Gaffigan opened with excerpts from Bizet’s own Carmen Suite No.1 and the Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 22. Following intermission, there was Offenbach’s Overture to Orpheus in the Underworld and his Intermezzo and Barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffmann. Then the program rounded off with Ravel’s La Valse. There were no encores although the audience called for some.

It tickled me that all four of the French composers had historic connections to the most performed American-born operatic composer — although I doubt that this was exactly planned in advance. (More on that later.)

Saint-Saëns’ Second Piano Concerto was tossed off in only three weeks in 1868, at the behest Anton Rubinstein, who conducted the premiere with the composer at the piano. It begins with a dramatic slow movement, which opens with nearly a Baroque fantasia. Then comes the main body of the movement, one often colored by Spanish modality. There follows a breezy scherzo in Mendelssohn fashion, which also includes hints of Offenbach here and there. For his finale, Saint-Saëns turned out a tarantella in the manner of his friend and promoter, Rossini. So the Concerto is at once amazingly original in form as well as a kind of international tour.

Pianistic Flash

Barnantan obviously possesses tons of technique and was not above showing it off, — hands flying in the air and that sort of thing. His sensitive phrasing of the lyrical passages was always expressive, if not always in perfect alignment with Gaffigan. The audience cheered the performance to the rafters, complete with standing ovation.

Ravel was an ambulance driver in World War I, and the constant sight of the wounded and dead from battlefields scarred him for life. Hence, by the time the orchestra reaches the finale of La Valse, the sunburst of glamor depicting mid-19th century, high society Vienna, breaks into a sonic chaos of dissonant violence, converted into a frenzied protest against Austrian militarism.

Gaffigan took a fairly straightforward approach to La Valse, emphasizing the sheer massiveness of sound during tutti passages, and the utter stillness of Ravel’s impressionist fog. A performance of extremes, yes, but that’s what the piece is all about. And when the music shifted from glittering waltz into a dance of death, the effect was emotionally shattering.

The Offenbach selections featured his most famous music: the can-can in his Orpheus, and the Barcarolle in his final opera — each the aural definition of those forms for most listeners. Fortunately, no one near me sang or hummed along, although the performances were excellent enough to incite that. Both pieces were done with real panache.

Carmen Without Spice

Bizet died without garnering a Suite No. 2 from Carmen, although clearly that had been his intention. Otherwise, why the “No. 1″ in the title? But the existing suite has everything you need to hear from the opera. Its eleven movements are a bit much to fit into most programming. Gaffigan chose only six: the Prelude, Aragonaise, Intermezzo, Sequedilla, Dragons of Alcala and, of course, the Toreador’s song.

The performances were all right, but no more. With a reduced string section for the evening, brass and percussion tended to dominate. In Bizet, it’s a good idea to underplay the written dynamics because the brass are usually in their most brilliant registers, and the percussion a tad thick in places. But the larger flaw was the lack of Spanish flavor. Gaffigan chose to play the score purely as French music. That’s a little like eating paella minus the saffron. Minor elements can occasionally be important beyond surface appearances.

Aller! — the most performed American operatic composer? New Orleans born Ernest Guiraud (1837-92). Guiraud was a prodigy who, at age 15, composed an opera, which was produced in New Orleans. Shortly after that, he was off to Paris, where he remained.

Considered a master of orchestration, he was made a professor of the Paris Conservatory in 1876, where his students included Debussy, Dukas and Loeffler among others. His treatise on orchestration was published in 1892, the year of his death. It became a a standard text for all Paris Conservatory composition majors, Debussy and Ravel among them

But who’s ever heard a performance of Guiraud’s music? Well, he wrote recitatives for Carmen, following Bizet’s death. And his superb orchestrations grace Tales of Hoffmann. (Offenbach left only a rough piano score at his death. Saint-Saëns then performed a similar favor for his colleague, completing Guiraud’s last opera, Frédégonde three years after Guiraud’s death. Thus, he is remembered as the answer to a trivia question.

As repertoire goes, it’s pretty well agreed that Bach wrote “The” Passion (meaning the St. Matthew), Mozart “The” Serenade (Kleine Nachtmusik), and Mendelssohn “The” Octet. If you get into ranking symphonies, operas, or sonatas, you’ve got a fight on your hands, but it’s a sure bet that Dvořák wrote the greatest of all cello concertos. None other quite matches it in emotional scope, weight of profundity, use of modality, or lyrical beauty. I have always considered the little quiet epilogue of the concerto one of the greatest passages in all of Romantic music, and still do.

The daughter of violinist Donald Weilerstein, founder of the Cleveland Quartet, young Alisa played an admirable, if not always rhythmically flawless, solo. Her intonation was excellent in even the most challenging passages, and she proved first rate, as well, in her appreciation for the score’s flexible dynamic shifts.

But she sometimes rushed or stretched figuration, presumably feeling that was an interpreter’s license. Sorry, but I don’t agree. An eighth note followed by two sixteenths doesn’t work as a triplet. It bordered on a dictum drummed into me in my youth: “The right note in the wrong place is a wrong note.” That she mugged her way along with all that fake showbiz swooning — eyes closed, head back in a sway — was nothing more than a distraction from the essential purpose of any performance, the music. So the young Weilerstein was good on Friday, but deserves no gold star.

