In contrast to the austere approach of Kurt Masur two nights previously, Yannick Nézet-Séguin clearly thinks there is more to Bruckner's music than the notes on the page. The exceptional Québecois conductor is not the first to programme Bruckner's Te Deum following the three completed movements of his ninth symphony. Bruckner himself sanctioned the possibility when he realised he would not live to write a finale. But Nézet-Séguin went further in this fascinating LPO concert, prefacing the symphony with Bruckner's wonderful 1884 motet Christus Factus Est, and then performing the whole programme without a pause of any kind. Before the concert began, indeed, Nézet-Séguin made a short speech asking the audience to assist in creating a spiritual atmosphere by not applauding until the end of the evening.

The problem with this approach is that it is ultimately not true to the ninth symphony, which lay at the heart of the programme. The ninth is a searing work that is shot through with spiritual doubt and loneliness, from the darkness of the opening, through the violence of the scherzo to the climactic discords of the adagio. Though the adagio ends in a passage of memorable calm on the horns and strings, the symphony's larger struggle is in no sense resolved. So there is a spiritual gulf, not a unity, between the fragile serenity of the close of the adagio and the gripping certainties of the Te Deum, and Bruckner probably knew it.

That said, Nézet-Séguin proved once more that he is an outstanding Bruckner conductor, pacing the symphony in large bold paragraphs and often with thrilling authority. The LPO and the London Philharmonic Chorus rose to almost every challenge, and the luxury quartet of Christine Brewer, Mihoko Fujimura, Toby Spence and Franz-Josef Selig ensured a white hot performance of the Te Deum. But it is not the finale to the ninth that Bruckner could not and did not write.