‘A brilliantly gifted musician of exceptional promise.” To borrow yesterday’s advertising catchline, this is not just an imprimatur, this is an Alfred Brendel imprimatur. It has been given to 16-year-old Californian pianist and composer Kit Armstrong, who is a Brendel pupil. Even so, you can be pretty sure that the great, recently retired, pianist would not give out such a plaudit lightly.

Brendel continues: “There is every chance that, gradually unfolding, [his career] may lead him to the very top of his profession.” And so it seemed, in Armstrong’s performance of the Schumann piano concerto with the Oxford Philomusica. Displaying a clean, light tone, he seemed modestly unwilling to push himself forward. As yet, he doesn’t produce quite the panache that is needed in the first movement, nor does he have the experience to team up instantly with the interpretations of different conductors and orchestras – Armstrong didn’t always seem completely in step with conductor Marios Papadopoulos in matters of phrasing and ensemble. But surely this will come. Meanwhile he unveiled tender, lyrical playing in the intermezzo – responding to expressive playing from the violas and cellos in particular – and warmed up nicely in the finale. It will be very interesting to hear Armstrong play this concerto again in two or three years’ time. The concert opened with an expansive account of Weber’s overture to Die Freischütz – a little too expansive for comfort among the horns at times. Conductor Papadopoulos well reflected the fact that this overture is both an orchestral colour piece in its own right and a microcosm of the opera itself – ending up with a robust demonstration of the goodwill that wins the day. There was also careful reflection of shifting moods and differing orchestral textures in the Philomusica’s performance of Brahms’s Symphony No 2. The dreamy slow movement was tinged with melancholy, while the brass made sure that the symphony came to a blazing conclusion.