There was room, too, for Hough’s fizzing virtuosity and chattering figuration in a reading which conveyed a total unity of conception in this easy, flexible collaboration between soloist and Nelsons’ orchestra.

The concerto is clearly built on the template of Grieg’s concerto, and Hough’s pleasant little encore neatly created layers of links: it was Traume by Richard Strauss, but sounding very much like Grieg.

More Strauss ended the evening (the forest of microphones indicated both a live Radio 3 relay and an Orfeo recording of both Strauss pieces), the epic Also Sprach Zarathustra. The composer’s response to Nietzsche’s complex writings reduces the author’s philosophising to mere banality, but Strauss certainly gives the orchestra plenty of virtuosic opportunity, grasped with both flair and unfailing musicality by this orchestra, whose skill is far too easily taken for granted.

Nelsons’ beat was now fiercely predatory, now sweepingly generous – so sweeping that it swept his baton out of his hand, and he had to continue with his fingers doing the talking.

And the way he delayed the applause at the end was something it took Simon Rattle a long time to learn.