Robertson had reduced the string section of the orchestra by a bit, a good idea when supporting a genteel-voiced cello. On the other hand, when the orchestra had its tutti passages, he encouraged the players into roaring strength, creating a more heroic impression of the concerto than I’d ever before encountered. In the long run, I found that a different strategy, but a convincing one. And boy, how the orchestra played for him. Beautiful solos from first chair musicians abounded, not least from Acting Concertmaster Nadya Tichman.

Having It All

Lutoslawski’s Mi-Parti encompasses everything of his mature style, and that does not exclude much from developments of 20th-century music. Like Bach, he brought together assorted major elements of the century and then blended all of them, pushing them forward. That’s why he can’t be pigeonholed into one “ism” or another.

He often favored an Impressionistic fog of blended tones, mostly atonal with minor elements from Schoenberg or Berg. But then, he also used free passages — aleatory, as Boulez dubbed them — wherein the players are given the notes minus the exact rhythmic values. John Cage or Morton Feldman built their careers on this. There were times, for instance, when Robertson stopped beating time and simply held up fingers of one hand high about his head. The number of fingers indicated which free section to play: one finger for the first, then two, then three.

Folksy elements may also appear in the work, although those were mostly absorbed into Lutoslawski’s early compositions, before 1955. Hints of that turned up in Mi-Parti, fleetingly, like ghosts of the past.

Lasting about a quarter hour in a single movement, Mi-Parti offers something from all the textures I’ve mentioned. It opens with soft strings, punctuated as they move along by some of the composer’s signature fanfare figures from the winds and brass. Scored for very large orchestra, the music constantly brims with bravura orchestral sounds. For sonic splendor, you would have to go as far back as Ravel’s or Respighi’s big orchestral pieces to match those in Mi-Parti.

Basically, the form is that of an introduction and Allegro, but with both sections interrelated. Indeed, the title means something like “two views of the same object.” It’s similar to seeing a person first from up front and then from the rear. The views are quite different, yet they’re essentially just two aspects of a single person. The wonder is that Lutoslawski could be so subtle and logical in his organizing of materials that everything is immediately meaningful and acceptable to the average concertgoer at first hearing. It all ends up sounding as inevitable as a Debussy Prelude.

Unreal World

Janáček’s full title, Taras Bulba, Rhapsody for Orchestra, is rather misleading, as the work consists of three rhapsodic tone poems, based on Nicolai Gogol’s short novel about the heroics of the Cossack leader Taras Bulba. The deaths of Bulba’s two sons are depicted in the first two movements, his own in the third. It is not, however, remotely morbid music.

The work’s textures are ever surprising: furious one moment, then innocent folk melody the next. There’s something almost Kafka-like in Janáček’s instrumental textures, suggestive as they are of some fascinating world of unreality. What better textures for an epic tale?

Curiously, by some means, Taras Bulba holds its line throughout, helped by sometimes quirky orchestration effects that create searing climaxes. That was illustrated by the wildly appreciative audience reaction to the performance. Ovation followed ovation in what seemed like a parade of demanded bows.

Of course, much of this was attributable to Robertson’s splendid control of the orchestra, which outdid itself in brilliance. Balances, entrances, careful shifting in dynamics, and glaring bravura were the hallmark of the performance. As I was in the aisle before intermission, I heard one woman saying to her male companion, “It’s a really good symphony evening.” Sure was.

The summer solstice, especially given last week’s blazing temperatures, might be the most auspicious time for the local premiere of a piece called Seht die Sonne. The title is an allusion to the radiant chorus that closes Schoenberg’s immense Gurrelieder, but Seht die Sonne lies a great emotional distance from that chorus, being altogether grimmer and less conclusive.

Scored for a big orchestra replete with winds, brass, many percussion instruments, and a pair of harps, it opens with a broad, majestic theme of massive solemnity, played by the horns over sustained notes in the strings. Throughout Seht die Sonne, sections of overwhelming orchestral density and volume alternate with lightly scored, rapidly moving sections dominated by the strings or woodwinds.

Every now and again, a remarkable texture or solo emerges from the clamor, such as the rapid, repeated harp glissandos about a third of the way through, so sharply harmonized and percussive as to be worlds away from the stereotype of swooping, angelic harps. This is followed by a pounding timpani solo, then by a clacking multiplayer percussion riff over chromatically rising harmonies in the rest of the orchestra, somehow combining the bitter and the sweet at once.

After this comes perhaps the greatest stroke in Seht die Sonne. The entire orchestra falls away, leaving only a solo cello playing a frantic cadenza that explores, and exploits, the full range of the instrument, including scurrying, haunted phrases in harmonics. The single cello — played magnificently by associate principal cellist Peter Wyrick — is slowly joined by the basses and the remainder of the cellos, in a long development incorporating echoes of the opening brass theme. The violins, violas, and woodwinds enter at staggered intervals, and eventually the percussion and brass.

Seht die Sonne builds to a huge, syncopated climax, then calms, dying away quietly with yet another allusion to the opening, this time in the timpani. Special kudos are owed to timpanist David Herbert for brilliant work here and in the Beethoven that concluded the program, and to principal percussionist Jack Van Geem and his associates.

