The night before this Prom the Albert Hall hosted Xenakis and Rachmaninov — “like putting a lion and a porcupine together and expecting them to have children,” The Times noted. If that were true, then this concert with the London Philharmonic Orchestra — Brahms, Zimmermann, Debussy, Mozart and Ibert — was a veritable zoological orgy.

By the skin of their teeth they got away with it — though Vladimir Jurowski might wish not to put his orchestra through quite such an elaborate preamble the next time they play Brahms. Here was a truly searching performance of the First Symphony, alive with flickering drama, fleet-footed yet darkly powerful. But at the end of such a punishing evening the LPO woodwind and brass sounded tired and stressed, abrasive rather than consoling. It worked, but without some of that essential Brahmsian tenderness.

Yet the mountains that we climbed before the Brahms were pretty majestic. Zimmermann’s rather astonishing Dialoge, which scatters the orchestra’s sections across the platform for a spiky yet beguiling encounter with two piano soloists, must be one of the most hair-raising challenges for a conductor, but Jurowski was his usual cool, unflappable self, shedding light on every complex corner. The pianists, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich, were as coolly compelling as their Mozart (the Sonata in D for two pianos) had been warmly secure.

Actually, there was one bona fide link in this Prom, as Debussy’s Jeux was one of the inspirations for Dialoge. Jurowski conducted the piece not long ago, but here it sounded less precious and more in tune with its balletic origins, whirling decadently to a sickly climax.

After all that you’d be forgiven for forgetting the curtain-raiser. This was Jacques Ibert’s odd but fun Bacchanale, written in 1956 to celebrate ten years of the Third Programme. Perhaps that explains its catholic tastes: one third Stravinsky to two thirds Eric Coates.

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