After this stimulating start, Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor (K 491) proved a bit of a letdown. It wasn't because the piece is dark-hued (though it is — one of only two minor-key concertos among Mozart's 27 for piano). The problem lay in Neale's too-staid approach, avoiding the potential storminess that can give this piece its punch. His deliberate tempi and broad, overarching gestures tended to smooth out the tempest and produce a slightly ho-hum effect.

The soloist was another of Neale's former San Francisco Symphony colleagues, the Symphony's estimable pianist Robin Sutherland, who played with style and aplomb. The woodwinds, who have a big role in this work, got off to a brittle and stiff start (perhaps daunted by the challenge of the Elgar to come), although matters were quickly rectified. Sutherland performed his own cadenza to cap the first movement, oddly quoting in advance the entire main tune of the slow movement to follow — a first in my experience. It was no doubt meant as a gesture of tribute to the composer, but it upstages Mozart's structural design for the concerto. When its proper time came, Sutherland rendered the Larghetto's graceful song artfully and sympathetically, with a tiny excess of pedal, while the winds battled some pitch problems. The concluding movement, a somber theme with artful variations, seemed understated, but the sunny major-mode episodes were nicely contrasted.

Edward Elgar's imposing and potentially puzzling Symphony No. 1 provided the evening's main event, and gave Neale and his musicians the chance to demonstrate once again that the Marin Symphony now claims undisputed preeminence among Northern California's surviving regional orchestras. The performance was full-throated and assured, full of gusto and confidence. Neale guided the famous long-breathed opening melody (labeled “Andante, Nobilmente e semplice”) with careful restraint and control against the steady underpinning from celli and basses, before letting the noble theme burst into its gleaming, full-blown harmonization. This complex work mirrors its enigmatic creator, pulling its listener into agitated seas of surging compulsion, with roiling themes and restless motives, all richly dressed in burnished late-romantic garb. Ideas crowd in on one another with Wagnerian drive, tumbling over themselves in a sometimes bewildering tumult of over-ripeness, contrasted with sylvan movements of fleeting radiance. Neale and his players took this all in stride, remaining in full control but letting the waves of sound have their crashing impact.

The impish scherzo of the second movement was deftly pulled off, with its sudden transition into a diabolical march, and then a witches' wild ride. This is intriguing music that goads the listener into wondering how seriously to take it all. The answer remains one of Elgar's enigmas. The lush and elegiac third movement, thematically based on the scherzo, was lovingly delivered, with its Debussy-like central moment of flitting color patches. Here Neale drew long, ample lines giving an arching sweep to the movement's Tristan-esque harmonies. The violins were especially impressive in their control of pianissimo phrases.

Elgar saves his most inscrutable questions for the final movement, with its odd slow beginning reminiscent of Mahler, after which all hell breaks loose. The listener strains to parse what is happening amongst these myriad, sometimes sputtering ideas, with haunted and turbulent subjects building to unachieved climaxes amid the eternal churning of the celli. When finally the symphony's great melody returns, it is less in triumph than in perseverance against the ruthless swirl of flurrying countermelodies. The Marin musicians were fully up to the challenge, and gave Elgar's provocative work a performance to be proud of.