There goes one of the good ones.

Amid all of the heightened emotion about Mariss Jansons' last concerts as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra this weekend, this simple statement you hear at the workplace when an exemplary employee leaves may sum up his tenure best.

Lake Fong, Post-Gazette Pittsburgh Symphony conductor Mariss Jansons walks off the stage following a performance in his last series with the symphony. Click photo for larger image.

Many things didn't work out the way he would have liked or else Jansons wouldn't be leaving so soon -- after only seven years. But he is a class act, a committed servant of the music and above all a good person.

As a conductor, he had that "world-premiere" touch, the ability to make even a well-known composition fresh and new to our ears. You could say he did this by relentlessly crafting the orchestra to the sound in his head, but it also was attributable to his belief that ephemeral music has transfiguring and spiritual power.

Could the programming have been more perfect, then, last night at Heinz Hall for the first of Jansons' three final concerts with Schoenberg's "Transfigured Night (Verklarte Nacht)" and Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, "Chorale"? Both journey from troubled D minor to triumphant D major, metaphorically tackling the struggles of life in the process. It's just the sort of exhibition of the pure soul of music that Jansons has offered in Pittsburgh from his first days here as a guest conductor.

Bathed in a tingling atmosphere, enhanced by a standing-room capacity crowd, Schoenberg's string orchestra version of "Transfigured Night" had an otherworldly glow to it, not unlike the moon in the Richard Dehmel poem upon which it is based.

The PSO approached the ensemble of the original sextet version of the piece, particularly in the impassioned laments of the women in the poem and the warm support of her lover. At times Jansons employed his trademark beaming gaze toward the heavens, eliciting rich response in the timbre from the strings.

But it was the power and the passion of the Ninth that put this concert over the edge.

While the famed opening measures of Beethoven's masterwork wanted for more mystery, the rest of the piece fell in line with Jansons' vibrant and forceful take on Beethoven symphonies. Pushing and pulling at the texture of the work in the first movement led to a fast-paced, but wonderfully characterized Scherzo.

In the Adagio, Jansons pulled at some heartstrings, and why not, it's a goodbye. But the sheer magnitude of the philosophy and the grandeur of the "Ode to Joy" poured over the audience, with exceptional singing by the Mendelsohn Choir of Pittsburgh and soloists Jane Eaglen, soprano; Michelle DeYoung, mezzo-soprano; Thomas Studebaker, tenor; Franz-Josef Selig, bass.

The audience demanded that Jansons return to the stage for several curtain calls.

They know a good one when they see him.