For the first half hour, the visiting Chicago Symphony Orchestra were all but eclipsed by the long-awaited return to the Proms of the pianist Murray Perahia. He has been absent long enough (20 years) for many young Prommers to be seeing him for the first time, so excitement was in the air.

Excitement, though, is not what Perahia and Bernard Haitink are primarily about. Their gentle musical partnership always eschews display and ego games; searching and unfolding is what it is all about. And so it was with the Mozart Piano Concerto No 24 in C minor which began this Prom. Sure enough, the work boasts the largest orchestra that Mozart ever used in a concerto, with horn and trumpet parts which ensured that the Chicago Symphony didn’t feel left out. But all eyes and ears were directed to the palpable sense of calm authority on the podium and at the keyboard.

The single word “moderation” summed up this performance. Some listeners might have been expecting fiercer C minor strength and drama; but Haitink put the dark orchestral opening on slow-burn, so that, in the Albert Hall’s wide spaces, every sustained chord, every harmonic shift would tell. And when Perahia entered, the shock of those first stark notes hit the mark. His fingers wet-moulded every singing line, and the (equally moderate) pacing of the remaining two movements enabled him to create pearly lines of variation and variegation.

Only in the cadenzas, which Perahia wrote himself, did anything like a storm break. In the first movement the hands rushed towards and away from each other, like eddying currents, and seemingly improvised variations were in remote keys. And, in the finale, ideas that looked towards Beethoven framed Mozart’s own fancies.

Making a rewarding link with the Mahler in the Chicago Symphony’s previous concert, Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony – by far his most Mahlerian – was performed after the interval. Now the full forces of the mighty orchestra were brought to bear: a tattoo of timpani and drums, serried ranks of woodwind, and a golden glory of horns, trumpets, trombones and tubas.

It could have been a showpiece for this particular band; but, again, Haitink turned his back on histrionics, and concentrated on the slow and inexorable amassing of power, on the nobility of the tortured strings, the chill isolation of the solo voices and, in the finale, the lost innocence of song and play.

This symphony has often hurt a lot more; but it was the dignity and soul strength of the composer that we heard here.

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