Thomas Quasthoff / Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Barbican, London

Tribute from the Mahlerland

The build-up to the funeral of the Queen Mother seemed a long one. While Spitfires and a Lancaster flew over the coffin, at the Barbican that night a poignant, if ironic, tribute was paid by a German orchestra with a German soloist in German-Austrian repertoire. (If only the arts could lead politics.) The Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, with its recently appointed chief conductor Kent Nagano and bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff, was paying a rare visit with two concerts featuring Mahler's greatest orchestral song settings Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and Kindertotenlieder with Bruckner's Third Symphony and Schubert's Ninth.

Tuesday's concert was prefaced by a tribute to the Queen Mother: not only a minute's silence but Mahler's orchestral setting of Rückert's "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" – no easy song for Thomas Quasthoff to limber up in. But the poignancy of his own physical struggle gave even more depth to a solemn and serene moment. A single crass clapper broke the precious silence; not a further sound was heard until Mahler's clarinets began Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen.

Quasthoff has a way with words, positively chewing on the syllables, maximising their meaning with the widest variety of vocal colour. Despite the occasional hint of discomfort at the upper end of his register (Nagano's slow tempi?), Quasthoff's voice has supreme warmth and focus; his is a musical intelligence of utmost sensitivity. Mahler's so Schubertian major-minor ambiguities summed up marvellously the mood of a sad passing.

In Bruckner's massive Third Symphony played, unusually, in its original 1873 version, the Berlin came into its own: strings warm and full, brass appropriately blazing. Bruckner was the Michael Nyman of his age, not only in the chugging and layering of texture and keen orchestral colouring, but in his propensity to quote – Beethoven and Wagner jump from the page. Puzzlingly, Nagano remained coolly distant from the score, generating a succession of blocks of material rather than blocks of related material; 12 minutes longer than the Norrington recording is long.

In Thursday's concert Quasthoff was in better voice, richly resonant in the third song of Kindertotenlieder, with marvellous support from plangent cor anglais and oboe. This performance went from strength to strength, Quasthoff's appropriate snarling in the final song balanced at its end by a heavenly peace (the audience met it with tutti throat-clearing). Schubert's Ninth began inauspiciously, the dance-like allegro more like a graceless military march. But suddenly something clicked: the second movement was as fine as I've heard it. At last Nagano was involved, allowing the music to flow with beautiful pacing and shaping. In the final two movements the orchestra was transformed, marvellously incisive rhythmically, well balanced and blended, awesome in ensemble. Berlin's second orchestra competing to be first?