Whenever one of the world's leading orchestras has a vacancy for a chief conductor, Mariss Jansons's name always seems to be near the top of the shortlist. Lately he has become an increasingly regular guest with the London Symphony, which will surely soon be searching for a successor to Colin Davis. Jansons would fit the bill, if the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam does not sign him first.

Friday's prom demonstrated the rapport that already exists between the conductor and this crack orchestra. In Jansons's hands, Dvorak's New World seemed not so much from the new world as from terra incognita: the aching lilt to the melodies and the drama with which Jansons charged the outer movements demonstrated that while Dvorak was composing the piece in the US, he was casting nostalgic glances back to his Bohemian homeland. Even the over-exposed slow movement breathed fresh air, launched by perfectly poised chords and floated on a perfectly poised cor anglais solo - an astonishing reinvention.

The Dvorak symphony was complemented by just one other piece, Strauss's Don Quixote, in which both conductor and orchestra delighted in the colours and onomatopoeic effects of the score. The cello soloist was Truls Mork - not quite the swashbuckling hero needed at the start of Quixote's adventures, but he came into his own. The epilogue, magically cushioned by Jansons's sifting of the orchestral textures, was rapt and desperately sincere.