Thomas Hall reviews Northern Sinfonia at The Sage Gateshead

But it is the visceral, primitive Hungarian folk rhythms we most associate with Bartók. The plucked strings of the Allegro engaged in a question and answer episode, tossing phrases from one side of the stage to the other with perfect precision while the finale stepped up the pace to an exhilarating degree.

Friedrich Rückert's poems on the death of his two children, Luise, aged three and five-year-old Ernst, within weeks of each other from scarlet fever remained unpublished until after his death.

Mahler later regretted setting them as his wife's warning about tempting fate resonated horribly when their own four-year-old daughter, Maria Anna, succumbed to the same disease three years later.

Knowing the genesis of the words makes Kindertotenlieder uneasy listening but when Mahler spoke of "constructing a world" in his music, he meant every aspect of that world.

And he may have had in mind a mezzo soprano of such expressive range as Tanja Baumgartner to sing the work; her lower voice warm and vibrant, the shift to higher ranges seamlessly done and the tone colours beautifully modulated.

Unusually for a soloist, Baumgartner took a seat among the audience for the second half of Wednesday night's concert.

She was rewarded with the Brahms Serenade no. in D in a reading that caught the character of its Viennese classical origins in the minuets and the broad grandeur of Beethoven's influence in the rich wind playing of the opening Allegro.