Transcendence is everywhere in Mahler’s most ambitious symphony, from the flaming opening hymn to the upper reaches in the epic setting of Goethe’s Faust finale. You’d think no visuals could match the auditory phantasmagoria, just as dance, music and design flunked the essence of Paradiso in the Royal Ballet’s The Dante Project. Mahler does compose a kind of concert opera in Part Two, though; sound, movement and image accorded well.

Never make your mind up too soon about any large-scale work by a genius. Back in 2010, I had my doubts about James MacMillan’s first Passion, hearing in the impact of Colin Davis’s Barbican performance a halfway house between the composer's shattering best and his more contrived side.

Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela took the Barbican by storm last night with a thrilling account of Mahler’s Third Symphony, his great exploration of the cosmic order, ascending from raw paganism to sublime transcendence. It's technically the longest symphony ever composed, and here it swept the audience through an epic journey that tilted between passages of gossamer-like intimacy and outbursts of apocalyptic rage.

Paavo Järvi: The Complete Erato Recordings (Erato)

From a privileged position in the Festival Hall stalls, I could see 97-year old Herbert Blomstedt’s near-immobile back as he sat on a piano stool with the score in front of him, but also his supremely expressive right arm and hand, every finger brought into play, the left hand occasionally visible to me as he raised it at moments of high emotion. The Philharmonia simply burned for him, every phrase and dynamic brought into focus to heighten an already assured vision.

Mahler’s Sixth is one of those apocalyptic megaliths that shouldn’t be approached too often by audiences or conductors. It’s been a constant in Simon Rattle’s treasury since 1989, when he first recorded it with his City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (they performed it together at the Proms in 1995) to now, when the second of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra concerts followed a recording. Sophisticated, yes, but where was the feral intensity?

Let’s begin at the end. Can the Paris Olympics' closing ceremony offer anything as classy or joyous as 260 musicians aged 13 to 18 singing the French carol-plus-farandole finale of Bizet’s L'Arlésienne music?* This encore also made Proms history as a unique riposte to the Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra’s instrument-twirling Bernstein “Mambo”. And what a sequel to a Mahler One brimming with energy, masterfully negotiated by conductor Alexandre Bloch.

When it was first announced that Mark Elder was to become music director of the Hallé, I phoned a friend who knew him well from serving on his staff at English National Opera in earlier years. “He’s completely devoted,” he said. “He never does anything superficially, he’s always well prepared, he’s a good orchestra trainer, and he’ll last longer than other conductors.” It was a description and prediction that was amply fulfilled in the following quarter-century.

Programme notes for Mahler’s monumental symphonies will often blithely chat about the works’ epic struggle between life and death, creation and destruction, joy and dread. In a comfy hall with a slick orchestra and a polished maestro, all of that can feel abstract and remote. Not last night at the Barbican. 

In an evening filled with "firsts" one of the many striking aspects was the effect the Anonimi Orchestra debut had on people walking past on the Marylebone Road. As we sat in the warehouse space of the Bomb Factory – with its exposed brick walls and large display windows – from time-to-time passers-by could be seen transfixed, gazing in at the vivacious ensemble bringing light to the January gloom.