Major Work, Challenged by Balance Problems

Seht die Sonne’s variety and grandeur make for a piece too big to fully absorb in one hearing, and I wish I’d been able to attend more than one concert in this series. It’s a major, and successful, work by an increasingly prominent composer. The performance, committed and convincing, was marred by significant balance problems, with the brass and winds dominating and obscuring the strings whenever the full orchestra played. Perhaps that’s unavoidable, given the scoring, or perhaps it’s what Lindberg intended.

More likely, though, the problem can be attributed to Oramo’s comparative lack of experience conducting in Davies Symphony Hall, where the strings vanish all too often under the sonic onslaught of heavily scored works written in the last century or so, especially given the ease with which he achieved perfect orchestral balance in this program’s Beethoven.

Following the Lindberg came a welcome change of mood, in the form of a set of Debussy songs, Chansons de Jeunesse (Songs of youth). Scored for small orchestra by Sakari Oramo himself and performed by soprano Anu Komsi, the songs are light, charming, and by turns sunlit or moonlit. Oramo made good scoring decisions, and some, such as the harp and glockenspiel combination in the magical “Musique,” are inspired.

Komsi’s bright, clear soprano suited the songs well, as did her sovereign vocal control and command of dynamics. She must be a delightful Zerbinetta and radiant Gilda, given her stage presence and fluid high register. But her tone, however lovely, lacked much variety, and palled a bit some 20 minutes into the set. Worse, her poor French, with its overly rounded vowels, rendered the texts unintelligible, the very antithesis of how French songs should be sung.

The closing performance of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony got off to a promising start, with a stately reading of the slow introduction and a bumptious account of the Vivace that follows. But Oramo made the bizarre decision to attack the second movement immediately after the first, with no pause, and the fourth movement immediately after the third. He played each movement for maximum drive, rather school-of-Toscanini, and the overall effect was exhausting rather than exhilarating.

There were scattered moments of great beauty, including the contrapuntal entries of the strings in the second movement, the trills in the Scherzo, and a gorgeous short clarinet solo in the second movement by Carey Bell, but the performance desperately needed more repose and more wit. Most of the audience evidently reveled in the excitement, because Oramo got a standing ovation — but I breathed a sigh of relief when the last movement finally ended.

Bartók’s Dance Suite (1923) opened the afternoon, followed by the Sibelius Violin Concerto (1905) in D Minor, Op. 47, with Jennifer Koh as soloist. Following intermission, the program was rounded off with a dozen excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet, Op. 64 (1936): “The Montagues and Capulets,” “The Street Awakening,” “Morning Dance,” “The Quarrel,” “The Fight,” “The Balcony Scene,” “Folk Dance,” “Romeo and Mercutio,” “Public Merrymaking,” “Dance With Mandolins,” “Dance of the Girls With Lilies,” and “The Death of Tybalt.”

The Prokofiev excerpts were, indeed, all that could be hoped for. The orchestra raged when called on, as in those thunderous dissonant chord clusters of the opening, or, by contrast, it virtually purred with warmth during the lyrically Romantic sections. The young performers’ playing of “The Balcony Scene” was as beautiful in timbre and emotional communication as that which any top professional orchestra might provide.

On the other hand, the virtuosity of the strings and winds for the fast perpetual-motion music of the swordfight music proved breathtaking in its bravura uniformity of ensemble. Everything was there: intonation, bowing precision, fullness of volume, and apparent ease of execution as the segment whizzed along with outstanding vigor. Both visually as well as in sonic splendor, this was superb playing.

Shwartz also had the advantage of using the full original orchestration, rather than the reduced version of the concert suites drawn from the ballet. Thus, he had six horns rather than the four called for in the suites, as well as all four mandolins that Prokofiev asked for. (Those mandolins, by the way, were perfectly played by members of the viola and cello sections, showing how versatile and virtuosic these youths are.)

When I once asked conductor Antal Dorati why Bartók’s masterful Dance Suite, his second most important orchestral composition, was so seldom programmed, he answered, “Because it’s so damned difficult that it requires more rehearsal time than the Concerto for Orchestra. And, as it’s half the length, one might as well go ahead and play the Concerto.”

There’s the pity of it. This fifth of Bartók’s suites was his last. There are the two large symphonic suites, Opp. 3 and 4; the two ballet suites (from The Wooden Prince, Op. 13, and The Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19); and finally the Dance Suite. The latter is the more complex of the lot. It consists of five dances, kneaded by a small set of variations on a gentle theme, marked ritornello: that is, a returning element that bridges the often barbaric, and occasionally ghoulish, dances into continuous play. Something of the sort may be familiar to many from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exposition, with its Promenade ritornello.

Sterling Playing, With a Caution

Many of the performances by the Youth Orchestra were sterling, although moments of lax ensemble work were heard in the trickier rhythmic sections. That was especially true during the opening dance, brimming with cross rhythms as it does. It didn’t help that Shwartz was watching his score rather than the eyes of his musicians. As pianist-conductor Hans von Bülow once observed to the young Richard Strauss, “The score should be in your head, not your head in the score.”

There are times in the piece when the players really needed watching. Indeed, it was said that Fritz Reiner conducted more music with his eyes than his baton. Much of the performance was crackerjack, but an additional rehearsal might have helped put the last kernels in place.

