Will Valery Gergiev ever come on stage looking neat and cool, with a florid baton, ready to conduct a wide-ranging programme of Rameau, Brahms, and Dame Ethel Smyth? Maybe when pigs fly. But Tuesday’s packed Prom audience wasn’t complaining at all. Wild man Gergiev and the London Symphony Orchestra gave them just what they came for: Russian music, nervous fury, crackling tension, fluttering fingers.

Neurotic Tchaikovsky, ever ready with a febrile cymbal or a burst of tears, is perfect Gergiev material, and the Romeo and Juliet overture, opening the concert, found conductor and orchestra at their very best. LSO winds dug out their earthiest colours for the slow introduction; then the Montagues and Capulets set to at a speed just below the reckless. The electric charge was enormous. When the voltage sank, the music-making kept its sting: for the love theme, the strings stayed beautifully veiled. Not a note was out of place; this was top-notch playing.

Nothing else on the bill topped that peak. But Hamlet, another Tchaikovsky Shakespeare overture, dithered and brooded nicely enough. And in Alexander Toradze’s mighty hands, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 2 – never the most popular of the set – certainly gave us spectacle.

Between movements he flexed shoulders and hands like a boxer limbering up for another round. And how he slugged the keys. The first-movement cadenza was hammered into the ground. Always he stayed strenuously Russian, slowing some speeds to the dislocation point, making hay with the dynamics. If this really had been a boxing match, Toradze would have won easily. And Prokofiev would have lost. The LSO’s tone was rougher here, although they renewed themselves for their next Prokofiev, the Seventh Symphony. A great performance of this elusive work must walk a tightrope between simplicity and mockery, brightness and worry. Not easy. This time round, Gergiev didn’t tweak the ingredients enough. But given the instrumental finesse, and Prokofiev’s tunes, it was still a treasure trove. I wasn’t longing for Dame Ethel.

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