The London Symphony Orchestra's principal conductor has his sceptics, and they are rarely more vocal than when it comes to his Mahler. It's fast, flashy and lacking proper schooling – or so the usual charges run, ascribing to Gergiev's musical direction the stereotypical afflictions of bling-obsessed new Russia.

Mahler's Ninth, its outer movements shot through with references to the "Lebe wohl" (farewell) motif from Beethoven's 26th piano sonata, is typically understood as a study of resignation in the face of approaching death. Composed following his diagnosis with a heart defect, and shortly after the death of his daughter, its necromantic traits are undeniable. But the lightness of breath that characterises much of the score relates not only to the fragility of a failing body, but to that of an entire cultural milieu: the death prefigured and almost welcomed in the symphony is arguably more that of an epoch than an artist.

Gergiev's reading works because it marries the hesitancies of the outer movements with the garish ebullience of the inner two, where gestures of high-spirited brilliance and rambunctious self-confidence seemed to half-buckle in self-doubt. Similarly, the wistful textures of the first movement and long-drawn lines of the finale glimmered with an intensity that increased with the sense of nostalgic distance. If this sounds paradoxical, then it is an authentically Mahlerian paradox. The players were convinced: from the rosy vein struck by the strings to the honed gestures of the woodwind, here was an orchestra at one with itself and its director.

This closeness seemed lacking in the first half, where Gergiev seemed to peer at the score of Shostakovich's second cello concerto as if for the first time. But this mattered little because the soloist led from the front. Capturing admirably the work's caustic wit, Mario Brunello made a compelling case for one of Shostakovich's most perplexing works.