Who said the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dead? It certainly wasn’t on Tuesday at the Proms, when the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra turned east and found the Hungarian composers Bartók, Kodály and even Ligeti waiting with abrupt folk rhythms and orchestral textures ghostly and glinting.

You might think that curiosity alone would have packed out the house. Ligeti’s Atmosphères isn’t a Strauss waltz, and Daniel Barenboim doesn’t usually wave his baton at scores full of drifting textures. Yet there were some empty seats. It was a pity: the Vienna Philharmonic, cream of the cream, kissed Ligeti’s spectral whispers with the delicacy of true connoisseurs. Besides, it was all over in nine minutes. Amazingly, this was the piece’s Prom premiere, almost 40 years after being pitchforked without permission onto the soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

For sonic subtlety, the Ligeti was outclassed by the orchestra’s silky quiet in the opening movement of Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, marked “andante tranquillo”. There was nothing “tranquillo” about some of the audience’s coughs; yet the spell held, as it did in the third movement’s night shivers.

Throughout, Barenboim’s control of dynamics was masterly. Even so, in this distinguished performance some key elements went missing: that Hungarian snap; peasant vitality. For structural reasons alone, we needed both in the finale.

The orchestra’s poise had consequences, too, in the showstoppers placed either side of Ligeti: Kodály’s Dances from Galánta, and, heading further east, Enescu’s first Romanian Rhapsody. In the whirlwind stomp of Kodály’s finale, the VPO woodwinds’ high-speed articulation was a marvel. Yet I’d gladly have traded one perfect note for a glimpse of mud on the dancers’ shoes. In the Enescu, too, orchestral perfection carried a price. Even with their instinctive ability to sway the tempo this way and that, the performance sounded a mite too clean and tidy – like a lovely exhibit in an ethnology museum, trapped inside a glass case.

One hundred per cent delight returned with the Johann Strauss encores. In the Annen-Polka, phrases curtsied to each other; that special Viennese lilt was back. Hail to Hungary, too, glistened with idiomatic sparkle. Hail to Barenboim and the Vienna Philharmonic – especially when they’re on home territory.

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