By Robert D. Thomas
Southern California News Group Music Critic

Once in a great while a concert ascends beyond greatness to transcendent. Saturday night’s performance at Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 by Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic reached that level.

This was the second of three major orchestras being presented this fall by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County in a season celebrating the 10th anniversary of Segerstrom Concert Hall and the 30th anniversary of the Segerstrom Center for the Performing Arts in Costa Mesa.

For the LAPO this was the first concert on a short West Coast tour (other performances are in San Francisco, Davis and Seattle this week). It’s to the PSOC’s credit that it chose this work rather than the companion tour program, which concludes with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4.

It’s also to the large audience’s credit — and, of course, to the orchestra’s performance — that patrons waited a full minute after the final notes died away while Dudamel stood motionless on the podium, before he relaxed his posture, which elicited a thunderous, standing ovation.

Now age 35, Dudamel is in his eighth season as the Phil’s 11th music director. Some silver strands are creeping into his curly locks but he looks nearly as youthful as when he took the reins in 2009. His conducting style continues to be purposeful and elegant — every gesture has a musical reason behind it.

Although he was an experienced Mahler conductor before he came to the LAPO, primarily through his work with what is now called the Simón Bolivár Symphony Orchestra, we have watched Dudamel mature during his frequent LAPO Mahler programs, which included two surveys in 2012 of the composer’s entire symphonic output.

The 9th — which Mahler composed in 1910 while suffering from a heart condition that would lead to his death a year later — is so important to Dudamel that when he took the Phil on a European tour in 2011 Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 was on the agenda.

However, Saturday night’s performance was in a class by itself. Conducting without a score, as he usually does for major pieces, Dudamel led an unhurried, majestic reading of this 80-minute work. Along the way were several illuminating moments — who realized, for instance, how many wonderful moments Mahler assigned to the second violins in the final movement?

Dudamel has now chosen several of his principal players, including Principal Horn Andrew Bain and the orchestra’s new principal trombone, David Rejano Cantereo, and they and their sections were exemplary throughout the performance. In addition to having both take solo bows afterward, Dudamel waded into the orchestra to give Bain an affectionate hug before shyly taking bows from deep within his ensemble.

Hemidemisemiquaver:
The third of the major orchestras on the PSOC series this fall will be the Berlin Philharmonic on Nov. 20 at 3 p.m. Outgoing Music Director Sir Simon Rattle will lead his ensemble in its first Orange County performance in 15 years, playing music by Webern, Schoenberg, Berg and Brahms. Information: www.philharmonicsociety.org