Some chancer has pinched Charlton Heston’s hand and so – what’s a chap to do? – I hold Kate Beckinsale’s hand instead as a door opens into the Berlin Philharmonic’s Digital Concert Hall.

Truth is, I’ve often wondered why even flagship Odeon cinemas have been allowed to decline into resigned shabbiness, a glory that might aspire to be faded if it had ever been splendid in the first place. I’ve come to the Odeon Covent Garden, actually located on Shaftsbury Avenue in Soho, to see a live relay of Claudio Abbado conducting the Berlin Philharmonic – music from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique – and my tatty surroundings could hardly be further removed from the airy, clean, plush formality of the Philharmonie in Berlin. Above the space where that door-handle invocation of Chuck’s almighty mitt had once been is slung a jaunty row of stick-on lettering – 'MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAMS LIVE!' – the dubious ‘s’ at the end of ‘dreams’ drawing regrettable attention to itself by peeling away. And a cardboard Leonardo DiCaprio grins as if he, too, sees the funny side.

Cardboard film stars, a live concert – but we’ve only got their word for it – I’m fascinated by the authentic artificiality of the concept. An extra-musical highlight of the evening occurs when a camera, trying to zoom in on a soloist, fleetingly captures another camera by mistake and the fourth wall shatters, as surely as when George Lazenby refers to ‘that other fellow’ during the opening moments of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Before I turned up at the Odeon, questions galore. The roar, not to mention the needlework pianissimos, of the Berlin Philharmonic – how would they sound pushed through a cinema sound system? Would the concert be a literal relay? Or topped and tailed with intros and an interval feature? Cinemas sneak up their profit margins with heavily marked-up popcorn and potato snacks. If the guy sitting next me decided to Monster Munch his way through A Midsummer Night’s Dream how would I cope?

It’s a melancholy reflection that in a cinema that could likely hold, at a guess, 300 people, only 30 music-loving Londoners could be fagged to schlep up West on a Sunday night to hear the world’s greatest orchestra in the sort-of flesh. I had a whole row of seats to myself; any overly eager gnashing jaws melted into the ambience. And quickly I realised what a down-to-a-fine-art operation the BPO Digital Concert Hall is. At the stroke of 7.30, rostrum shots of the Berlin Philharmonie’s interior cut to a presenter – die deutsche Katie Dërham, ja – who introduces the programme, swapping skillfully, seemingly mid-sentence, between German, English, Italian, other languages too, with the linguistic adroitness of an inflight aircrew.

It’s heartening to see how fit Abbado looks as he ambles towards the podium in his lounge suit, preparing to conduct from memory. At 80 next month, the man who in 1989 took over from Herbert von Karajan now returns to the Philharmonic once a year. And as he waves off the downbeat into Mendelssohn’s miraculous, fantastical introductory woodwind chords I know that, sonically, there’s nothing to worry about. As Mendelssohn’s high-register, scurrying strings follow, I am further reassured. The depth, the balance, the serene tone of the BPO strings is recognisable and welcome, that moment where Mendelssohn reintroduces his main theme as a sepia flashback near the end of the Overture is as tender as a Bavette steak.

And during the break – in which a rank-and-file BPO second violinist introduces a thoughtful interval feature about the Symphonie fantastique – I ponder Karajan, his likely perspective on live streaming into venues where he couldn’t directly control the sound. For Karajan, the acoustic reality that a patron in seat 47C of the stalls would necessarily hear something radically different to somebody else up in the gods was the stuff of conductorly nightmares. That sitting in a Soho cinema I can enjoy perhaps a more faithful overall sound picture than many concert-goers in Berlin is, I reckon, a paradox that would have obsessed Karajan. A live experience in some ways more live than the actual live experience.

Abbado’s Berlioz is, let’s say it, cinematic in its scope; the heady romance of the Ball, the out-and-out timbral peculiarity of the descent into hell, ricocheting strings and wavering woodwinds. And with the music now at an end a final dilemma. To applaud or not to applaud? Some choose to clap enthusiastically, but not me. Abbado’s ears are sharp, but not that sharp. He isn’t going to hear the acknowledgment and, quite frankly, who wants to be seen applauding a cinema screen?