This apparently bitty and disparate programme proved much more satisfying than the BBC’s conventionally structured opening night. There were tangible thematic connections between pieces and an imaginative attempt to exploit the sonic (and, for TV viewers, colouristic) possibilities of an unavoidably empty hall. Which is not to say that everything came off.

Complemented by opulent red-dominated lighting, the two blasts of Gabrieli came at us from second tier boxes and those seats behind and to one side of the orchestra which often serve to accommodate choral overspill. The first Canzon segued into a misconceived account of Elgar’s masterpiece, the seating plan apparently authentic to the extent that section principals remained seated with the main body of string players standing where feasible. The wide open spaces of the extended, socially distanced, ground-level platform space appeared to cause problems of co-ordination though the excellence of the rest of the concert told a different story. The problem here was Sir Simon’s latterday propensity for superfluous rubato and micromanagement; the sonorities seemingly mired in suet as we waited for that final awkward pizzicato.

After that a step change: the music-making subtler and mostly swathed in blue lighting. Dame Mitsuko Uchida provided a poised mainstream account of the first movement of the ‘Moonlight’, music referenced by musicians as disparate as John Lennon and Shostakovich before they were joined in 1987-8 by György Kurtág. The three-dimensional nature of sound production is a key factor in his …quasi una fantasia…, scored exotically for piano and spatialized instrumental groups. Coincidentally the inclusion of mouth organ harkened back to Hannah Kendall’s contribution to the First Night. For all their fragmentation and surrealism Kurtág’s four brief movements have their own resonant certainty, not least the meditative final portion filtering quasi-Bach through Ligeti-ish instrumental colors. Here, beautifully graded pianism from Uchida and the variously displaced players.

After more Gabrieli, new Adès and the promise of light at the end of tunnels. This was certainly a very consonant miniature, based on a simple descending figure that generates something not so new, like Pärt’s Cantus crossed with Morricone on Mescaline. There’s a final surprise shift of tone amid “the full glare of the sunshine” but nothing to frighten the horses. This adaptable 7-minute work – it included the cimbalom and piano required by the Kurtág – might prove to be his greatest hit.

Sir Simon Rattle is much associated with the music of Adès, less so with that of Vaughan Williams although he has conducted the Tallis Fantasia with the Berlin Philharmonic as well as the LSO. The orchestra’s longer-serving players will have encountered the Fifth many times whether under Richard Hickox or André Previn whose final LSO performance came in January 2011, some forty years after their famous RCA collaboration in the Kingsway Hall. Previn tended to smooth over the contrasts in this astonishing work, refashioning it into one long radiant string-dominated paragraph. At slightly faster speeds and admitting more internal contrast, Rattle was arguably closer to the composer’s intentions. His climaxes were projected with sporadic vehemence but there was little of the subjective point scoring which marred the Elgar. It is not difficult to understand why the Symphony was programmed. When it was premiered at the Proms in 1943 Vaughan Williams was on the podium. By then the old Queen’s Hall had been destroyed by enemy bombing and the concerts had moved to their present home at the Royal Albert Hall. In this wartime context the music made a great if unexpected impact. As Sir Adrian Boult was prompted to write to the composer: “Its serene loveliness is completely satisfying in these times and shows, as only music can, what we must work for when this madness is over.”

Sunday night’s Prom by the London Symphony Orchestra was Simon Rattle’s 75th and surely his strangest. But, in his best style, it was eclectically programmed, balancing novelty with tradition, responded imaginatively to the restrictions in place, and was very well played in the circumstances. These circumstances allowed for more inventive programming than would normally be entertained, but the biggest irony was that the spatial effects that would have sounded so amazing in the hall were only possible because the hall was empty.

The required distancing between players became the basis of the programming, from Gabrieli brass ensemble music with the players scattered around the RAH’s boxes, to György Kurtág’s …quasi una fantasia… that, although written in 1988, has social distancing built into it. Only at the end, for Vaughan Williams’s Fifth Symphony, did all the players come together in relatively conventional formation, for what was the highlight of the evening. The physical separation of the players even in this piece clearly made ensemble playing more difficult – especially with perspex barriers also in place – but for the most part the ensemble was very good.

Watching BBC Four’s coverage was enjoyable for lots of reasons – the camera-work was resourceful, the editing less twitchy and fussy than usual – but of course the spatial effects don’t really come over aurally. The segueing between pieces made a virtue of the lack of audience applause, and the cameras had freer rein to move around without worrying about disturbing – or knocking over – Prommers.

This was most noticeable in Mitsuko Uchida’s performance of the first movement of Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata (the pianist pictured above), which she played intimately and with customary care. This was relayed via a long tracking shot, gradually closing in on the pianist, then flying above her to look down on the keyboard, and then zooming out to a long shot, following the shape of the music. It was beautiful television.

The Kurtág that followed was a terrific juxtaposition, starting with the piano alone before the strange line-up of percussion entered. Sadly the strangeness of the percussive effects were flattened out by TV, the fragility of the sound lost in the warmth and compression of the broadcast sound.

After more crisp Gabrieli we had a world premiere, Thomas Adès’s Dawn, an obvious choice of composer for his long-time champion, Rattle. The piece is a chaconne, built over a repeating phrase, which was only one clue to the fact the piece was written in a hurry (presumably during lockdown).

Featuring Uchida as orchestral pianist, the music started with smudgy arpeggios (perhaps a reference to the Beethoven sonata?) on harp, cimbalom, gongs and vibraphone that persisted through the whole piece. There were solos thrown over the top and the almost entirely diatonic music built to a gleaming C major ending. Pleasingly scored – the timbres coming over better than in the Kurtág – it was compositionally underbaked. Acclaiming it an “instant classic” as Suzy Klein did was, apart from being an example of some broadcasters’ need to tell us how to react, clearly an overstatement that would surely embarrass rather than delight the composer.

The Vaughan Williams symphony – premiered at the Proms in 1943 – was the most conventional part of the evening. It was a delight right from the purposeful start, Rattle conducting from memory with economy of means but great intensity. The scherzo perhaps lacked a bit of edge, but the rapt slow movement, starting from hushed opening chords which hark back to the Tallis Fantasia of more than 30 years earlier, was exquisite, Rosie Jenkins negotiating the cor anglais solo beautifully.

The last movement is, like the Adés, a passacaglia, but a fully conceived one. The passing around of the theme is masterly and the counterpoint worthy of the old masters RVW revered. But it is clothed in an essentially English modality that, while perhaps sounding old-fashioned in 1943, has a certain contemporary edge today. The final chords saw Rattle almost brought to tears by the music, his heartfelt whispered “bravo” to the players a more fitting end than any amount of applause.