Hearing the Vienna Philharmonic play the gigantic coda of Bruckner's Fifth Symphony is one of the great musical experiences. Where other orchestras are happy simply to make an immense noise, the Vienna players reveal the detail and subtlety of Bruckner's dense counterpoint and massive textures, as well as producing an overwhelming, luxurious sound. It is music that this orchestra were born to play.

Their unique performance traditions and elite membership - which now includes a solitary woman - have nurtured Bruckner's symphonies for over a century. Their performance was a revelation of the continuity of their relationship with 19th-century masterpieces, the sound of living history.

However, for all its glories as a sonic edifice, this was not a great interpretation of Bruckner's most imposing symphony. Conductor Bernard Haitink allowed the players to revel in their magical sound, especially in the vast climaxes of the slow movement and finale, but he did not have a convincing intellectual or emotional approach to the rest of the piece.

Instead of transcendent mysticism or spiritual drama, Haitink played the piece as a pragmatic lesson in musical counterpoint and structure. This brought a granite-hewn integrity to the first movement, but made the finale sound merely prosaic.

The engine of the huge last movement is an outrageous double fugue, which generates the massive musical momentum that climaxes in the coda. But in Haitink's performance this fugue sounded like worthy, academic part-writing rather than white-hot inspiration, and where it should have reached its apotheosis, the structure of the piece threatened to collapse.

Haitink's literal-minded approach to speed and texture made the whole piece sound like a technical exercise rather than a necessary, vital drama. His reverential, monumental performance confirmed Bruckner's reputation as a composer of enormous symphonies, but it also reinforced the prejudice that his music is unwieldy and inexpressive.

Bruckner's vision needs to be realised by a similarly visionary conductor. Haitink's performance, on the other hand, would have appealed to Brahms, who once described Bruckner's symphonies as "symphonic boa constrictors".