It was back in the 1960s that Bernard Haitink became music director of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, initiating a 25-year tenure that gave rise to some classic recordings of Mahler and Bruckner. Haitink is now reunited with the orchestra as conductor laureate.

The sound this orchestra makes is as remarkable as ever: strings richly textured, woodwind mellow and fruity, brass refulgent. In Bruckner's Eighth Symphony the quality of the brass in particular contributed to some noble paragraphs. The Scherzo was dispatched with a powerful sense of while the Adagio exuded tender regret. The scaling of the series of peaks in the finale was masterly; on surmounting the climactic one, Haitink, not the most demonstrative of conductors, even allowed himself the indulgence of a raised, clenched fist.

In its Wagner/Debussy programme the following night, the orchestra was on less secure form: ensemble was far from flawless and the intonation frequently suspect.

In the Act 1 Prelude from Parsifal the textures were balanced scrupulously, yet the sense of weightlessness, the inimitable diaphanous quality, were missing. Haitink is due to conduct Parsifal at Covent Garden in December, but on this evidence it may not prove to be the most revelatory of readings.

The opening of the Prelude to Tristan und Isolde was so attenuated as to lose all sense of direction, while an unseemly scramble to the climax was a barely adequate representation of the intense yearning of the lovers. The Liebestod, too, was underwhelming, with little sense of sublimated ecstasy.

Something of the mystery lacking in Haitink's Wagner was heard in Debussy's Six Epigraphes Antiques: fragmentary, elusive and compelling.