Philadelphia Orchestra galvanized a symphonic army of unlikely allies with Mahler’s perplexing ‘Symphony No. 3′

The Mahler filled the stage, packed the Kimmel Center, challenged everybody's concentration span, overrode any acoustical limitations and yielded as fine a Philadelphia Orchestra concert as one is likely to hear. But such success on Saturday at Verizon Hall (the third of four performances, the last being Oct.15 at Carnegie Hall) is never simple.

Strategic planning was essential for artistic director Yannick Nézet-Séguin in this 110-minute symphony in six-movements, none of which sound anything alike. Equally essential were the highly individualistic personalities among the orchestra's principal players (especially oboist Philippe Tondre), mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato and the combined Philadelphia Symphonic Choir, Philadelphia Boys Choir and Philadelphia Girls Choir.

Reasons why this widely loved symphony (premiered in 1902) doesn't turn up as often as other Mahler symphonies is not just the expense of hiring extra musicians but the rehearsal required to navigate the piece's extreme emotions that can pivot in a nanosecond.

While the more popular, similarly scaled Mahler ("Resurrection") celebrates rebirth, the more pagan enacts rebirth, and not from a safe distance. Mahler's forces of nature which characterized the 35-minute first movement arrive in violent fortissimos and barely perceptible heartbeats. So many different kinds of musical objects march by (chirpy piccolo and all) that the piece becomes an army of the unlikely allies. Best not to analyze but to submit to it. Mahler constantly stretched the sustaining power of his ideas to their limits; Saturday, there were a few mid-performance walkouts in the audience.

Though conductors have needed to skip details in order to maintain the piece's through line (a single bar of music contains three or more performance markings), Nézet-Séguin harnessed finer points, all the while building the first movement's long span of music with a sure sense of pulse, slowing slightly as a passage climbed to its summit and then, unexpectedly, racing ahead leaving a wild profusion of color in its wake. It worked. The extensive trombone solo, which can arrive like a terror-inspiring deity, was imposing in a nonspecific way from Nitzan Haroz, though his more nuanced soft playing later on opened up three dimensions, like a fine characterization of a Shakespearean villain.

The second movement, all light and flowers, is sometimes played as a waltz, but this time, was a song without words. The third movement often tries one's patience — the music's impulsive animation can wear out its welcome — but the recurring, folksy brass solo was beautifully played by the new principal trumpet Esteban Batallán on a corno da caccia (a hybrid horn with a larger trumpet-like mouthpiece) with a trill that wasn't just decorative but put a finer point on what had come before.

The spare, nocturnal, seemingly static fourth movement employs a weighty Nietzsche text that was so effectively colored orchestrally and sung by mezzo-soprano DiDonato with profound empathy that Mahler's music projected the philosophical content far more clearly than the words. Her lower range was tested in the fifth movement, though when surrounded by such good choral forces, who noticed?

The final, string-dominated movement is about love, and that's where Nézet-Séguin poured on the warm Philadelphia sound. In more intimate moments, concertmaster David Kim employed portamento phrasing, which died out in the 20th century but was very much a part of Mahler's world. It added yet another level of expressivity.