The profundity of the Sibelius Concerto sounded set aside for the sake of bravura, especially by violinist Koh. She tended to rush, sometimes dashing ahead of the orchestra. True, she played all the notes, and brilliantly, but now and then she squeezed the rhythmic values too tightly.

Then too, the finale was taken too quickly. It is, after all, marked “Allegro ma non troppo” (Fast, but not too much). What Koh played sounded like a virtuoso gush rather than the profoundly tragic bolero that Sibelius intended. The orchestra accompanied very well indeed, and clearly with more self-control than their soloist displayed.

As encores, Shwartz offered zesty performances of the Polonaise from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, plus a section of Gershwin’s Cuban Overture.

Now the prize-winning youth orchestra is off to perform in Europe, with concerts in Berlin, Munich, and Prague, besides appearances at three regional German festivals: the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival in Rostock, the Audi Summer Concerts in Ingolstadt, and the European Festival Week in Passau. Their violin soloist will be the Austrian virtuoso Julian Recline.

Besides the music on Sunday’s farewell program, tour repertoire is to include John Adams’ Lollapalooza, Chausson’s Poème, and Saint-Saëns’ Introduction and Rondo Capriccio (both with Recline as soloist), plus Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World.”

As in all 6.5 series concerts, Friday night’s included commentary delivered from the podium, allowing the audience to hear all three conductors speak, as well as see them conduct. Shwartz, who began the program, spoke affably and enlighteningly about the work he was conducting, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Three Asteroids: The Torino Scale, Juno, Ceres. Starting with general comments on how the piece was commissioned, he moved on to lucid descriptions of the work’s three movements, using the orchestra to provide musical examples.

Friday was the United States premiere of Three Asteroids (although the third movement, Ceres, was previously performed by Robert Spano and the Boston Symphony). But it should not be the last time Turnage’s work is performed by the orchestra. Three Asteroids is a welcome addition to the orchestral literature, with engaging cross-rhythms, masterful interweaving lines of orchestration, and a clear overall shape.

Unfortunately, though, the Symphony’s performance of the work fell flat. Despite Shwartz’s energetic conducting style, there were many problems of ensemble, especially in the first movement, which features a repeated syncopated figure in the horns and divided cellos. Furthermore, the orchestra seemed to hold back in terms of dynamics, frequently ignoring the many ff and fff markings that can be found throughout the score.

Conductor: 10, Speaker: 3

The second conductor up to bat was Ragnar Bohlin, the Symphony’s chorus director. Bohlin programmed Francis Poulenc’s rarely heard Figure humaine (The face of man), a work scored for two unaccompanied six-part choirs (for a whopping total of 12 independent lines). Unlike Schwartz, Bohlin failed to connect with the audience during his commentary, reading dryly and diffidently off a written text he held in his hands. The contrast between his speech and his conducting could not be greater. Bohlin proceeded to lead Poulenc’s masterpiece entirely from memory and with enormous passion and conviction. The San Francisco Symphony Chorus was in rare form, performing with excellent diction, a wide range of tone color, and exquisite balance.

The final work on the program was Bártok’s Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin, which seemed an odd follow-up to the Poulenc. While Figure humaine is an uplifting hymn to liberty in the face of violence and oppression, Bártok’s ballet score is famous for its seamy plot line, a tale of thuggery, eroticism, and murder. The performance was led by James Gaffigan, the Symphony’s associate conductor, who had the audience in stitches with his humorous description of the piece, which he compared to an episode of Law and Order.

Gaffigan’s Mandarin was a fast-paced thrill ride, one that emphasized the climactic ending of the work rather than stopping to smell the smut along the way. As in the Turnage, though, it often seemed as if the orchestra was holding back, failing to give all it had in terms of dynamics and energy. A notable exception to this was the clarinet section, led by principal Carey Bell, who performed the prominent solo clarinet part with great finesse.

Although MTT conducts his fair share of Romantic repertoire, from Schubert to Richard Strauss, he seems to eschew romantic indulgence in favor of a no-nonsense approach. Occasionally, when an unusually persuasive and passionate soloist on the order of Yefim Bronfman joins the orchestra, he allows romantic sway to take hold of the proverbial baton. But much of the time, at least to these ears, he embraces straightforward, let-the-music-speak-for-itself musicianship. The results — as in this final program of Brahms, or as in Leif Ove Andsnes’ performance of the Piano Concerto No. 2 — are often immaculately sculpted, and unfailingly beautiful, but they ultimately fail to scale the firmament.

Having said that, MTT and his forces got mighty close in this German Requiem. The singing was especially glorious when the chorus opened up full voice, as at the end of “Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras” (For all flesh is as grass). Here, you could only marvel at Brahms’ mastery of massed forces.

The soprano choristers were especially ideal, with voices ever warm, radiant, and consoling. The tenors often matched them in caressing sweetness, although their thinner sound and lack of corresponding body when opening up led to an unfortunate imbalance in the great fugue at the end of the penultimate section, “Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt” (For here we have no continuing city). But most of the time, as in the conclusion of the opening section, “Selig sind, die da Leid tragen” (Blessed are they that mourn), Ragnar Bohlin’s chorus sang sublimely.

