Rumours of discontent swirl round the Berlin Philharmonic like seagulls round a fishing trawler. They always have, always will. But if the players are disillusioned with Simon Rattle, they are hiding it brilliantly. In this overwhelmingly powerful concert they eclipsed everything else in this Proms season.

What made the evening so exceptional was that orchestra and conductor demonstrated their prowess and rapport in such contrasted symphonies. Before the interval, Brahms’s Third Symphony was the epitome of grace, romantic yearning, understated emotion and tonal warmth. Afterwards, Shostakovich’s epic Tenth Symphony was like a night in a madhouse: all hope abandoned; bleak, sardonic and terrifying.

The only thing the performances had in common was the astounding virtuosity of the playing. This remains, in the best sense, an orchestra of show-offs — by which I mean that it comprises players who not only relish the limelight, but who shoulder the responsibility for shaping the music and making explicit even its most hidden emotional nuances.

Time and again the ear was gripped by some extraordinarily characterised solo passage — a low flute of unearthly strength, a horn of such noble assurance that it sent a shiver down the spine, the velvety blend of clarinets and bassoons in the Brahms, the sepulchral darkness of the double basses at the start of the Shostakovich.

Rattle’s achievement was to ensure that the interpretations were more than the sum of these exhilarating parts. This he managed with magisterial focus and tremendous energy. In the Brahms it was the flexibility of the phrasing, the perfect balance between legato lyricism and lithe, springy rhythms, and the generosity of the expressive colouring that impressed.

In the Shostakovich it was the sustained intensity, somehow even more nihilistic in the shrouded pianissimo passages than in a helter-skelter second movement — though Rattle drove this supposed “portrait of Stalin” with such forceful venom that, at the end, I found my knuckles white from gripping the edge of my seat. It was as harrowing an account as I ever expect to hear of this distraught cry from a tortured soul.

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