Mention the name Gustav Mahler, and it’s hard not to think of resurrection. From his popular Second Symphony—titled the “Resurrection Symphony”—to the rebith of the composer’s musical reputation after World War II, this is a potent Mahler leitmotif. Hearing the San Diego Symphony under Music Director Jahja Ling perform Mahler’s Fifth Symphony Saturday (Nov. 3), I thought about the local orchestra’s own resurrection. In the last decades of the 20th century, the San Diego Symphony lost several complete seasons while languishing in bankruptcy. With significant generous underwriting from Irwin and Joan Jacobs and the subsequent hiring of Ling as Music…

Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s Debussy recital Friday (Nov. 2) at La Jolla’s Sherwood Auditorium was not for the timid or casual aesthete. His program was no sampler of Debussy’s greatest hits, but an elegant master class that probed the gamut of the composer’s idiom for his favored instrument. With consummate technical prowess and uncanny insight, Thibaudet conducted a riviting class that took us through the sometimes enigmatic Second Book of 12 Preludes, two suites—“Estampes” and “Suite Bergamasque”—and the exuberant tour de force “L’isle Joyeuse.” He devoted the recital’s first half to the Preludes, traversing all 12 without break or applause, except…