Superb Soloists

The soloists, too, were something special. In Davies Hall, at least from orchestra row J, the full body of baritone Matthias Goerne’s ever-caressing, warm midrange glowed as it cannot in the drier confines of Herbst Theatre. Even his oft-distracting physical movement, more restrained than in his recent performance of Brahms’ Four Serious Songs in Herbst, actually made sense — his body language spoke of the soul breaking free of its earthly confines. Goerne is one of the most profound and contemplative singers we have. He may initially appear pondering and burdened, but his singing reveals that is because he is ever probing deeper into the music his voice brings to life.

Soprano Laura Claycomb achieved what relatively few singers can — the absolutely right, exquisitely radiant, soaring tone that grants transcendent comfort. It’s not easy to sit silent as long as she did, and then open your throat to deliver an impeccable stream of heavenly sound, as a little glitch in the opening phrase and a few minor intonation problems suggested. But she did a marvelous job of getting a handle on her voice, and delivered one of the finest renditions of “Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit” (Ye now have sorrow) that I have ever heard live or on recording.

(Speaking of recording, few sound systems can realistically convey the profundity of the low organ notes that Brahms uses to underscore his message. If ever there were an argument for live performance over Memorex, this was it.)

Yes, But

So, what’s the quibble? Mainly that MTT’s no-nonsense tempi failed to sufficiently differentiate between sections. Everything felt a bit too similar, without the contrasts and shadings that make for greatness. The soprano solo, as beautiful as it was, felt too strict in time, and shifts within choral movements weren’t radical enough. As in the performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 that I recall from several years back, we were led right up to heaven’s door, gave it a firm knock, and then stepped back, rather than allowing God to carry us the rest of the way.

The concert began with the lovely Geistliches Lied, Op. 30 (Song of the Spirit), here performed by four-part chorus and organ. In the Four Songs for Women’s Chorus, Two Horns, and Harp, Op. 17, actually written four years later, the high sopranos and low altos seemed from different planets; the sopranos sounded round, warm, and angelic; the altos, thinner and a bit edgy. My husband described the performance as balm applied to the forehead, but I found the lack of vocal consonance disturbing. Such are the ways of the world.

MTT’s comprehension of text was especially apparent at the end of “Es tönt ein voller Harfenklang” (The sound of the harp is full of love and longing). There, Robert Ward and Jonathan Ring somehow managed to make their horns wail, as the heavenly sopranos joined Douglas Rioth’s harp in offering consolation. Marvelous.

Michael Tilson Thomas beautifully managed to capture the individual styles of all three works by leaning a bit on German Romantic models, as established by the likes of Bruno Walter or Karl Böhm. MTT also had the advantage of showcasing virtuoso pianist Yefim Bronfman as his soloist for the concerto. While the performance was not 100 percent perfect, MTT and Bronfman came so close to achieving that that it hardly mattered.

Brahms had begun work on a Symphony in D Minor in 1854, largely under peer pressure. But it just didn’t work out to his satisfaction. Rather than burn the symphony, as he did with so many of his manuscripts, he recast it into part of his First Concerto, and partly reused other bits for his German Requiem. That may account for the odd formal layout of the concerto. The very symphonic first movement is long, over half the length of the final two movements put together.

Transferring orchestral textures into a concerto format is a tricky task, at best. While the concerto is an unquestioned masterpiece, it is most problematic to hold together, as well as fiercely difficult for the pianist. Early critics were not far off base in labeling it as a symphony with piano obbligato. (Tchaikovsky faced much the same problem when resetting his Seventh Symphony sketches as his unfinished Third Piano Concerto.) The wonder is that Brahms, in spite of the difficulty, managed to pull it off.

Going the Distance

The piano part is inordinately taxing. Coping with the fatigue factor as well as the pervasive unreasonable keyboard writing can be daunting. The concerto bulges with extensive double, triple, and quadruple trills, extremely tiring for the hands and wrist when they are so long and frequent, as in the Brahms First. I know of no other concerto that’s so dominated by flutterings.

That, and the 45+ minutes of unrelieved intensity, requires that the artist have a keen feeling for self-pacing. He simply cannot maintain the required white heat for that length of time. When coupled with the inevitable fatigue factor, still playing all the expressive elements takes a special sort of pianist indeed. Bravo, Bronfman! He did it.

Bronfman seemed to hold an endless amount of power in reserve, drawing orchestral sonorities from the piano time and again. Then too, his phrasing stuck me as ideal, tastefully brimming with passion even in quiet episodes. The lyricism of his solo passages was velvet coated. Indeed, the little soft-voiced cadenza near the close of the slow movement proved magical — one of the particularly memorable episodes of the performance. But then, dynamic shadings from both him and the orchestra were super throughout the concert.

His one small flaw was the occasional bit of heavy pedaling, smearing sonority in some of the more tortuous passages. As the work closed the evening, the audience obviously hoped for an encore. None was forthcoming. After all, what can you play after that concerto without its becoming a lead balloon?

All-Smiles Serenade

Hardly a greater contrast with that stone-faced concerto can be found than the Second Serenade, which is all smiles and folksy charm. The serenade is scored for the classical orchestra of Haydn and Mozart, minus any violins. This serves to highlight the importance of upper woodwinds against the lushness of the violas, cellos, and basses. It produces a most unusual orchestral coloration, one that other composers would later toy with, most obviously Dvořák in his Second Serenade (though he dropped the violas as well as the violins).

