Mr. Gilbert and the Philharmonic players mirrored his precision and warmth, and contributed memorable moments of their own, most notably the otherworldly wind choirs at the start of the closing Adagio.
Pretty soon you could also hear coughing, enough of it to shatter, repeatedly, the intensity Mr. Kalmar created with his careful pacing and the striking balance of the strings, the plaintive offstage trumpet and the dissonant, blaring wind choirs.
Mr. Jansons's curtain-raiser was a trim account of Rossini's "Scala di Seta" Overture that put the spotlight on both the well-blended wind choirs and the nimbleness of the orchestra's strings.
In the best moments, the strings produced a silky, transparent sound, the wind choirs had an appealingly gamy texture, and the percussion gave the music both the gravity and lift it demands.
In a spectacular non sequitur of concert programming, Mr. Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony followed the opera with a complete rendering of Manuel de Falla's "Three-Cornered Hat," in which the orchestra's wind choirs were especially splendid.
Over the course of two evenings and a morning, I heard a huge variety of instruments and ensembles, from a solo piano, to a string trio, to a new piece for wind, brass, mixed choir and tape.
The Music Department also has rehearsals for the school orchestra, chamber choir, wind band and brass ensemble amongst other ensembles.
The strings sounded rich and unified, the wind and brass choirs were impeccably blended.
There was a startling sonority in the scene of Tristan's death: the wind and brass choirs were eerily glassy and smooth, almost electronic in timbre.
In both, the basses and percussion rumbled palpably, and the wind and brass choirs could not have produced a more beautiful blend.
It seems more an orchestra of individuals than it used to be, certainly during the Herbert von Karajan years, when sonorities were polished and wind and brass choirs balanced to within an inch of their lives.
