Founded in 1946 in the American sector of West Berlin and once known as the RIAS Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin has gone through several changes of name and profile throughout its history. Still linked to DeutschlandRadio, it is now effectively the German equivalent of the BBC Symphony.
Its current music director is Kent Nagano, a troubling musician, whose work combines insight and awkwardness in equal measure. This was the first of two Barbican concerts, and Nagano's programme - Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and Bruckner's Third Symphony - exposed his weaknesses rather than his strengths.
Dedicated to Wagner, Bruckner's Third is an editorial minefield of revisions and counter-revisions. Nagano reverted, ill-advisedly, to the first version. It weaves glancing allusions to the austerity of Tannhäuser and the profanity of Tristan into a vast tapestry in which the spiritual jostles with the mundane.
Its episodic nature, subsequently smoothed out in the score's first revision, was heightened by Nagano's fondness for lingering in the moment at the expense of overall shape; this is problematic in Bruckner, where a sense of the music's architecture is all-important. The outer movements proceeded in jolting fits and starts, and it was only in the timeless beauty of the slow movement, with its sheen of strings, and the relentless savagery of the scherzo that the work's impact came across.
The soloist in Mahler's song cycle was the outstanding bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff. He prefaced the work with Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen from the Rückert Lieder, in tribute to the Queen Mother. Advocating withdrawal from "worldly tumult" to a life of contemplation, the work's sentiments aren't quite appropriate for a woman who, to the end of her life, lived in the public eye, though there was little doubt as to the sincerity of Quasthoff's singing.
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen lies a fraction high for him; none the less, his performance, combining vocal restraint with in-your-face emotion, was harrowing throughout, despite Nagano's sluggish tempos. The whole evening was summed up in the audience response: Quasthoff received a standing ovation; the applause that greeted the Bruckner was distinctly limp.
· The DSO Berlin are at the Barbican, London EC2 (020-7638 8891), tonight.
