"An incredible monster in many ways" is how Bernard Haitink, in a recent interview,

described Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony, the main work in the first of two concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra that juxtapose one of Haitink's favourite Shostakovich symphonies with a Mozart piano concerto played by Emanuel Ax. The performance, however, didn't always capture the sense of the work's monstrosity quite as much as one would have liked. Haitink's association with Shostakovich is long and runs deep, though his measured approach has its drawbacks – as well as great strengths.

He favours slowish speeds in Shostakovich, and the power of his Fourth derives primarily from his emphasis on protracted dissonances and his careful control of dynamic gradations. He's good at reminding us of differing degrees of loud when the decibel count is at its highest. The work's debt to Mahler was duly emphasised, though we were also conscious of echoes of Tchaikovsky's Fourth in the eerie, waltz-like passage at the centre of the first movement, and of his Pathétique in the grinding, low string throbs that bring the work to its close.

Yet the emotional range wasn't always as wide as it could have been. The immense climax of the final movement was shaded towards elegy rather than terror or rage. And even though the playing was tremendous in its richness and detail, there was an occasional lack or irony and bite in some of the sardonic instrumental solos that break into the maelstrom.

The Mozart piano concerto, meanwhile, No 9 in E Flat, K271, got a performance of elegant grandeur and weight. Ax's supple, no-frills playing was immensely appealing. The string tone was

extraordinarily beautiful, above all in the dark central andantino, one of the most intense slow movements in Mozart's entire output.