Shostakovich's gargantuan Fourth Symphony was the showpiece finale of Saturday's Prom by the European Union Youth Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy.

This exceptional group of players, aged 14-24 from the EU countries, announces that classical music might survive a while yet, with a new generation to perform it even if most of them will be women, judging from a rough head count of strings where nigh-on 70 per cent were girls.

The opener was Schnittke's playful (K)ein Sommernachtstraum, an alphabet soup of jokes and allusions, from Mozart in minuet mode to Red Square funeral bands, all whisked together while still retaining their recognisable components. It was chosen to signal both the Shostakovich and Mozart's Violin Concerto No 5 in A major, K219, which came next.

Whereas the Schnittke bristled wittily, this fell flat, somehow killed by a conspiracy of politeness, not a word we now associate with Mozart, as if robust period-instrument performance had never happened.

Soloist Janine Jansen played elegantly enough but suffered slips of intonation in an over-pallid account. Careful thematic programming can be a straitjacket. A blowsy romantic concerto instead might have worked wonders for everyone.

All was redeemed by the Shostakovich, played with bravura and electrifying virtuosity-from the sour opening reveille to the dank, watery mystery of the finale. Man, or in this case Girl, of the Match was the principal bassoon (unidentifiable by name, alas), who could walk into any world-class orchestra immediately.

Friday's BBC Symphony Orchestra Prom proved an enigma. Three works by John Adams, played expertly, nevertheless left one feeling undernourished.

To complain of a surfeit of tenderness seems perverse, but Adams's hallmark exuberance was largely absent, notwithstanding the spectacular percussive finale of Harmonielehre ( 1985).

In The Wound-Dresser, Eric Owens (bass) relished Adams's mastery of the sung line with a warm sincerity worthy of Whitman's soulful text. My Father Knew Charles Ives opened a landscape window on New England.

Its central movement, peering into a 1930s dance hall with misty, muted echoes of Glenn Miller, was an especially cunning and magical piece of stylistic double-glazing.