Rumblings of discontent in the German media concerning Simon Rattle's stewardship of the Berlin Philharmonic can safely be discounted as unrepresentative.

As this pair of Proms emphatically demonstrated, the orchestra is in fine shape, while Rattle continues to elicit the kind of incisive, highly charged readings familiar from his work in this country.

It's true that the Berlin Phil is not what it used to be. Karajan's sleek, refulgent performances have been replaced by something leaner, more muscular, more searching.

And the orchestra has developed a conscience about the community and contemporary composers, too. Friday's concert offered Noesis by Hanspeter Kyburg, a work uncompromising in its intellectual derivations (the title comes from the philosopher Husserl), even if it builds, over the course of its three movements, a thrilling sense of momentum from fragments and computer-generated textures.

Colin Matthews's orchestrations of four Debussy piano preludes, by contrast, explore the brilliant surfaces and kaleidoscopic colours of the originals. Marrying Matthews's own sensibility and imagination to Debussy's refined conceptions, they are far more than mere arrangements: superbly crafted miniatures in their own right.

In the two G minor symphonies of Mozart, phrasing and articulation were constantly animated, the rise and fall of tension exquisitely controlled. Frank Peter Zimmermann was the soaring, ecstatic soloist in Szymanowski's First Violin Concerto on Saturday, but it was the performance of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony that made the most indelible impression.

Where some Bruckner interpreters take a magisterial view, Rattle prefers something more arresting: his phrasing is aquiver with intensity. His grasp of the work's architecture is no less convincing, but the context within which it unfolds is one of high-level tension. The tuttis are like massive pillars, but ornate ones, while the intervening episodes can be spirited.

It's a bold strategy, but it paid handsome dividends here. The power unleashed at the climaxes was colossal. This was not a spiritualised Bruckner, but a firebreathing one. The Berliners need have no fear: their orchestra is in safe - no, inspirational - hands.

• Last night's Prom was cancelled because of the fire at the Albert Hall.