NCH, Dublin

Mozart

– Symphony No 40.

Mahler– Das Lied von der Erde.

The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra that played for Cristian Mandeal was a lot lighter and more lithe than the orchestra that had played for Giordano Bellincampi the two previous weeks.

The real change didn’t originate with the players, of course, but rather with the conductor. Mandeal, a Romanian who’s best known in this part of the world from the time he spent as principal guest conductor of Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra, is a musician with an easy, natural grace.

The darkness and urgency that other conductors find in Mozart’s G Minor Symphony were not for him. The symphony he offered was instead a thing of purest beauty, presented almost as a kind of calm contemplation.

The lyrical fluidity of the playing was remarkable, and although the textures were always well blended, the various strands of the contrapuntal working – and these are among the many miracles of this particular symphony – were always clear. It was, you might say, a sort of Mozart light, but also a Mozart that was rewarding for its consistently fastidious refinement.

It might look like a lack of imagination that, for the third time in a row, the NSO has paired Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde( The Song of the Earth) with this particular Mozart symphony (and the time before that, the pairing was another Mozart symphony!).

But the coupling works. The pieces, which came late in their composers’ careers, stand both as summations and as projections of what might have been. And Mandeal showed the same sharp ear for sonority and quicksilver lyrical responsiveness in Mahler as in Mozart.

Das Lied von der Erdeis both celebratory and valedictory, and was written at a time of great personal and professional difficulty for the composer, who thought his setting of Hans Bethge's reworkings of Chinese poems to be "the most personal thing I have yet created". Australian tenor Stuart Skelton sang with fullness and warmth, with Mandeal thrillingly allowing orchestral climaxes to envelop and almost eclipse the sound of the voice.

Scottish mezzo soprano Karen Cargill showed a sometimes super-charged lower range, which allowed her to project with great firmness. She also showed a not-always-welcome tendency to increase her vibrato as she rose in pitch, and sometimes ignored Mahler’s specific instructions to sing softly.

It is, of course, the mezzo who has to carry the greatest part of the work, the final song of farewell. However, in this extended leave-taking, Mandeal’s fluidity allowed the music to move a little too easily. The heart-wrenching sense of eternity at the close needs to sound that bit more hard-won.