When Davies switches to the quiet of acoustic guitar it is so you can hear the struggle between desperate nostalgia and inevitable

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When Davies switches to the quiet of acoustic guitar, it is so you can hear the struggle between desperate nostalgia and inevitable disillusion in his old songs, the impossible ache, as in "Picture Book", for "those days when we were happy, a long time ago".New songs, slated for a long-promised solo album, stand their ground in such company. Davies, still trim and bouncing with frenetic, adolescent energy, has also drilled his band in the tight, raucous hard-rock of The Kinks' stadium years - and the abrasive lyrics and violent music battle with the massed, still silence in this theatre's stalls. Opening with the brilliant 1966 B-side "I'm Not Like Everybody Else", the most desperately confessional song he wrote, is a brazen statement of intent. The irony of such behaviour as Davies sings "Set Me Free" is hard to miss: it is as if he is singing to the subjects of his satirical songs of suburban conformity, not just about them.The daring nature of tonight's set-list doesn't help.

The format of his solo show, though, remains untouched: to lead his fans in cheery singalongs to some of pop's most deathless, deeply ambiguous lyrics. Tonight's crowd, however, don't want to join in. Most are over 40, many over 60, and all seem trapped by old-fashioned English reserve, fearful of causing a scene by being the first to sing out. "It's been a very difficult year for everybody," Ray Davies admits, the nearest he gets to acknowledging his being shot in the leg by muggers in New Orleans, and the recent stroke suffered by his brother and co-Kink, Dave. But 2004 has been a year of revival for Davies, too, as the reissue of The Kinks' 1968 album, Village Green Preservation Society, has given focus to the British public's lasting affection for his band. Whenever did you hear a British audience do that? It was a greeting more profound than all the subsequent ovations, a tribute not just to a concert but to a life..

Prime among them was the shading of one orchestral colour into another, trumpets into trombones and over to the basses, as one of Mahler's shrill outbursts winds down into a fading growl. The moments when an off-stage posthorn emerges are always magical, but never more seamlessly brought off.Anna Larsson's warm, secure singing, at a testingly slow pace, was punctuated by a stark note-bending oboe, and into the short choral episode with neat singing from London Symphony Chorus and St Paul's choristers - not enough of them, the one point when size did matter.At the end, the audience let the final massive chord hang on into a silence as unexpected as it was affecting. The full force of the orchestra was kept for three or four peak moments, the impact all the more shattering for leaving the ears space to recover.In the Barbican's close-up you could enjoy to the full the subtleties of craft and practice that go into making the big picture a great one. But Haitink is not the man for straining tone and hyped-up drama, and while the horns certainly filled the house, they did so with restraint. Would it fit? The players packed on, within two metres of the front row, but the question was about sound rather than size.