The early post-pandemic concerts enjoyed some of the best and best-behaved audiences. Apart from the collective thirst for live music, few would dare to cough on these occasions. Evgeny Kissin’s recital last summer at the Salzburg Festival was special not only for the hush in the auditorium but also for being among the first to open to a capacity audience, and indeed for coming shortly after the death of the pianist’s teacher Anna Pavlovna Kantor, to whom the album is dedicated.

For all this intense back story, and notwithstanding Kissin’s claim that he always performs better live than in the studio, the playing here is disappointingly short on electricity. Don’t get me wrong – it has all those qualities that made the wunderkind Kissin such a phenomenon: the supersonic virtuosity, high-definition clarity and awe-inspiring ease of execution. Forget about slips or smudges. But what higher qualities does the now 50-year-old pianist bring to the table? Poise, poetry and philosophy were on my wish-list; but there they remained, ungratified.

True, there are places where some expressive individuality comes across, as in a super-still ‘Clair de lune’ and the poetic oases of Chopin’s first Scherzo. Less successful is Gershwin’s second Prelude, which limps more than it swings, the rubato becoming all too predictable as we go along. Chopin’s Nocturne No 17 in B and the Impromptus suffer from an edgy piano sound that fails to blossom (try Nelson Goerner in the Nocturne for an instant corrective). The Berg Sonata, placed first, is intense enough but the excruciatingly slow tempo and a compulsion to over-articulate obstruct the natural flow. Gould has shown how a glacial tempo can just about be made to work. But Perahia and Aimard are far more at home in the idiom and with Berg’s concept of a poeticised first movement rather than a beefed-up slow movement.

I doubt if Tikhon Khrennikov could have appeared on Kissin’s projected Salzburg programme this year, even if he hadn’t had to cancel on health grounds (Yuja Wang stepped in). Even before the invasion of Ukraine, this part of Kissin’s programme raised eyebrows. Khrennikov’s status as the Secretary of the Soviet Composers’ Union from 1948 to 1991, helping to organise and implement Zhdanov’s persecution of such luminaries as Prokofiev and Shostakovich, overshadows his entire career: this despite the support he commanded among many of his fearful fellow-composers and his own claims that the true picture was more nuanced. If anyone can make this music itself worthy of a hearing, that would probably be Kissin, who in his teens recorded two of Khrennikov’s piano concertos. But even he struggles to elevate it past the impression of Prokofiev rejects.

The Salzburg audience was treated to a substantial encore in the shape of Chopin’s second Scherzo, alongside three other smaller ones, including Kissin’s own rather Stravinskian Dodecaphonic Tango. Kissin has composed more solo pieces, alongside a cello sonata and a string quartet, all recently published by Henle. Now there’s an idea for an album.