The five-movement Serenade contains both a Scherzo and a Menuetto to emphasize its 18th-century influences. Yet this is North German classicism, a good deal thicker than was favored in Mozart’s Vienna. Chords and doublings tend to be fuller than are typically encountered in a Mozart serenade — Brahms’ cream cheese music rather than Mozart’s whipped cream music. What really stood out was the splendid playing of the Symphony’s wind section, all in perfect balance, a thing undoubtedly owing much to the skills of MTT in fostering it.

MTT opened the concert with a most distinguished performance of (as it’s commonly known) the “Haydn Variations.” Variations are one of the more difficult musical forms to control, if they are to add up to more than an assortment of sonic confetti. Finding a continuous line of logic from the first variation through to the closing notes surpasses mere technical competence. The composer needs a keen appreciation of finite mathematics within sonics. Music, after all, is just the acoustical manifestation of mathematical formations.

Brahms, who was a past master at this, once noted that the key lay in maintaining variation changes to the bass lines. Audiences will hardly be aware of this going on, nor should they, but therein lies the artistry of the achievement.

Then, in an act of sheer chutzpah, Brahms had the gall to end his superb set of variations with a finale that’s another set of variations, a Passacaglia. That’s an even more demanding Baroque form of variations writing, one long out of vogue at the time — in other words, creating a finale to his variations out of an even more demanding set of variations on the original St. Anthony material. (The original tune is from an old Austrian pilgrims song.) In effect, he topped one coup with an even grander one. What a show-off!

The performance was brilliantly on the mark. That did not surprise me, as MTT’s old recording with the London Symphony has long been a personal favorite. The sonics were appropriately rich in sonority, be it for the martial sixth variation, or the ultimate quiet but fast eighth. Above everything, Thomas captured a sense of inner profundity, whether the score was swaying or gingerly gliding. The entire evening struck me as a major triumph for all concerned.

As a nice gesture, Thomas gave solo bows to the three retiring members of the orchestra, all of whom were seated in the hall: violinist Daniel Kobialka (33 years a member), violist Leonid Gesin (29 years), and trombonist Mark Lawrence (33 years). MTT then invited any former members of the orchestra in the house to rise and take a bow. All were applauded with the gratitude they richly deserve.

Brahms composed the gigantic concerto in B flat long after he had stopped playing in public. But, so the story goes, he once transposed the entire piano part up a half step because the instrument had gone flat! (I guess the tuner had gone home.) But even played as written, this is the mother of all piano concertos. And though it “lies better” under the hands than his first concerto, it can still intimidate all but the most intrepid players.

Leif Ove Andsnes confessed to having practiced the piece intensively over his recent vacation, calling it a “hard nut to crack.” (See last week’s feature.) Well, crack it he did, and what he found inside was a dazzling array of intricate passages, iridescent strands of melody, and not a single morsel out of place. This was the Olympian Brahms, with scales like lightning bolts, fiendish double notes at top speed, and all coming out sounding so “simple,” as the composer jokingly described the first movement.

Striking just the right note of compliance and strength in the opening duet with the wonderful French horn, played by Robert Ward, Andsnes showed who was in charge. And, mighty as the orchestra could be, he was able to say, “Bring it on.”

The second movement gives the pianist no chance to rest, but forges on even more passionately. In the middle there is a cadenzalike passage in which Brahms strews his half-step motive all over the keyboard, in octaves, thirds, and sixths, and in both parallel and contrary motion … then asks that it all be played in a whisper. Andsnes proved his fearlessness in this movement, and from that point the concerto built to its most powerful climax.

Creeping Into a Still Place

The piano reenters the concerto in the slow movement, with the most mysterious entrance in the entire literature. In these unison octaves Brahms expresses an awed (and odd) stillness, leaving listeners to feel that he is tiptoeing back into the music, afraid to break its spell. That spell was cast by the “other” Michael, Grebanier, the orchestra’s first cellist, with one of Brahms’ most touching themes. He later set it to words (changing the key to minor). Hearing Grebanier warm up with little bits of it was a moment of preconcert fun.

The outstanding playing of the solo winds and brass in the earlier movements reminded me of how much chamber music there is in this concerto, which has often been called a symphony with piano obbligato. Brahms must have been a model for Arnold Schoenberg when he composed his two concertos half a century later. In this music, the pianist must integrate his part with the changing textures of the orchestra, “accompanying” while always remaining the soloist.

Andsnes, who is well-known as a chamber music player and lieder accompanist, recognizes this. In view of his technique, I can hardly blame him for reveling in the piano versus orchestra aspect of the concerto, in which case MTT was precisely the adversary he needed. I would call it the “Hillary approach” — strong, combative, takes no prisoners.

Contrast this with Sandra Rivers’ recent performance with the Oakland East Bay Symphony. Rivers is a pianist primarily known for her work as an “assisting artist” with the likes of Joshua Bell. She emphasized the piano with orchestra aspect, and the results were deeply moving, albeit in a totally different way.

