We Mahlerites of a certain age are a passionate lot. Those of us who still go to concerts frequently recognize each other as surely as if we were wearing a particular uniform or insignia. It’s not as if we have a secret handshake or anything, but we are the veterans of the culture wars of the 1950s, when performances of our hero’s music were rare indeed and often denigrated as kitsch. Sometimes we felt like Bradbury’s “book people,” left to keep the flame eternal but hidden.

But we will never be united in praising each of this genius’s efforts equally. My own favorite of Mahler’s symphonies is without question the Seventh, the epitome of excitement and invention, but many consider it the weakest. I once conducted a survey on my radio program about these works and the disparity of opinion about the Seventh was the most contentious of all.

Now that Mahler is universally loved, some still do not care for this rather quixotic effort. The New York Philharmonic and guest conductor Riccardo Chailly – back with the Philharmonic for the first time in 20 years – will be dusting off this rich score this week and presenting it for reconsideration. One highly respected Parisian critic, who is coming to hear this current performance, e-mailed me the other day to admit that he has little or no understanding of the work or its meaning.

There is a tantalizing connection between the work and the orchestra. Mahler toyed with the idea of presenting the world premiere of his new creation in New York, blissfully far away from the anti-Semitic Viennese press that dogged him at home. The scars of previous excoriations eventually convinced Mahler not to try anything personally daring with his new ensemble, however, and he limited his own music in the three years that he conducted the Philharmonic to the relatively safe and time-tested First and Second symphonies. The Seventh premiered instead in Prague, as the composer, with the help of his apprentice Alban Berg, frantically re-orchestrated the parts the very evening of the performance.

The rocky performance history of these symphonies, from the darkness of critical and popular disdain to the glorious light of enshrinement among the immortals, includes a steady waning of the popularity of the appellations that attached themselves to them when they were new. Although the 2nd is still known as the “Resurrection,” it is now rare to hear such names as “Titan” (1), “Giant” (5), “Tragic” (6) or “Symphony of a Thousand” (8). “The Song of the Night” is still often associated with the mighty 7th but perhaps the nickname “Underappreciated” might be more a propos of the critical reception that has haunted this idiosyncratic musical essay for more than 90 years.

A failure at its premiere, the piece has laid its composer bare to charges of kappellmeisterism and even charlatanism. It is, by far, the most misunderstood of his mature works for orchestra, even inspiring recent sophistry that the creation contains its own built-in avenues for raveling, thus making it a thesis on the nobility of failure.

Much of this negative opinion is generated by the composer’s use of Schrammelmusik – the music of the tavern dance band – and other popular devices of fin-de-siecle Vienna. But primarily the confusion lies, I think, in the lack of perception that this work is really an essay on the life-affirming and healing nature of art itself. In the case of Mahler, a consistently tortured personality, angst sells, and the public looks askance at a creative personality who dares to accentuate the positive. As a society, we wish our artists to suffer.

Add into the mix the critical profession’s distaste for the upbeat and the result has been a wall of scholarly and popular resistance surrounding Mahler’s own personal best, a symphonic rendering of Siegfried complete with the hero’s own journey from first movement darkness into glorious C Major final light. (Both the Wagner opera and this colorful symphonic work are so viscerally electrifying as to be positively beloved by little boys and brass players – domestic partners of the latter will tell you that there is really no appreciable difference between these two groups).

Each of the five movements is extremely colorful. Langsam-Allegro con fuoco begins with a solo for tenorhorn, a tuba-shaped relative of the euphonium that had been invented by Adolphe Sax, and ends with highly complex writing that only resolves itself in an ultimate high E rolled with sticks on the glockenspiel.

Serenade (“Nachtmusik”) is a ghostly march, perhaps inspired by Mahler’s viewing of Rembrandt’s “Nightwatch” on a visit to Amsterdam. Schattenhaft (“like a shadow”) is a neurotic series of fits and starts that perfectly captures the contemporary Viennese penchant for hypochondria and psychoanalysis. And the glorious Rondo-Finale is a shimmering paean to life and joy.

A solo violin opens the fourth movement with both ends of an octave leap, which starts this charming Andante amoroso off on a slightly tipsy note. This serenade is the third and final part of the “night music” trilogy of inner movements in this labyrinthine work, but it is also the third member of the remarkable trio of slow movements in the three purely instrumental symphonies of Mahler’s middle period. Already proving in the Third Symphony that he could write a magnificent Adagio, he chose to abandon the form altogether during these years, 1901-5. The Adagietto of the Fifth, the rocking, barcarolle like Andante of the Sixth and this charming serenade form, for me at least, the high point of this imaginative composer’s art.

The horn, so important in the aforementioned Andante and the featured instrument surrounding the Adagietto, is granted the beautiful solo melody of this serenade and the accompaniment of Mediterranean street instruments evokes the memory of the gentle zephyrs of an Italian holiday. Listen especially to the unusual parts for mandolin and guitar, so important to establishing the proper mood that some conductors even seat their players in front of the orchestra.

The shared melody of the horn and cello is breathtakingly beautiful and, when the cello drops out, the horn plies its figure against a lush, stringed answer that is the fulcrum of this amazing movement. First the horn sings and the strings answer and then, in the reprise, the strings play the melody in a very lush manner – Mahler indicates in the score “breit,” that is “broadly” – and the horn alone answers. The last nine measures of the serenade are as lovely as any in the history of music, as the woodwinds breathe a last sighed farewell and the guitar quietly intones the final three notes, marked “morendo” (“dying away”). For me, this deliquescent moment of memory is the apex of fin-de-siecle art, as arresting as a Klimt botanical.

So how does one judge this week’s performance? Actually, it is quite easy. If, at the very end of the orgiastically positive Schubertian finale, so evocative of the “Great” C Major, with its elemental release of musical tension, there is not a fraction of a second of silence followed by a roar of applause and shouting, then the assembled forces simply did not nail it. With Maestro Chailly at the helm, however, I firmly believe that they will.

Riccardo Chailly will conduct Mahler’s Seventh Symphony on February 10 at 7:30 p.m.; February 11 at 2 p.m.; February 12 at 8 p.m.; and February 15 at 7:30 p.m. (Lincoln Center, 212-875-5000).