Musically, this two-night stand peaked early - launching with Tchaikovsky's masterly Sixth Symphony and ending with Ravel's Bolero, it could hardly have done otherwise. But we were hearing one of the world's great orchestras at the top of its game: glossy, gloriously effulgent and effortlessly controlled.

Riccardo Muti's glare at a coughing audience member during Prokofiev's Symphony No 3 on the second night gave a hint of where some of that discipline comes from. Yet it seems to stem equally from the players themselves. It was a treat to hear four top-rank wind principals coordinating even the speed of their vibrato.

The Tchaikovsky was the highlight. At the climax of the first movement, as a slower pulse imposed itself on the tumult, Muti took what might have seemed a winding-down and turned it into an almost unbearable ratcheting-up of tension. The second movement's cello melody was a red-blooded serenade, the advancing march in the third rightly unsettling. And the fourth movement was forceful, rather than resigned - if, as some claim, this symphony was Tchaikovsky's suicide note then Muti seemed to be saying he died in anger rather than despair.

This shared the first night's programme with Hindemith's ballet suite Nobilissima visione and the ear-splitting, French-perfumed headiness of Scriabin's Poème de l'Extase, followed by a slow, solemnly beautiful encore of Schubert's Rosamunde.

However, the price of the orchestra's discipline was a sense that Muti may have the music on slightly too taut a leash. This was confirmed on the second night, when the brittle grandeur of the Prokofiev gave way to a Spanish-themed second half of brilliant but slightly sterile Falla and Ravel.

Still, there was a passionate encore in the opening Sinfonia from Verdi's Forza del Destino. It might have been chosen to show off Muti's best angles as much as the players'. But there is no denying the impact he makes in the driving seat of this precision-tuned juggernaut of an orchestra.