The final instalment of the Philharmonia's Vaughan Williams survey was entitled Response to War, and the programme flanked the 1936 cantata Dona Nobis Pacem with two of his finest symphonies, the Pastoral and the Fourth (which was the first to be given a number rather than a name). It should have been the climax to what has been a forceful retrospective. That it was not was due to indefensible audience intrusion: if ever a concert were ruined by coughing and mobiles, this was it.

The noises were first heard as the opening movement of the Pastoral drew to its close. This is the greatest of Vaughan Williams' symphonies, and the music, evoking a landscape irrevocably damaged by war, is slow and, for the most part, extremely quiet. The beginning was beautiful, if a bit low-key, but once the coughing started, the performance didn't really stand a chance. The passion of Richard Hickox's interpretation, and our appreciation of it, could only be intermittent; the players looked thoroughly browned off.

During Dona Nobis Pacem, ringtones took over. Just as soprano Lisa Milne was intoning her prayer for peace, the air was rent, as if on cue, by some jazzy tintinnabulation. Thereafter the performance blazed, and was all the better for some angrily fine singing from the London Symphony Chorus. During the interval the offenders must have gone home, allowing us to enjoy the Fourth Symphony in peace. Fiery, proud, dissonant and despairing, the work is widely regarded as prophetic of the second world war. It was wonderfully done; Hickox's Vaughan Williams at its best.