First off, a grateful nod to the EuroArts production team for abjuring from the bleeding chunk of music which usually accompanies the menu. More puzzling choices are the reordering of the concert programme, which originally and sensibly began with Britten but now opens with the concerto, and the peculiarly sniffy booklet essay, which I presume is reprinted from the programme for the whole trilogy of Britten/Shostakovich concerts, of which this was the second.

Then there is the still more personal question of body language. I remember one of Daniel Harding’s first Proms in which he led Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony as though it were the Symphony of a Thousand, and Teodor Currentzis’s gestures often seem out of scale to the notes and the forces before him – though if the Mahler Chamber Orchestra get the point, that’s what matters. Jumping around to face the audience on the last chord of the Shostakovich symphony I can do without, but others will find it fun and friendly, and if it’s good enough for Sir Roger Norrington…

Finally, the music: the Sinfonietta is unconducted, one to a part, which makes good sense of the first movement’s rapid exchange of ideas and allows for smoother coordination of the string parts that defeated the student players of the RCM who were first to attempt it. The Variations remind me that this was one of Abbado’s orchestras in the way the 10 musicians listen to each other and always look to shape and lead the argument: the viola’s lead into the final Tarantella is a delightful example. They are conversational partners with Steven Isserlis, who brings air and rubato to the motto theme of the concerto and takes the phrases of the slow movement in a single breath, remote from the dirge-like, Russian performing style associated with it. Sometimes this vocally flexible approach lets some notes lose focus or pitch – the coda of the first movement has some sour moments, though the oboe is also at fault – but he rides magnificently over the gathering waves of the cadenza and makes us fully aware of the physical effort involved in the finale.