In seasons past, this time of mid-December would find the San Diego Symphony and the San Diego Master Chorale slicing and dicing some arrangement of Handel’s “Messiah” for holiday consumption. One year would feature a Baroque music specialist on the podium, while another year would trot out Mozart’s beefed-up orchestration of the familiar oratorio.

Sometimes we sat through three hours or more of the expansive oratorio, while other years it was “Messiah-lite,” a severely pared down version that eliminated most of the oratorio’s music after the angels departed the Nativity tableau. The last two Symphony seasons, however, have proven blessedly “Messiah”-free (a blessing for reviewers at least) at Copley Symphony Hall, and Friday (Dec. 10) found these two august musical organizations serving up Gustav Mahler’s “Second Symphony,” known as “Resurrection.”

The choral text of Mahler’s “Second Symphony” is all about the glory of life after death, but for Music Director Jahja Ling, this work was chosen to celebrate the San Diego Symphony’s life after bankruptcy. Quoted in the program brochure, Ling explained that Mahler’s Second “stands as a suitable commemoration of our orchestra’s successful resurrection after too many earlier bouts of disaster or near disaster.”

Under Ling’s authoritative baton, the orchestra certainly sounded reborn in this sweeping five-movement symphonic tapestry that stands as Romanticism’s towering, end of the 19^th century response to Beethoven’s groundbreaking Ninth “Choral” Symphony. Vibrant and incisive, the orchestra painted the first movement’s menacing gloom of death (Mahler originally named this movement "Todtenfeier" or "Funeral Rite") with bone chilling immediacy, yet modulated into the warmest sonorities and lilting melodic themes for bucolic reveries of the ensuing Andante moderato.

A devout Mahler-ite (is there a contemporary conductor who would admit NOT to being a Mahler devotee?), Ling settled into the composer’s sonic landscape and seemed loathe to leave its spell, which is another way of saying that his was an very long-winded “Second Symphony,” about an hour and 45 minutes in duration. I give Ling credit for following the composer’s explicit instruction to place a five-minute break after the opening movement, but adding those five minutes to the total playing time of Michael Tilson Thomas’ excellent 2004 recording of this work with the San Francisco Symphony only comes to 93 minutes, although Eric Bomberger’s description in his program notes of the “Second Symphony” as an 80-minute work seems a bit miserly.

Ling’s conducting virtues included his beautifully detailed characterization of every facet of this symphony and a skillful marshaling of the vast onstage and offstage instrumental forces needed to realize Mahler’s grand vision. Much of his patient development of a distinctly Middle-European warmth and color from the San Diego strings came to laudable fruition in this work, which is securely embedded in the Viennese musical tradition and Austrian folk customs.

It was a winning evening for the expanded trumpet and horn sections: kudos to Principal Trumpet Calvin Price for shapely solos both stentorian and sweet. Even the offstage horns purred mightily, although we can forgive a single slip on one brutally exposed and outrageously high note. Mahler loved to include chorale-like processionals for low brass, but Ling’s trombone choir lacked precision and a unified sound.

Susan Platts’ creamy, room-filling mezzo made the fourth movement, “Urlicht” (“Primal Light”), glow with breathtaking spiritual intensity, and Janice Chandler Eteme’s complementary, radiant soprano seemed to grow right out of Platts’ voice, forming a gleaming concord that floated above the orchestra. Mahler singers of uncommon sensitivity in phrasing and articulation, each displayed formidable strength and a completely unforced technique.

In the final movement, Mahler has the chorus evoke the state of immortality with an extended, hushed sonic cloud, which the San Diego Master Chorale sustained successfully. The Chorale’s intensity grew as both orchestra and chorus merged into that mighty consummation of the Divine and the resurrected souls that Mahler so fervently affirmed. If only the Chorale sopranos had displayed adequate power to crown that tremendous wall of sound, it would have been the ideal climax.

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