Bramwell Tovey and the Philadelphia Orchestra on New Year's Eve

“Shake hands with someone you’ve never met before,” Tovey advised the gathering in Verizon Hall, thereby breaking the ice among strangers and subconsciously planting the encouraging thought that 2017 might bring some pleasant surprises to offset the impending prospect of a U.S. president who suffers from narcissistic personality disorder.

Actually, Tovey won his audience even before he strode on stage, when his disembodied voice announced, “Photographing or recording this concert is strictly prohibited, unless you feel like it.”

In the course of an evening of favorites by Bernstein, Gershwin, and of course Johann Strauss the younger, Tovey demonstrated himself a capable conductor and a deft jazz pianist but above all a comedian equally adept at well-timed one-liners and facial mugging. Introducing Strauss’s Emperor Waltz, Tovey exhorted the audience to “picture elegant ladies in long white gloves that cover all their tattoos.” When a mobile phone went off in the audience, Tovey happily reassured the offender, “Don’t feel self-conscious. Just answer it. We’ll wait.”

If Tovey was the ideal choice to lead a New Year’s Eve concert, the same couldn’t be said for the evening’s soloist. The soprano Tracy Dahl possesses a coloratura voice well-suited for opera but less so for popular fare like Gershwin’s “Fascinating Rhythm” and “Lady Be Good.” After she departed early in the second act, Tovey carried the festive mood the rest of the way, which was just as well. The man is a genuine hoot. Too bad New Year’s Eve comes only once a year, for his sake as well as ours.