Wolfgang Rihm wrote In-Schrift in 1995 for performance in St Mark's in Venice, his aim being, as he put it, to "outwit" the cathedral's notoriously reverberant acoustic. Some might doubt whether the Barbican, even with its adjustable acoustic reflectors, is consequently the right venue for a piece that depends partly on echoes for its impact. Such considerations, however, did not prevent Daniel Harding from conducting it as the opening work of his latest concert with the London Symphony Orchestra.

The overall effect was one of in-your-face clarity rather than reverberating density, though we were able to appreciate both the deftness of Rihm's construction and the often startling originality of his instrumentation. Central to the work is a sustained monotone - a kind of drone shuttled from instrument to instrument. Sometimes it fragments into stammering figurations; at others it becomes the basis of ear-splitting crescendos on tuned percussion. Beneath it, six trombones sing a slow, Monteverdian lament. Rihm dispenses with violins and violas, leaving the cellos and basses to intone a penumbral chorale, suggestive of early 17th-century choral polyphony. Even without the requisite echoes, it's hypnotic, disturbing stuff, and Harding conducted it rather beautifully.

Rihm's music has antecedents in Mahler, whose Fifth Symphony came after the interval. In some respects, the Fifth is the least metaphysical of his symphonies and is thus most suited to Harding's extrovert, if at times dispassionate style. Some of it seemed mannered, above all the passages in the central Scherzo when the music struggles to reconstitute itself out of silence. The playing was phenomenal, though a gleaming brilliance occasionally replaced warmth, and there were moments, in the opening funeral march and the Adagietto, when you noticed a lack of quintessentially Mahlerian introspection.