It’s straight down to business with Alexander Kobrin: there’s no exaggerated bowing to the audience or fiddling around with the piano stool. Moscow-born Kobrin was appearing as one of the recitalists and teachers at this year’s Oxford Philomusica International Piano Festival and Summer Academy, and he appeared to be relishing the experience: no fewer than three encores were provided, in spite of the fact that he had to be up bright and early the next morning to give a three-hour masterclass.

But back to the beginning. Kobrin opened with Schumann’s Waldszenen (Forest Scenes), Op. 82. This programmatic series of short sketches revealed his ability to make the piano sing — Kobrin seems particularly at home in gentle, romantic, sonorous music. The gently flowing Entrance, and the fragile Lonely Flowers, for example, were particularly telling. On the other hand he can certainly deliver contrasts: making light of the technical challenges involved, there was plenty of fiery excitement in Hunter in Ambush, while Haunted Spot was chilly, exactly describing a place where the sun never shines.

Kobrin injected a sense of awe and not a little passion into Brahms’s Variations in F sharp minor on a Theme by Schumann, Op 9, appropriately reflecting the fact that the young composer dedicated the work to Schumann’s wife Clara, with whom he was to develop such a close relationship. There were contrasts here, too, with tenderness being followed by massive accelerations of speed and volume, rather reminiscent of a jumbo jet taking off.

Finally Kobrin unleashed a fiery, bright-toned account of Chopin’s Douze Études, Op 25. These technical exercises, each designed to highlight a different pianistic problem, were delivered with transparent clarity — just the job for the Summer Academy students in the audience, who gave Kobrin a well-deserved standing ovation at the end.

n The Oxford Philomusica Summer Academy continues until Sunday. Full details: www.oxfordphil.com