The Vienna Philharmonic is the latest orchestra to join Valery Gergiev in his complete traversal of the Shostakovich symphonies at the Barbican. The main work in their first programme was Shostakovich's Fifth, but they began nearer to the centre of the Viennese tradition with Mozart's Linz Symphony.

In many ways this was an old-fashioned performance, untouched by period-instrument practices or insights. Gergiev's broad and occasionally brash approach militated against the detailed characterisation and contrasting of individual themes that mark the finest Mozart conducting. But it is rare to encounter in any group such unanimity of ensemble and such effortless shaping of ideas, with the musicians moving simultaneously, as one player.

These unique strengths were also apparent in the Shostakovich, which received additional fire and impetus from Gergiev's committed and stylistically assured input. The distinctive colours and unblended rawness of a great Russian orchestra were noticeably lacking, but the warmer, central European sounds of the Vienna players proved just as valid for this music.

Ever since the label "A Soviet Artist's Reply to Just Criticism" was attached to Shostakovich's Fifth by a Moscow journalist in 1938, the symphony has come to be among the most argued over in the composer's output. Here, Gergiev's reading of this potentially bombastic passage seemed closer to the notion of "forced rejoicing" advanced in Shostakovich's posthumous and disputed memoirs, Testimony. The fact is that the deliberate ambiguity of the symphony's close saved Shostakovich's career, and possibly his life. It was vividly executed on this occasion, as was the tender string writing of the slow movement and every other detail in what proved to be an overwhelming account.