Two works that stand at opposite poles, between Protestant fervour and Mahlerian melancholy. Under Daniel Harding’s precise direction, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra offers an evening in chiaroscuro.
Munich – Herkulessaal – 7 March 2025
Felix Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 5, “Reformation”, op. 107
Gustav Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde, symphony for tenor, alto (or mezzo-soprano) and orchestra, composed in 1908–1909
Fleur Barron (mezzo-soprano)
Andrew Staples (tenor)
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Daniel Harding
The famous Herkulessaal hosted an evening of contrast between two musical visions: on one side Mendelssohn and his “Reformation” Symphony, rooted in Protestant impulse and in the inheritance of Bach; on the other Mahler and his Das Lied von der Erde, where melancholy and the acceptance of finitude unfold in an orchestration of infinite richness. Where Mendelssohn received a luminous and well-structured reading, Mahler prompted more debate, particularly over the conducting and the singing of the soloists.
Mendelssohn – A symphony of fervour and architectural clarity
Mendelssohn composed his “Reformation” Symphony in 1830 to mark the three hundredth anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, the founding event of Protestantism. He never saw it published in his lifetime, judging it imperfect. Today it stands as a singular work in which religious fervour, the inheritance of Bach and Romantic impulse are mingled.
From the opening bars Daniel Harding establishes an undeniable solemnity and grandeur. The first movement, a genuine homage to the Lutheran chorale style, opens with a majestic gravity. Double basses and cellos set a climate of expectation before the Dresden Amen arises several times over, a reminder of its role as a sacred motif that Wagner would later take up in Parsifal as the leitmotiv of the Grail. Harding sculpts every entry with exemplary legibility, letting the orchestra breathe without ever weighing down the structure.
The second movement surprises by its lively, dancing character. Taken at a brisk tempo, it comes close to a Ländler, the Austrian country dance Bruckner would later incorporate into several of his symphonies. This skipping quality, marked by well-defined rhythmic accents and a light articulation in the strings, gives the music an unexpected lightheartedness. The woodwind, the flutes especially, bring a freshness that calls Beethoven to mind. Harding shows remarkable suppleness here, giving the section a natural momentum and a fluency that holds the balance between classical elegance and rhythmic vitality.
The third movement, more inward, keeps an elegant simplicity. The song of the strings rises with a contained expressiveness, avoiding all excess of pathos.
The finale, finally, unfolds a polyphony of rare nobility. Built on Luther’s chorale Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, it imposes a grandiose architecture that Harding magnifies by a subtle handling of the dynamics. One senses a breadth that at moments seems to anticipate the great symphonic frescoes of Elgar. The counterpoint is built with an almost Bachian clarity, and the orchestral power unfolds without ever tipping into bombast.
The reading offered by Harding and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra is impressive in its rigour and its luminosity. This reforming Mendelssohn is shown at his best: structured, solemn, but never heavy, with a fluency that brings out all his spiritual depth.
Das Lied von der Erde: orchestral splendour, and too much of it?
The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra returned after the interval in larger forces for Das Lied von der Erde, that crepuscular work, halfway between symphony and lieder cycle, in which Mahler mingles orchestral grandeur with an anxious, resigned inwardness. As one might expect from such an ensemble, the instrumental level verges on the exceptional. The woodwind stand out in particular: Lucas Spagnolo (flute) and Stefan Schilli (oboe) bring subtle colours and an articulation of rare finesse. The horn section, led by Pascal Deuber, impresses by its assurance, while Magdalena Hoffmann’s harp distils flashes of light of a bewitching limpidity. Harding, who regards Mahler as a composer whose “orchestra thinks and breathes like a living organism”, tends every texture, every inflection, bringing out the brilliance and the transparency of Mahler’s writing.
But if the orchestra rises to the heights, the vocal side proves more problematic.
Andrew Staples confronts the tenor part, one of the most thankless in the repertoire, where the stretched tessitura and the dense orchestration leave little respite. Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde, which demands powerful projection and extraordinary stamina, puts him immediately to the test. His commitment is not in doubt, but the timbre lacks bite, and an emission at times constrained deprives certain phrases of the necessary legato. Harding, holding to an ample dynamic and a teeming orchestra, does not make his task easier, and one would have wished for a balance more favourable to the voice.
In Der Einsame im Herbst, Fleur Barron brings a voice of deep low register and velvety texture, not unlike the Kindertotenlieder at moments. Harding seizes here on the slightest harmonic tremor while bringing out that atmosphere of latent desolation, where the cold of autumn is only the reflection of the soul’s exhaustion. The intelligence of the text is manifest, but Barron dramatises every word with an intensity that, over time, can seem too insistent. This expressive over-investment, instead of magnifying the poem’s melancholy, at times tends to disturb its natural flow.
The third movement, Von der Jugend, is a jewel of instrumental goldsmithery in which Mahler plays on a light instrumentation and an almost pointillist counterpoint. The orchestra excels here in a reading of exemplary transparency. Yet Staples struggles to convey the irony beneath the text, which calls for a certain detachment, a suppleness he does not always find.
In Von der Schönheit, the orchestra recovers a pictorial brilliance, magnified by a particularly expressive violin solo and by strings of remarkable acuity. Harding gauges the rhythmic and dynamic contrasts subtly, breathing in a kinetic energy that gives this sensual evocation an almost cinematic dimension.
The fifth movement, Der Trunkene im Frühling, marks the tenor’s last appearance. Unfortunately Staples does not manage to transcend it; it would have called for a firmer sense of phrasing and a more visceral commitment. The competition on record is surely fatal here.
Then comes Der Abschied, the metaphysical summit of the work. Harding is particularly inspired, sculpting the rhythmic inflections with surgical precision and revealing the subtle arrhythmias that make this music beat like an irregular heart. The opening, carried by the oboe, has a poignant strangeness that evokes the wandering of the shepherd in Tristan und Isolde. The soundscape unfolds with a gripping breadth, between resignation and a longing for eternity.
And yet, sublime as it is, Harding’s conducting seems at moments too detailed, too attentive to every sforzando, every accentuation. This analytical precision, so precious in other repertoires, would have gained here from more suppleness, from a letting-go that would have allowed the music to breathe more freely. Fleur Barron, for her part, gives a technically irreproachable performance, but one that struggles to reach that dimension of absolute surrender, that floating outside time which makes the greatness of this finale. And instead of witnessing the venomous dissolution of an eternity of dark light, the listener catches himself glancing at his watch.
Daniel Harding, who learned much of his Mahler from Claudio Abbado, retains from him the demand for orchestral clarity and the concern for a sound always alive, never fixed. Yet this Lied von der Erde still seems perfectible in its vision. The splendour of the orchestra is beyond question, the conductor’s rigour impressive, but the raw emotion – the kind that seizes the listener at the deepest level – does not yet fully emerge. Perhaps Harding will find, in future performances, a more natural balance between control and surrender, between transparency and pure lyricism.
In sum, then, a masterly performance from the orchestral point of view, but the alchemy between conductor, orchestra and soloists remains to be refined before the work attains its full existential dimension.
Read also: Bruckner, Symphony No. 9 – Herbert Blomstedt and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra · Mahler’s Seventh – Daniel Harding and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
