Orchestras can't always use Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to give new seasons a blockbuster start. This time, the Charlotte Symphony has turned to Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1 – an hour of nature worship, soul-searching and celebration for supersized orchestra.

The freshness of Mahler's musical strolls through the outdoors was what Christof Perick and the orchestra captured best Friday night. It came through in the bounce that the cellos gave their first tune; the heartiness of the woodwinds' bird songs; the gusto of the dances; and the overall zest that bound all that together.

Mahler's soulfulness and jubilation? The orchestra's grip on those was looser. Admittedly, the group made the final moments – with their pealing brasses and thunderous drums – a high-impact experience. Earlier on, though, the orchestra showed the effort that Mahler's exertions took. The ragged French horns were the most obvious sign.

Maybe the live radio broadcast of tonight's performance on WDAV will give the horns an adrenaline rush to carry them through. But the other thing that kept the music from being as stirring as it can be is built into the orchestra – or rather, not built in. Even with extra players brought in for the occasion, the group's string section is still smaller than major orchestras use in ordinary circumstances, not to mention what they might marshal for a Mahler extravaganza.

The difference shows at the extremes. The big moments – Mahler's outcries of angst or jubilation – don't possess the immensity that would hit home. And the quiet moments lack the intensity that they should have. The symphony's opening is a pianissimo that can sound like it reaches from the depths of the earth to the stratosphere. The orchestra this time plays it neatly. But the breadth is missing.

The night's soloist – who wasn't even involved in Mahler – drove home the difference. Heidi Meier, the German soprano who first performed here last season in Carl Orff's “Carmina Burana,” returned to join the orchestra for excerpts from Mozart's “The Abduction from the Seraglio.” Meier portrayed the opera's heroine, a woman held captive by a pasha. In one aria, the heroine laments being separated from her sweetheart. In the next, she scoffs at the pasha's threats.

The purity and tenderness Meier gave the first of those was as telling as her agility and gleaming high notes in the second. But even more potent: Meier had one of those too-rare voices than can fill an entire theater even when she sings softly. If only the orchestra's strings could've done that in Mahler.