Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Jansons, Royal Festival Hall, London

After the sunset, a new dawn. There was a kind of poetic symmetry about the pairing of Strauss' Four Last Songs and Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe in the second half of this Mariss Jansons concert with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. The Straussian sunset was richly evoked in precisely the kind of dusky autumnal colours that are the signature of this splendid orchestra – and if Strauss imagined a dramatic yet lyric voice for his poignant valedictions in song then he had it all in Anja Harteros.

This German-born soprano managed to achieve the seemingly impossible: a spectacular vocal reach possessed of a touching introspection. Her reading was public and intensely private. Her inwardness was our invitation to inhabit these Hermann Hesse and Joseph von Eichendorff texts. Flexible coloratura embraced "Fruhling" ("Spring") and summer's smile in "September" faded "into the garden's dying dream" with enough chest colour in the voice to hint at wintry desolation. Then the fabulous airborne melismas of "Beim Schlafengehen" ("Going to Sleep") and a very real sense in "Im Abendrot" ("At Sunset") that she was looking into the "vast and silent peace" of the hereafter. One or two tiny lapses in intonation apart, this was beautiful and accomplished singing.

After that, the cool, undulating, breezes and sighing contrabasses opening the final scene of Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe emerged like one big orchestral swoon. Textural luminosity is something this orchestra does especially well and Jansons' super-subtle ear brought out myriad refinements. His flautist, Philippe Boucly, characterised the heady solo as if mentally choreographing it and the final dance was nothing if not euphoric.

How disorientating, though, to encounter Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony in the first half of the concert. I doubt it had any bearing on the impression that Jansons' performance made but it did seem oddly inconsequential, a buoyant but hardly heroic account which behaved as if the revolution – Beethoven's and that of the period performance movement – had never happened. This was not an "Eroica" to suggest a trail-blazing force hell-bent on changing the face of the musical landscape. There was a dimension missing – an edge, a defiance. Beethoven didn't change the world playing safe.