The last movement, as performed by MTT and LOA, was a rollicking, even jovial affair that seemed to be over before it began. Indeed, it began before I had a chance to awaken from the dreamlike slow movement. The final chord was treated as dominant in preparation for the E-flat tonality that begins the finale, so I guess it made some sense. Slow movement melts into happy finale. In any other concert, at that point we should have gone home happy.

Seeking Out the Melancholic

Yet every story has two sides, and thanks to brilliant programming we heard them both. In the first movement of the Fourth Symphony, composed four years after the piano concerto, it was difficult for the audience (and no doubt for the performers, as well) to make the shift to a much more serious vein, in this last of Brahms’ works in the symphonic genre. The music of the first movement is so lovely that it doesn’t seem possible that all will not end well, in this best-of-all-possible worlds.

The sunny temperament of Brahms is still present to some degree in the Scherzo, the third movement of the symphony. There the triangle tinkles merrily, played to perfection by Jack van Geem. But from the opening sigh in the strings, to the last trumpet of doom, Thomas went for the deep, melancholy song that is the only true way to Brahms’ heart. The sad opening solo in the slow movement, played by the horn, tells the full story of human life and its varieties of grief.

It is a kind of miracle that the orchestra comes together and leads us listeners into a world of compassion and consolation. The chorale, played by three trombones in the last movement, was so beautifully and movingly shaped by Thomas that it made clear that opposites can and do coexist in this tragic, yet ultimately uplifting, work.

But when one of those is Shostakovich’s arduous, anguished First Violin Concerto, another Rachmaninov’s splashy Symphonic Dances, and the third Stravinsky as orchestrator giving his best Tchaikovsky impression, the commonalities seem engulfed by the vast differences of milieu, style, and substance. Indeed, the greatest audible commonality Thursday may have been the disciplined brilliance of the playing, both of the Symphony players and of the soloist in the Shostakovich, violinist Vadim Gluzman.

Not long ago the Shostakovich First was rarely played, but it seems lately to have joined the small clutch of 20th-century concertos every young violin soloist is expected to know. It is a demanding and largely bleak work, dominated by two sizable slow movements and strikingly, if darkly, scored. As one of the pieces Shostakovich shelved for a time around his harrowing travails in 1948, and as (I think) the first of his works to use the “DSCH” motto theme that was to become so familiar in his later works, it occupies a pivotal place in the composer’s output.

(I hesitate to quibble with an annotator so august as Michael Steinberg, who wrote the Symphony’s program note, but it’s not quite right to say, as he does, that the winds in the second movement of the concerto announce the “DSCH” theme. “DSCH” — the notes D, E-flat, C, and B-natural, in German usage — ends with the downward half step between C and B, while the winds’ four-note motif ends with a downward whole step. You do hear “DSCH” — transposed, yet with the right intervals — in the concerto, but only three times: once at the very end of the second movement and twice in the cadenza, and all three times only in the solo violin part. To me that seems significant.)

Gluzman stepped in as soloist in the Shostakovich after the originally scheduled Vadim Repin canceled. The two have more in common than the coincidence of their first names. Gluzman has studied with Zakhar Bron, the Novosibirsk-based violin pedagogue among whose pupils Repin and Maxim Vengerov are perhaps the best-known.

I didn’t catch Gluzman’s recent Tchaikovsky Concerto with the Marin Symphony (see the SFCV review here). I was kicking myself for that omission once the enthusiastic reports of various members of the orchestra began filtering back to me. Hearing Gluzman’s fine new recording of that work, which hit the street immediately afterward, only made the regret keener. (The disc, containing the Glazunov Concerto and the three pieces of Tchaikovsky’s Op. 42 Souvenir d’un Lieu cher in addition to the Tchaikovsky Concerto, is BIS SACD-1432; you can listen to excerpts online here.)

Cord of Sanity

The rich, dark tone and sinewy strength of Gluzman’s recorded Tchaikovsky were also the glories of Thursday’s Shostakovich. The violinist took this assignment at relatively short notice. That he had recourse to the printed music in concert would seem to suggest that he was not yet entirely at ease with the score, but you would never have guessed as much with your eyes closed.

In the slow first and third movements, Gluzman’s deep, concentrated sound and the powerful evenness of his bowing were striking. There was relatively little of the self-conscious vulnerability some violinists have taken to exhibiting in this music. Gluzman’s protagonist appeared to be beset by great sorrows and anxieties, but not actually reduced to an emotional wreck. A cord of sanity and strength ran through the playing, however hysterical the music grew.

That made the enormous third-movement cadenza, for example, more straightforward, less ruminative than it often is, but at the same time more cogent. What it lacked in artful local inflection was more than made up for in emotional directness and urgency. The same went, indeed, for both the slow movements themselves. I admired in particular Gluzman’s way with the opening “Nocturne,” where he conveyed the impression of (if you will) resolutely purposeful wandering as well as any violinist I’ve heard.

I was reminded there of the concerto’s dedicatee, David Oistrakh, whose recorded performances of it give that same impression of inner solidity. As an approach to the slow movements, it has the additional merit of making the other two movements seem less gratuitous, less incongruous. Gluzman was breathtaking in the fast movements, slashing of attack and hurtling forward at speeds that would have seemed reckless had he not been in such evident technical control.

