Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/Haitink, Royal Festival Hall, London, *****

There's nothing like delay to sharpen the appetite, and it almost seemed, for a while, as if Monday's concert wouldn't happen at all. A van carrying the Vienna Philharmonic's instruments was held back by an accident but was on its way, we were told. In the event, the concert started only 40 minutes late.

Bruckner's Fifth Symphony, the one work on the programme, is itself very much about delay, and after 75 minutes, it would be a hard heart that was ungrateful for the complete unfolding by the brass of the great chorale towards the end of the final movement.

The Vienna brass and wind instruments still have different physical characteristics from those in other orchestras, jealously guarded for their individual sound. To describe it as "the world's greatest Bruckner orchestra", as did the South Bank diary, is hardly daring – the Vienna Philharmonic gave most of the first performances of Bruckner's symphonies, and it does make a sound, collectively, of unsurpassed beauty. And, perhaps, to call Bernard Haitink "the world's most celebrated Brucknerian" will not raise many eyebrows a year after the death of Günter Wand.

By its monumental nature, its sheer length, Bruckner's music seems to invite this rash of superlatives. But it's more than questionable, surely, whether the Fifth is his "most popular symphony". Historically, that accolade belongs to his Seventh, Bruckner's first great success in Vienna, shamelessly exploited more than half a century later on the soundtrack of Visconti's film Senso. In this country, though, the Fourth was the first to challenge the strong prejudice against the composer.

The Fifth Symphony is, in fact, one of the hardest of Bruckner's symphonies to appreciate – without the attraction of extravagant instrumental forces, nor generous with tunes, though Haitink and his string players brought as much sensuous appeal as you could wish to the occasional garlands in the austere slow movement. Yet the very starkness is compelling in itself and essential to the measuring of vast tracts of time. You learn to love the music's bareness. Tempo is more than ever important, and contrasts of tempo are used in a particularly lively way in the first movement, which, unusually for Bruckner, has a slow introduction, though one that is brought back and integrated in the music's subsequent development. The finale is famous for recalling themes from all the earlier movements and mixing them into its fugal procedures – in which respect it has everything to please the academic mind. I can't say that I found those fugal procedures totally enthralling even in this wonderful performance, but when that chorale finally sailed over the strings, working at full stretch like so many galley slaves, it had every bit of its intended effect.