The dream of reforming society is long gone, but you can fix the odd thing for the best. "I won't stand by and see innocent people being hurt," says John Connolly's Charlie Parker, in a novel with a death count in the scores. Both these good, gripping thrillers are fascinated with how things work. The dream of reforming society is long gone, but you can fix the odd thing for the best. "I won't stand by and see innocent people being hurt," says John Connolly's Charlie Parker, in a novel with a death count in the scores. Because it deals with nuances of personal interaction, the social novel often ends up being read as a manual of etiquette. It is to the thriller - dealing as it does with extremes and with last things - that we go for handbooks of morality.

Where the noir thrillers of the 1930s dealt most often with public morality, their contemporary equivalents are more private. The final tarantella was fearless and full of nervous energy. Altogether, this was a performance that was powerfully driven and richly detailed, and Gilad needn't feel shy of recording such a sublime work.Having proved that he has got what it takes in the Viennese classics, Gilad then showed splendid romantic flair in two encores, delivering a positively volcanic account of Chopin's "Revolutionary" Study, and an irresistibly physical one of Rachmaninov's G minor Prelude.. In the slow second movement the decorative elaborations and orchestral touches were affectionately nourished, while the minuet third movement pretty well played itself, without undue fuss. Still, and most importantly, there was a passionate sense of engagement: a young champion's refusal to be daunted by a giant. I was not disappointed, even if the ultimate degree of confidence in the long perspective of the first movement was lacking, partly because the lyrical passages were a little too fidgety. The finale was delicious, with a strong undercurrent of urgency and some sophisticated picking out of colours in its later stages.All of which built up considerable anticipation for Schubert's tumultuous C minor Sonata in the second half.

If the challenging slow movement was well sustained, it could have been even more compelling, perhaps, with more breadth and weight given to the right hand towards the end. Still, Mozart himself would have approved of Gilad's rapid passages in thefinale, which flowed like oil, while his tone was constantly jewel-like, and changed colour according to the expressive light he cast on it.Yet he's clearly not just a keyboard Narcissus. The lively sections in the first movement of Beethoven's "Tempest" Sonata (Op 31 no 2) exploded with a force that communicated itself bodily, while the tragic little shreds of recitative in the middle of the movement were intensely atmospheric and poignant. The first movement was really frisky, with colourful and expressive detailing in its short development section. The slow movement showed off Gilad's bell-like singing tone and was full of beautiful details, if some seemed a bit consciously planted. This was not a dyed-in-the-wool Austro-German view of Mozart, but the more flamboyantly pianistic Russian approach - Gilad is a pupil of Dimitri Bashkirov.