London Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Daniel Harding
Barbican, London
Reviewed by Paul Charlesworth
London’s claim to be a major world city of culture is supported by its unique possession of no less than five resident symphony orchestras. Of these, The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is without doubt our leading orchestra and in the survey of international music critics conducted by Gramophone magazine in 2008, it was ranked number 4 in the world.
The LSO is resident at London’s Barbican Hall, where it performs around 70 concerts a year, but members also put on smaller scale concerts at what used to be St. Luke’s Church in Old Street.
On Thursday 20 November the orchestra performed in front of Daniel Harding, one of their principal guest conductors. The programme comprised two pieces, Schubert’s 5th Symphony and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth), Schubert and Mahler were both Austrians and, although Schubert died over thirty years before Mahler’s birth in 1860, both might be broadly seen as belonging to a European romantic tradition. Interestingly, both composers also wrote 10 symphonies although Schubert’s eighth symphonic work was famously “unfinished”, and both died tragically young. The two works included in this concert, however, could hardly be more different in mood and scale.
Schubert’s Symphony Number 5, D485, is a joyful, lyrical work, scored for a small orchestra, with minimal brass and no percussion. Daniel Harding had taken the unusual step of moving the woodwind down in front of the strings, which greatly improved the balance for the audience, Flute and Oboe both have significant solo passages at various points in the work and bringing them into the foreground enhanced their effect. Overall, we were treated to a well-directed and beautifully performed small scale symphony.
In contrast and in true Mahler style, Das Lied von der Erde requires a large orchestra with lots of brass, two harps, keyboard and percussion of all shapes and sizes. Although the work may be seen as a song cycle for Tenor and alto voices, based on poems by Hans Berthge, themselves based on translations of Chinese text, it is symphonic in scale and form and may well have been presented as his ninth symphony had Mahler not been superstitious – no composer since Beethoven had lived to compose more than nine symphonies before dying.
At the time that he composed Das Lied von der Erde, Mahler had already been diagnosed with the heart condition from which he was to die a few years later and in the same year, he lost his daughter, Maria. These events, coupled with his unhappy marriage to his unfaithful wife, Alma, may go some way to explain the sadness that prevails in this work. This is particularly true of the extended final movement, for orchestra and alto, which fades away into a lingering farewell.
If Daniel Harding’s direction of the Schubert symphony was almost perfectly balanced, the same cannot be said of the Mahler. Whether the orchestra was at times overwhelming, or the soloists, Christianne Stotijn (Mezzo-soprano) and Burkhard Fritz (Tenor), were not quite powerful enough in delivery, there were certainly occasions where the singing was lost. These things are, however, inevitably difficult and the acoustics of the concert hall always play a part.
In spite of this shortcoming the performance had its moments. Burkhard Fritz impressed with the richness of his delivery and when he sang, during the 5th movement that in order to cope with the stresses of life he drank all day long, I was quite willing to believe him.
As much as anybody, however, the evening belonged to the LSO’s principal Flautist, Gareth Davies, who managed important solo passages in both works with great conviction and style.
The 2013/14 LSO season at The Barbican, London, continues until the end of June 2014.
Rating: 5/5 
For more information or to book tickets visit www.lso.co.uk.
