Like firework rockets, most piano whiz-kids arrive quickly, coruscate briefly and disappear permanently. Few burn steadily and brightly for a long time. I suspect that 22-year-old Daniil Trifonov is one of those who’s here to stay.

He doesn’t look like a Lisztian virtuoso. Tall, gangling and loose-limbed he twitched like a Thunderbirds puppet at the keyboard. So anxious to please he nodded his thanks to everyone in sight and almost head-butted conductor Mario Venzago in the process. But boy, can he play!

I’ve read about concerts where the audience gasps in amazement but never seen it until now.

As Trifonov thundered out the last note of his encore, a fiendishly difficult transcription of the Infernal Dance from Stravinsky’s Firebird, you could hear those gasps before the audience erupted.

The main course, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 – the obvious choice for the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition winner – was pretty tasty, too.

Trifonov used a huge range of dynamics but there is subtlety as well as power in his armoury as he showed with the sort of dolce playing the composer would have relished.

Venzago was a steady and sure hand here and in Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 and Schumann’s fourth symphony. Clarity, crisp phrasing and lack of egregious idiosyncrasy were the virtues of Venzago’s conducting.

Schumann’s notoriously dense orchestration never congealed – Venzago’s divided violins helped – and in Mozart’s slow movement the woodwinds were allowed to phrase felicitously.

But Mozart’s Jupiter finale sounded slightly underwhelming, and Schumann’s dark musical chasms a little shallow.