Rattle and Dvorák: it seems to be a thorny relationship, even though the Czech composer was famously affable and the Liverpudlian conductor is the smiliest in the business. Two months ago he brought the Berlin Philharmonic to London for the Seventh Symphony, bringing oomph and pizzazz but obscuring the Bohemian ebb and flow that makes Dvorák so distinct from his Germanic contemporaries.

This performance of the Sixth, with the fleet-footed Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment sporting instruments that must have been at least a little out of date when Dvorák wrote the piece in 1880, marked a turn for the better. Relieved of his duties to the mighty “Berlin sound”, Rattle went for rowdy fervour, and grandiosity achieved through painterly effects and swift pacing.

But if Rattle’s Berlin Seventh sounded like Bruckner, this one sounded more like Beethoven: mostly hard-driven and edgy rather than swelling with Czech bonhomie. The highlight was undoubtedly the Adagio, delivered with a bittersweet tang by the OAE strings, and glowing with the distinctive colours of the woodwind.

Elsewhere, however, there was a little too much Rattle posturing, too many extremes of tempo: the orchestra blitzed through the cross-rhythms of a fierce Scherzo, and the finale was more an exercise in manic virtuosity than the uplifting, all-embracing climax it ought to be.

All the more reason to celebrate what had come before: an irresistibly charged encounter between Rattle the sensitive showman and the raptly focused Steven Isserlis in Dvorák’s Cello Concerto.

But they did have more in common than just the mop hair-dos: this was a fascinating exercise in poised interplay between orchestra and soloist. Rattle galvanised this warhorse with a stinging urgency, while Isserlis’s gut strings spun out a beautifully reflective counterpoint, quietly but firmly growing out and blending back into the fabric. At the close, however, he won out – in a calmy affectionate, deeply moving farewell.

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