Prom 44: Hamburg PO/Metzmacher, Royal Albert Hall, London

This was a lesson in artistry. From Richard Goode's opening phrase in Mozart's D minor Piano Concerto, No 20, the tenderness, elegance and softness of touch were heart-rending.

This was a lesson in artistry. From Richard Goode's opening phrase in Mozart's D minor Piano Concerto, No 20, the tenderness, elegance and softness of touch were heart-rending. This can be a turbulent concerto, but Goode and Ingo Metzmacher conducting the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra took a simple, quiet approach, the work's classical period origins being respected rather than overwhelmed.

In each movement, it was if chamber music was being played, with mutual respect between soloist and tutti. The Hamburg wind was particularly fine, with reedy oboe, and the strings tender. Beethoven's cadenza for the first movement sounded even more remarkable and improvisatory as rain pounded down on the hall roof.

Goode extended this improvisatory feel to the exquisite beginning of the Romance. His cadenza to the third movement, confined to Mozart's material, was musicianly and refined. Unlike my experience of listening to Alfred Brendel's last "live" broadcast from the Proms on the radio, the balance in the hall between Goode and the orchestra in Mozart's passage work was accurate. One reason Brendel might decide to quit "live" broadcast is that the dynamics are not his.

The concert began with Richard Strauss's Don Juan. This was the first piece of Strauss to become part of the standard repertory. At 24, he produced this most ardent and tender work, anticipating at the start of his career a later masterpiece, Der Rosenkavalier. The huge orchestral forces luxuriated in the voluptuous colours, Metzmacher drawing a steady, well-controlled performance from his players.

Strauss, at the end of his life, was out of step. So, too, has been Hans Werner Henze, who got out of step or (more relevantly) rejected the dogmatic formulism of the post-war avant-garde. And now he's written a 10th symphony! First performed in 2002 at the Lucerne Festival by Sir Simon Rattle and the CBSO, its UK premiere in this concert did not spell masterpiece. Rattle had asked for "something crystalline and clear and English", which suggests either that Henze misunderstood Rattle or that he never intended to meet the request.

The 42-minute work is in four movements, the first and last closely related, the second a Mahler-like string "adagietto", the third - and most successful - a colourful, spirited dance. Its forces are massive: nine percussionists playing every sort of clattering, thudding, squeaking, hammering sound; divisi strings (with particularly high and exposed double-bass writing); and braying brass. Metzmacher did his best, but the material was all too often congested, the shape opaque. A pity.

Booking: 020-7589 8212; www.bbc.co.uk/proms. Prom 44 is available online to Wednesday