The Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a Mix of Beethoven, Mahler and Nina…

Baritone Christian Gerhaher performs songs from Mahler’s “Des Knaben Wunderhorn,” led by Jaap van Zweden with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. (Todd Rosenberg)

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra was in its usual top form this past week in a concert that was zestily led by Jaap van Zweden, the Amsterdam-born conductor who recently served as music director of the New York Philharmonic and is now in that role at the Seoul Philharmonic.

The program soared in a dazzling performance of Beethoven’s grandly familiar yet ever thrilling “Symphony No. 5 in C Minor.” The show opened with a brief but evocative rendering of Nina Shekhar’s seductive, wonderfully mood-setting “Lumina,” a mesmerizing 11-minute piece inspired by both Hindustani ragas and an exploration of the shift between light and shadows. Those shifts moved from a big sound to a somewhat eerie fading sound, and then came a dramatic silence.

Next on the program was Mahler’s beautiful score for songs from “Des…