Prom 5, Royal Albert Hall, London

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It takes something special to keep the punters away from Gidon Kremer. Tuesday's turn-off was hardly the great Latvian violinist and the brilliant chamber orchestra he has drawn from his own and neighbouring republics; rather, a perverse programme. It improved as it went on, but the entire evening was about doctoring older music. Even the encores were ironic and joky, and the nearest thing to an original work was by the late German-Russian eccentric Alfred Schnittke.

Moz-Art à la Haydn was based on a theme of Mozart's, given a semi-theatrical treatment like Haydn's Farewell Symphony. It is a quarter-century old and has not worn well. The antics of starting in the dark, messing around with the rhythm and harmony, and collaging in some other familiar bits of Mozart are supposed to be playful, rather than portentous in Schnittke's usual way. But it's play in heavy clogs. Kremer and his colleagues performed with flair, intensity, precision and delicacy, as much as they could.

Next up was The Seasons Digest, Tchaikovsky's piano cycle put through a deconstruction of the Schnittke school by Alexander Raskatov. The idea was to link extracts from the pieces with a contemporary commentary. In practice, it meant that chunks of direct transcription alternated with poetic and whimsical fancies, in which a prepared piano and chiming percussion featured large. Fairly soon, it degenerated into schoolboy games like playing sweet tunes in sour ways, overlaying mock birdsong, and passing handbells around the orchestra. The audience laughed for a while, then turned ominously silent. The prospect of the violin concerto Liszt didn't write now looked like a cure by emetic, but it turned out to be the start of the recovery. His "Dante Sonata" became a credible vehicle for virtuoso violin and strings, thanks to an arranger, Sergei Dreznin, who knew the piano original inside out and could translate it into a idiomatic showpiece, from the opening solo flourish to a flamboyant cadenza, without losing the high-romantic mood. It would have been better still with a full orchestra: you could just imagine the brass and timpani Liszt used in his piano concertos, and without them the small orchestra slightly diffused the ruthless focus that a single pianist provides.

Nobody took credit for the final string-orchestra arrangement of the Schubert String Quintet, but it was a near-total success. The slow movement achieved the impossible in becoming a more overwhelming experience than the original, thanks to full textures at the opening and a Tchaikovskian fire in the central eruption. To deal with potential balance problems of the extra cello line, instruments dropped in and out, with subtle transitions from solo to full sections. This made the melody in the first movement wonderfully luminous, and only a few passages, notably the Trio, sounded thick-toned.

This Prom will be repeated today at 2pm on BBC Radio 3. Box office: 020-7589 8212. www.bbc.co.uk/proms