The London Philharmonic's Mahler festival began a fortnight ago with the first of his 10 symphonies. To end with the second, the Resurrection symphony, is not as strange as it might seem. The earliest of his colossal choral works, it is also the most cogent. And it deals most convincingly with Mahler's preoccupying concern: the fear of death, with all its accompanying desperation, nostalgia and paranoia, vanquished at last by a final choral movement that can be, in a performance of this quality, a life-affirming experience. Looked at this way, the Resurrection seems an ideal culmination of the series.

It also marked a welcome return for Bernard Haitink, who has had a 40-year association with this orchestra and knows how to bring out its best. He has been admired for his ability to pace large-scale works, to seek out a score's underlying architecture and play the long game. So it was here; but this structural soundness was, thrillingly, augmented by some excitingly visceral orchestral noises.

Haitink cultivated an orchestral sound that was big and bright but also surprisingly transparent, making for a remarkable clarity of line right from the opening bars. Crammed close against the back wall of the platform, the elongated ranks of brass sounded piercingly direct, sometimes almost too much so. But, though he called on it sparingly, Haitink seemed to relish the sheer size of sound he could make the orchestra produce. The first hint came with the cataclysmic climax before the return of the opening music in the turbulent first movement, but there was always a sense that there was more in store.

Expectation ruled over the next movements - an almost unbearably wistful, slow dance in the Andante and an eerily dark-toned Scherzo. It was not until after Birgit Remmert's simple and affecting singing of Urlicht that the orchestra's full tumultuous potential was unleashed. Then the hushed chorales, carefully delivered by the excellent London Philharmonic Chorus and the gleaming soprano of Donna Brown, ushered in a final evocation of light that, after such preparation, seemed almost tangible.

Now that Haitink has left Covent Garden, this country no longer has a major claim on him. But the huge warmth of his reception should have convinced him that although he has left one British institution, he has become another himself.