Works by Mozart and Shostakovich are likely to appear together more than usual in concerts this year, as programme planners try to discharge their anniversary obligations as neatly as possible. When the combination produces such compelling music-making as it did in this appearance by the London Symphony Orchestra, few are likely to complain.

This was the first of a pair of concerts in which Maria Joao Pires is the soloist in Mozart piano concertos and Bernard Haitink conducts Shostakovich symphonies. Here, the last concerto, K595 in B flat, was set against the Fifth Symphony. They are works that their respective composers began at almost exactly the same age, though the restrained, valedictory mood of the concerto is very different from the rabble-rousing way in which the symphony ends.

Pires did not dwell on the elegiac aspects of the concerto too much. There was a wonderful directness about her playing, with its bright, crystalline tone and crisp articulation, and not a trace of self-consciousness in her phrasing; even the central Larghetto moved purposefully, as though keen to reach the more extrovert territory of the finale as soon as possible. With a strong rhythmic backbone and perfectly cushioned textures, Haitink's accompaniment provided Pires with the perfect foil, though it took the LSO's strings a little while (about half of the first movement) to acquire a real tonal bloom.

In the symphony, the strings were outstanding from the start. That was vital, since the main structural emphasis was placed on the first and third movements: declamatory phrases at the very opening of the work, and wonderfully focused quiet playing in the Largo. Crucial, too, was the security of the brass as the opening Moderato was ratcheted up to its climactic march. Haitink's structural grasp never faltered. He treated the architecture with as much respect as if this were Beethoven's or Bruckner's Fifth rather than Shostakovich's, and set a standard that future performances this year will do well to match.