For all the painful problems that Ohio has – and this writer is from, so she sees them – a shortage of classical music is not.

Almost anywhere you drive in the state you can hear classical music on the FM band, something you can’t say about Florida, alas. And while the Sunshine State orchestras have followed one another, Ohio still presents a powerful symphony in Cincinnati and strong regional philharmonic in Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown.

It’s a long way to get to the point that the State should have an incredible crown jewel in the Cleveland Orchestra. It does.

It’s such a good institution that it extended America’s paradigm of classical music fame from “The Big Three” – Boston, New York, and Philadelphia – to “The Big Five” in the late 1950s. The Chicago Symphony, the other orchestra that influenced the creation of the term Big Five, arrives here on February 13 and 15.)

The patrons of Artis — Naples who were at the Cleveland Orchestra concert on Sunday got a good dose of grandeur with his performance of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. The orchestra came here on what became their annual Mahler March and had to delay their departure by four standing ovations.

Size alone, even though most of its 106 musicians were on stage on Sunday, doesn’t explain it. Nor the fact that Naples has the advantage of knowing the orchestra well from two performances of the same work in Miami.

There’s a finely tuned motor here, with string sections practically tied together and a brass section as sharp as a shard. When lead trumpeter Michael Sachs sounds the invocation of the opening trumpet, it practically pulls the listener forward into the seat. This tone is matched by Nathaniel Silberschlag’s flawless horn solo introducing the Scherzo to the orchestra.

Add in a confident wood section, which picks up a good number of strands of music to play against the rest of the orchestra in the Scherzo, and immensely flexible percussion, and you have the elements of a great Mahler performance.

It is, of course, with the right conductor, and we think Franz Welser-Möst is one of the best performers of Mahler’s work. This is Mahler’s third symphony that Naples hears from him with the Cleveland Orchestra, and we can’t wait to hear the next one. (It might not be next year; the orchestra’s 2021 Florida tour was recently announced, and it features Schubert, Rachmaninoff, Dvorak, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky.)

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony was written at one of the happiest moments in the composer’s life. He had escaped death after hemorrhaging, created an acclaimed Third Symphony – in fact later than the Fourth – and fell in love. Cleveland Orchestra Music Welser-Möst aptly described their Fifth Symphony as a “reverse” life, moving from its fateful opening of the funeral march to a rousing finale that frolic like a child on a playground.

Yet Mahler’s gripping music has a basis for his emotion in that even his sublime moments carry a tinge of anxiety. The composer feels that this joy is temporal. Better heads can analyze that down to the harmonics of his famous Adagietto string, which most people identify as a love letter to his future wife, Alma Schindler. To that ear, at least, the feeling of such fleeting happiness is still there.

Listen to it:Make up your own mind about Mahler’s Adagietto

The Cleveland Orchestra played the Adagietto as if it cherished it, never stretching its line into an unidentifiable chain link melody, as some orchestras do. Welser-Möst was most involved in this conduct, his arms raised to the sky, still lifting the work. Sometimes it seemed like he could take flight.

He was not alone. Lucky listeners also have wings.

Harriet Howard Heithaus covers the arts and entertainment for the Naples Daily News / naplesnews.com. Contact her at 239-213-6091.