The weekend visit of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra came hard on the heels of the welcome announcement that the Amsterdam-based ensemble would be spending more time at the Barbican in occasional residencies.

It is always an instructive pleasure to hear this world-class orchestra, with its perfectly blended brass and wind — not to mention the richly endowed strings.

In the second of their two concerts under Bernard Haitink they offered the magnificent torso of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, prefaced by Schumann’s Piano Concerto. The soloist for the latter was an artist who can be relied on to bring a musical quality as immaculate as that of the Concertgebouw: Murray Perahia.

Haitink’s Bruckner is very much a known quantity, carving great edifices of sound out of solid blocks. The cliché that Bruckner’s symphonies are like vast cathedrals is never truer than when Haitink is in charge.

If the first two movements provided the bricks and mortar and the overarching structure, the Adagio finale flooded the space with light and provided the spiritual dimension. Velvet-toned, superbly controlled brass, not least the normally intractable Wagner tubas, made their invaluable contribution.

It’s not the only way to do Bruckner, but Haitink, in being true to himself, is irrefutably persuasive. As the imposing architecture takes shape in response to his unerring baton, one is inclined to think: this is how it should be.

That, after all, is the mark of an outstanding performance. Let us hope the residencies bring us many more.