It would be an understatement to say that the New York Philharmonic’s weekend-long Barbican residency went out with a bang. The second half of this last outing was a brash, extrovert performance of John Adams’s Harmonielehre. From the opening shut-up-and-listen chordal stabs to the sonic warfare of its deafening final moments – horns aloft, brass irrepressible, percussion explosive – the NY Phil under its music director, Alan Gilbert served up a relentlessly robust, high-calorie sound.

It should have been visceral. Gripping. But those experiences depend on their context; and at the end of this concert I was left exhausted, not exhilarated, by what felt too much like a slow-burn aural assault.

The first half had paired Adams’s impeccably stylish The Chairman Dances with the European premiere of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Cello Concerto, performed by Yo-Yo Ma. In the former, Gilbert mustered silver-screen polish from the NY Phil’s strings. But there was little glamour in the disproportionately solid brass entries, little finesse in the uniform dynamic level (medium-loud), and little humour in Gilbert’s mechanical negotiations of Adams’s constantly shifting tempi.

Salonen’s Cello Concerto was more earnest still. Ma played with unwavering commitment, digging deep into overwrought, hyperactive Romantic gestures (set against a shimmering orchestral mirage), and maximising the mild ethereality of an all-too-brief flirtation with electronic looping. Amid the finale’s virtuosic flurries and endless rhythmic intricacies, he even managed a thumbs-up at his conversation partner on the bongos. But Ma’s occasional flashes of glee couldn’t save this performance – or this concert – from its own unleavened orchestral heft.