The orchestra dug into Shostakovich’s rich, reedy sonorities with relish, though they were not always in perfect coordination with the solo violin. Gluzman left conductor Gaffigan momentarily in the dust once or twice in the fast movements, and in the great third-movement passacaglia, too, minute disagreements were heard between the solo violin line and one or another of the wind lines.

On the Wing

If the Shostakovich performance made the rest of the program seem comparatively pale, that’s no fault of the playing. The opening bonbon, Stravinsky’s 1941 orchestration of the “Bluebird” pas de deux from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty, proved to feature Stravinsky the able mimic more than Stravinsky the ironic, distancing appropriator of older music. This is not so surprising, given that it was written to slot into a performance of the Tchaikovsky score (parts of the ballet were long available outside the Soviet Union only in piano reduction).

Apart from the necessary reduction of the orchestral string sections to pit-orchestra dimensions (here they were five violins on a single part, four violas, three cellos, and two basses) and the addition of a piano, Stravinsky stuck plausibly close to Tchaikovsky’s own manner. The Symphony players, led appealingly by principal flutist Tim Day in the part of the eponymous Bluebird and seconded by clarinetist Luis Baez, were bubbly, lithe, and graceful.

So was Gaffigan at their helm, perhaps to excess: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a conductor give such meticulous, dancerlike attention to the way line flows from his arms through his wrists to his fingertips. It looked most elegant from the back, but I wonder how easy it is to follow.

As for Rachmaninov’s big, brawny Symphonic Dances, from 1940, both the Symphony and Gaffigan were in taut control of a score that, like most of the composer’s large-scale music, runs a continual risk of sprawl. The playing throughout was crisply and almost casually virtuosic, light on its feet without ever sounding thin or underpowered.

Gaffigan let the orchestra linger in the juicy spots (like the sax-led second theme of the first movement), but the dominant impulse was forward, with an urgency that lent a ghostly whirl to the waltz of the second movement and bore the finale, “Dies irae” references and all, straight and purposefully through to its conclusion.

The Philharmonia is, according to the orchestra’s Web site, “the world’s most recorded orchestra,” with some 1,000 recordings to its credit. Founded in 1945 by the legendary record producer Walter Legge, the orchestra has been led by the finest conductors in the world, including Karajan, Klemperer, Muti, and Sinopoli. Dohnányi, now in his last season as principal conductor, will be succeeded in that position next season by Esa-Pekka Salonen, but will stay on with the orchestra as Honorary Conductor for Life.

Members of the Philharmonia Orchestra

Make no mistake about it: The orchestra is in terrific shape. Its hallmark string sound — warm, well-balanced, and rich — was on full display. Many critics have claimed that this sound is a legacy of the orchestra’s Central European heritage (its years under Karajan and Klemperer), and Dohnányi has done well to continue this tradition.

For me, the highlights of the concerts were the moments when I was able to enjoy slow and quiet passages that featured the strings, such as the second movement of Schumann’s First Symphony, played on Sunday night. The movement showed off well the ensemble’s ability to create beauty through careful attention to bow speed, ornamentation, accentuation, and balance between inner and outer voices. The strings also have an uncanny ability to play extremely softly and yet sound fully resonant, an ability that was on display in the Schumann and also in the first movement of Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony, performed Monday night.

While the Philharmonia’s string sections have always been lauded, its winds have on occasion come under critical fire. From my seat (near the front of the hall in the orchestra section) I found that the winds were consistently overbalanced. Throughout both concerts, it seemed as if special care was being taken to blend the wind sound into the string texture. While this produced wonderful results in terms of sheer sonic beauty, I found myself frustrated by the lack of individual voices coming from the winds, especially during solo sections. And during all but the most climactic of sections, the brass held back and never came to the fore of the texture. Again, this produced beautiful, rounded results, but after hours of such roundness I found myself longing to hear some sharp edges.

Little Sense of Urgency

Here lies the crux of my frustration with the concerts: While the ensemble cannot be faulted on its sound quality or its attention to detail, there was a general lack of excitement and energy, not only from the brass but from the entire ensemble. Dohnányi’s tempi were consistently on the conservative side, ensuring perfect execution but excluding any sense of urgency in faster movements or spaciousness in the slower movements.

Time and again this proved a problem, from the stodgy third movement of the Schumann on Sunday to the earthbound Finale of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on Monday. Matters were made worse by the conductor’s decision to summon the orchestra’s full string forces for the performances of the Schubert and the Beethoven, creating an unpleasant sense of heaviness.

All these problems came together in the performance of Mahler’s First Symphony on Sunday night. Dohnányi consistently chose the tempo of least resistance, ignoring many tempo modifications, both traditional and written. This was a Mahler largely devoid of color, with flawless, beautiful, but drab execution throughout. Once more, the musicians proved their virtuosity time and again throughout the performance, yet without any sense of risk or passion.

The highlight of the two evenings, to my ears, came not during the programmed works at all, but rather with Monday night’s encore, Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 1. For a few minutes, the orchestra performed with verve and excitement, with a sense of abandon and a wild degree of flexibility in terms of tempo. This is the orchestra I had wanted to hear all night — and the night before. Clearly, this orchestra is capable of great beauty and great passion. Next time, can we have more of that, instead of more of the same?