Christoph von Dohnanyi is considered a conductor of the old school, meaning not that he is a stick-waving commissar but that he is most at home among the Viennese classics.

As the Philharmonia's principal conductor, the playing he gets suits his temperament perfectly, for it is one of the great versatile orchestras, equally capable of loftiness and sparkle.

His preferences were apparent in Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, which opened this concert in place of the advertised Der Freischutz overture by Weber.

If a case had to be made for its being not incomplete at all but a two-movement homage to the songmaker's art, then this was it. It was presented as a dignified lyrical medley and it ended with a full stop.

Maybe the tempos were a mite slow, but such a reverential approach often involves being ponderous in the best sense and maintaining broad gestures.

Andreas Haefliger might have been von Dohnanyi's soloist of choice in the Beethoven Third Piano Concerto, a pianist not given in this case to much more than revealing, with the utmost clarity, what the composer ordered, and playing with an almost Mozartian grace.

The miraculous slow movement contrived to seem suspended in time and space, a lesson by all in controlling the mellifluous flow of the music to the stage, where it nearly comes to a halt.

The restlessness within the grandeur of Brahms' First Symphony was beautifully caught and a bright light shone on limpid clarinet, solemn brass and, pre-eminently, sunny violin - or as sunny as it gets in this protracted wrestling with conflict.