The BBC Proms do love an anniversary, and so several concerts in this year’s season commemorate 50 years since Igor Stravinsky’s death. Last night it was the turn of Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra to pay tribute, performing three pieces that showed why Stravinsky’s biographer Stephen Walsh described the composer’s career as a “zigzag”.

Rattle opened with Symphonies of Wind Instruments, composed in 1920. It’s a work that sounds both archaic and, even now, utterly contemporary. The focus on wind instruments was integral to Stravinsky’s flight from Romanticism: he said that he wanted to get away from “the warm human tone of the violins” and he certainly managed that. Rattle opted for the work’s original version, slightly less astringent than the 1947 reworking but with its own piquancy. Here, the brass was bright but mournful, oboes and flutes offering lyrical relief. Rattle’s approach was direct and concise: he trained as a percussionist and is always alert to rhythmic subtleties; at times, the LSO achieved an almost jazzy buoyancy.

For the Symphony in C, the orchestra was at something like full strength. The piece was begun in Europe in 1938 and completed in the US in 1940; of course, this being Stravinsky, everything hangs together perfectly. He had developed a fondness for the symphonies of Beethoven and Haydn, and there is Haydn-esque wit aplenty. While there were gorgeous moments, in particular for the oboe, the acidulated wind playing was once again dominant. Yet Rattle drew out an almost pastoral wistfulness in the second movement, while the third had an operatic urgency. At the hushed close, it was as if the string players were uttering a collective “Shhh!” to the rest of the orchestra.

The final work was Symphony in Three Movements, composed between 1942 and 1945, each of its sections linked, the composer once said, “with a specific cinematographic impression of the war”. A “war symphony”, then? Not really. Harp and piano joined the line-up for some delightful duetting, the latter’s off-centre figures sounding almost like a pre-echo of Thelonious Monk while the harp provided melodic balm. Rattle knows when to allow the brass to play raucous, and again, rhythms were forcefully punched out, but throughout, he ensured that even the densest textures were cleanly set before us. He has two more seasons as the orchestra’s chief conductor; they remain a team at the top of their game.