Dresden Staatskapelle's "Brahms Requiem'

The greatness of Brahms lies in the seemingly bottomless wealth of his lyricism. In the course of his largely self-taught musical education, Brahms acquired a number of technical devices to enhance his craft, especially complex rhythmic textures and counterpoint, but he never achieved the level of polish and self-assurance that marks the music of such masters as Mozart and Beethoven or, for that matter, his contemporary and rival, Wagner, another self-taught genius.

Nevertheless, the cragginess that defines the Brahms sound becomes a virtue, an endearing mark of his sincere expressiveness. The sound of his music is indelibly linked to the iconic photographic images of the composer as a wizened master, sitting at the piano with his massive gray beard dusting the keyboard and a cigar planted firmly in his teeth.

There is something appealingly old-fashioned about the music of Brahms, who was unabashedly conservative even in his own time. Even so, many of his beloved masterpieces were conceived by a young, strikingly handsome, clean-shaven man, including the German Requiem, which was performed on this week at Verizon Hall by the Staatskapelle Dresden.

Brahms was only 35 when the German Requiem was premiered in 1868. It was the work that cemented his reputation. The composer never specified his inspiration for the piece, but it has been anecdotally attributed as a memorial for his mother, and also for his most important musical patron, Robert Schumann.

In stark contrast to the death-centric, awestruck requiems of Mozart and Verdi (settings of the Latin Roman Catholic mass for the dead), Brahms takes a humanistic viewpoint, with an emphasis on comfort for the living. He assembled the text himself, which is an amalgam of scripture from the German language Lutheran Bible, and completely omits Christian theology.

The performance of this weighty masterpiece by the Dresden Staatskapelle was much anticipated, given the rich history of this German ensemble, which is now in its fifth century of existence. Guest conductor Daniel Harding, a protégé of Simon Rattle, led a massive ensemble, including the Westminster Symphonic Choir and two vocal soloists, with firm control, but with deference to the mellifluous sound of the orchestra and the intoxicating melodies of the music. The entire duration of the performance seemed like a magic carpet ride.

But Harding sounded overly reverential and insufficiently emotive, rendering clean layers of expertly produced sound that stayed at the surface of the music's spirit. This was, in short, a very good performance that skirted greatness by not digging deep enough. That aforementioned cragginess is certainly in this score, in the form of unwieldy architecture and difficult orchestral textures, but Harding chose to smooth it all over.

This interpretive choice became especially clear when the wonderful soprano soloist Christiane Karg sang, with a gleaming operatic intensity that focused the music's humanistic bloom in a way that eluded Harding.

In the end, Harding's obvious affection for the music carried the day, with an objectivity that did not prevent this masterpiece from appealing to the little old man in all of us, regardless of age or gender.