The Philadelphia Orchestra plays Grieg, Bartók, and Sibelius

The fact is that the orchestra hasn’t regained financial stability, and, even if an agreement is reached, it will still remain under full strength, and its salary structure will still be significantly below its peers in New York and Chicago. It says something about the musicians’ commitment to the orchestra and the city, and doubtless about the leadership of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, that it hasn’t lost first-chair players, although Ricardo Morales’s departure for New York was a near miss. Of course, this is a city that can barely keep its public schools running. But you have to wonder about a management that hasn’t found a way to tap the city’s deep pockets four years on from near-disaster and about a civic elite that hasn’t stepped up on its own for its premier institution. Or is union-busting really that much fun?

Yes, I’d rather talk about the music, too. We are going from the sublime to the kitschy this year, with Mahler on the one hand and John Williams on the other, and few concerts that veer far off the beaten track. This week, the season’s second, offered two substantial works with a lollipop, the latter being Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite No. 1. Grieg himself said of part of his own score that he literally couldn’t bear to hear it, though the complete music — rarely performed — is more than a curiosity as a response to Henrik Ibsen’s most experimental play. The first suite does give the strings an opportunity to shine, though not much for them to dig into.

But seriously, folks

The major works were Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2, with Gil Shaham as soloist, and the Sibelius Fifth Symphony. For some decades after Bartók’s death in 1945, the Second Concerto was considered the fiddle concerto of the 20th century, rivaled only by that of Sibelius. It was also known then simply as the Violin Concerto, its predecessor, composed 30 years earlier but never taken up or promoted by its composer, having simply been laid aside. The two works do, indeed, almost seem to have come from two different pens, the First Concerto being a moodily Impressionist work, and the Second brilliant and bristling, although less aggressively Modernist than the Bartók of a few years before might have been.

The striding, quirkily marchlike theme that opens the work immediately suggests a work of major ambition, but the violin’s entrance indicates a much more sinuous path, and the score as a whole plays soloist and orchestra off against each other to fascinating effect — a conversation in which two different languages are frequently spoken.

Gil Shaham’s tone was less assertive than that of many other performers who have tackled the work, but his playing was virtuosic in the best sense, and many of his effects were sheerly dazzling. As a performer, he seems to be having a very good time, with smiles and nods to his colleagues, but he is also the anti-Lang Lang, not only completely committed to the music but also, in his occasional drift toward the podium, almost seeming bent on disappearing up the conductor’s sleeve. Nézet-Séguin, for his part, handled the often-brash accompaniment well, and both men seemed not just pleased with the result but delighted with the collaboration; at any rate, I have never seen a conductor and soloist so chummy at the end of a performance, and their pleasure was infectious. Shaham threw in a Bach gavotte as an encore, while the string players looked on as attentively as if they were at a master class.

To breathe without drifting

The last time I heard the Sibelius Fifth with the Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle was making a complete hash of it. You can see, though, why the Philadelphians are a great Sibelius orchestra. His horns roll in like a great fogbank, and the strings beg for richness. Sibelius is pegged as a post-Wagnerian, but that is true only in the sense of someone who does not imitate but simply inhabits an established language naturally. He took from Bruckner the technique of balancing long, rolling periods with episodes built on tight, intimate figuration, but nothing in Sibelius could be mistaken for Bruckner: His sound is utterly distinct. In playing him, the trick is to let the music breathe while not permitting it to drift. Christoph Eschenbach, although not noted as a Sibelius conductor, had that knack; Nézet-Séguin prefers his music energetic. His performance was certainly more than satisfactory, and the orchestra was robust and shimmering as always, but there is a certain dimension in the music he has yet to reach.

Now, to get that dollars-and-cents business out of the way, and to give this great orchestra the commitment it gives the city.