He always sounds most at home in Russian repertoire, but Valery Gergiev has identified particularly closely with Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony in recent years.

His performance with the Vienna Philharmonic last night, in the second of the orchestra's Barbican programmes, was a reading of characteristic emotional intensity, sustaining an arc of despair from the opening premonitory bassoon solo to the final sobbing exhalations in the same key.

That intensity was never allowed to let up. The second-movement Allegro con grazia, which can be done as a charming, lilting waltz, was here projected with passionate urgency, the irregular dance rhythms underlaid by throbbing basses, the mood one of ominous anxiety.

Nor was there any relief in the March, which some interpreters deliver with a strut or a swing in the step.

Here, its precipitous progress resembled a hurtling towards an emotional abyss, and sure enough the final Adagio lamentoso brought no consolation, only new depths of grief.

The shattering force of Gergiev's account was followed by a long silence, but then by an encore that was surely otiose. The orchestra's playing was immaculate, however, its lustre matched only by the ubiquitous shininess of black shoes.

It was at the same time both richly textured and incisive, not least in Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, where the fast and furious Scherzo was especially dazzling.

The other movements were aptly titanic, as though hewn from granite. Yefim Bronfman was the impressively barnstorming soloist.

At the climax of his first-movement cadenza the orchestra intervened only just in time, as he seemed about to cleave the piano in two.

Bronfman's own little encore, a palate-cleansing Scarlatti sonata, was more welcome, and one of the few oases of calm in a programme which began with a whirlwind rendition of Verdi's Force of Destiny Overture.