagner's vocal writing makes this impossible was not resolved by soloist Jane Eaglen – even she was having to work awfully hard at bringing anything more than declamation to Brünnhilde's climactic lines – but she did sing a surprisingly intimate and affecting Liebestod. That the thousand or so lawyers in the audience were in tears might have been expected. (What is it about the legal profession and Wagner?) That I was also, was not.

And finally, my thanks to those readers who entered last week's competition. (Inspired, for those who missed it, by Classic FM presenter Katie Derham's statement that "It's now okay to like Debussy and Dido.") Omitting those entries that related to foodstuffs, footballers or politicians, here are the best suggestions for otherwise unrelated but loosely alliterative things that it's okay to like in the context of a Classic FM soundbite: Pierre Boulez and Patti Boulaye (from Delia Carter, Streatham), Charpentier and The Carpenters (from Robert Glover, Bath), Rameau and The Ramones (from Valentina Broes, Bruges, Belgium), NWA and OAE (from Mark Glintworth, Sussex), Karlheinz Stockhausen and Stock, Aitken and Waterman (from Mr Picard, London), Vaughan Williams and Andy Williams (from Janet Wheeler, Staffordshire), and Delius and Darius (from the divine Ms Derham herself). All marvellous but the bond cigar and Russell Watson photo go to Carl Shavitz of Cambridgeshire for the supremely economical Lulu and Lulu. Bravi!.

a.picard@independent.co.uk