Peter Jablonski, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

Rachmaninov and Prokofiev are always with us, and both featured in Peter Jablonski's recital in the current South Bank Piano Series. Jablonski is also going to record all the Prokofiev Sonatas.

The reason for this is something of a mystery, for while Jablonski is a pianist of natural musicality and some subtlety, this performance didn't suggest that he is suited to these Russians at all. He is too gentle a pianist, not temperamentally inclined to the ruthless percussive quality that gives Prokofiev's music its cutting edge. Nor is he alive to the sense of desolation or even the sardonic charm that alternately inform Prokofiev's Eighth Sonata. Its long first movement seemed quite beyond Jablonski's imaginative scope, and made for very boring listening. In the central movement he neglected the top line to such an extent that it seemed as if he were merely sketching, as if to say, casually, you know how it goes. Listeners need more help, and there was little conviction or electricity in the final movement.

The first half of the evening was even less satisfying. Professional pianists tend to make a disappointing showing in Tchaikovsky's well-loved The Seasons, which amateurs can probably better enjoy playing for themselves. "September" opened in a bluster, but with weak treble and a plonky left hand. The winsome "Autumn Song" of "October" was too slow and failed to sing. "December", a trite waltz and the weakest piece of the set, was treated to some knowing rhythmic bending but felt uncomfortably artificial.

The most puzzling playing of all came in Rachmaninov's Op 33 set of Etudes-tableaux – not as strong as the Op 39 set, and not representative of the composer at his most inspired anyway. Several of these pieces have a curiously evasive quality, but that is insufficient reason for playing them in a kind of half-hearted mumble, again with a weak right hand. Jablonski's habit of running one piece into the next hardly helped, and his occasional indulgence in throwing up his arms and keeling over the bottom end of the keyboard, as if he had just blown the roof off, seemed altogether in excess of what he had actually done. A bad case of miscasting.