During his career, George Balanchine made a number of abstract one-act ballets using music from 19th-century composers, often written originally to accompany three-act ballets of narrative and spectacle. A frequently repeated tenet of the Balanchine aesthetic is that his doing so distilled the true essence of the full-scale work. Nothing could less support this axiom than Balanchine’s “Raymonda Variations,” which opened New York City Ballet’s Matters of the Heart program last week.

There is virtually no connection between Balanchine’s version and the original 1898 ballet choreographed by Petipa. Balanchine’s “Raymonda Variations” is something entirely apart. In this suite of dances, drawn from Glazunov’s score, Balanchine takes a highly subjective approach to the music. Everything here bustles along at a clipped pace that is closer to modern inclinations than to Imperial ballet. Balanchine’s creativity is as impressive as ever, but his “Raymonda Variations” can seem over-crowded, over-accented, over-syncopated within the phrase and in relation to the music.

The ballet is led by a principal ballerina and cavalier, and supported by five solo women and an all-women corps de ballet. All the variations are very difficult, and frequently turn into obstacle courses at the fast tempi. Among the soloists, Tiler Peck delivered the best variation. Her hummingbird steps were redolent of the canary fairy in Petipa’s “Sleeping Beauty” — one of Balanchine’s favorite ballets.

In the ballerina role, Ashley Bouder extended a jerky développé in the duet that Balanchine set to Glazunov’s dream adagio. Even though Balanchine also typically hastened this once leisurely step, Ms. Bouder should have been less abrupt. On the other hand, her obdurate arabesque in the coda was a refreshing surprise. Replacing the originally scheduled Benjamin Millepied, Andrew Veyette struggled not to be turned into mincemeat by this intricate choreography rendered torturous by the tempo.

Balanchine’s “The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” made in 1975 to excerpts from Bizet’s “Jeux d’Enfants,” points out the crucial importance to ballet of dolls and puppets. Their dear little falterings supply a distancing that allows us to see our own human foibles, without getting defensive. At Thursday’s performance, Megan Fairchild and Daniel Ulbricht made their debuts as coquettish ballerina doll and loyal-unto-death soldier, and they seemed to have instantly made these roles their own. Ms. Fairchild’s opening pose anticipated the moment when she would crank herself up into a semblance of life. The doll heroine never quite gets the hang of locomotion: Mock tragedy ensues when she recklessly throws open a window and is blown into the fireplace. Ms. Fairchild and Mr. Ulbricht managed to be genuinely romantic even as they supplied a miniaturized send-up of courtship and romance.

Christopher Wheeldon’s “The Nightingale and the Rose” is based on Oscar Wilde’s parable on the self-sacrifice of the artist. A nightingale stains a white rose with her own blood for the sake of the passing amorous fancy of a student — his heartthrob will not accept red. “Nightingale” is a trenchant experience for the audience and a productive exercise for the choreographer, forcing Mr. Wheeldon to focus himself on more than simply matching steps to music. The duet between selfless nightingale Wendy Whelan and selfish student Tyler Angle is an interlocking, mirroring encounter that is a matter of mutual regard, not union. Both dancers supplied all that the choreography asked for and more.

The Matters of the Heart program closed with “Robert Schumann’s ‘Davidsbündlertänze,'” one of Balanchine’s final works, which he made replete with obvious references to the dissolution of Schumann’s sanity. But a lot of the choreography concentrates instead on sending the dancers on fast, high-stepping zig-zags around the stage that are unusual in the Balanchine canon. Thursday night’s performance featured four debuts in the eight-member cast. Abi Stafford enveloped herself in the choreography’s bobbing and dodging. Janie Taylor’s fluid reach and headlong rush perfectly embodied the overflowing banks of Schumann’s feverish composition. Partnering Darci Kistler here for the first time, Stephen Hanna seemed to have his hands full keeping pace with Ms. Kistler’s over-vivacious attack.

Sara Mearns’s schedule this season has been packed. By the time she got to this ballet on Thursday night, she had already danced not only one of the “Raymonda” solos, but also the role of willfull object of Mr. Angle’s pursuit in “Nightingale.” Ms. Mearns’s role in ‘Davidsbündlertänze” was created in 1980 by Karin von Aroldingen, then a mature ballerina for whom Balanchine’s invention seemed to necessitate an acting flavor and emotional motivation. The role strongly suggests the influence of Clara Schumann. In her debut, Ms. Mearns seemed to be dancing the role in a manner more appropriate to her youth and relative inexperience: She danced from outside in, re-creating the innately communicative postures and steps and letting the emotion text resonate.

Debuts also enlivened Saturday night’s Russian Treasures program at NYCB. In “Serenade,” Kaitlyn Gilliland was a tall and rangy, but not domineering, Dark Angel.

In “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2,” Savannah Lowery made her debut in the pas de trois ballet and gave one of her most admirably collected performances. In the lead role, Ms. Bouder was a powerhouse, but not a loose cannon. At times, her attack was too blunt for passages in which her limbs needed to sound the high, vitreous frequencies of a piano cadenza, but her speed, precision, and authority were prodigious.

Balanchine originally made this ballet in 1941, when it was titled “Ballet Imperial.” It was then an explicit tribute to St. Petersburg and its ballet culture. In 1973, Balanchine stripped away a lot of the monarchial trappings and renamed the ballet generically for the music. Nevertheless, the etiquette of the danseur noble is built into the choreography; that created problems when the curtain went up on Saturday night. Too many in the male ensemble seemed afraid to look pompous as they strolled and gestured in would-be princely protocol, which is probably why too many of them did seem stiff and pompous. Even Jonathan Stafford, as Mr. Bouder’s cavalier, seemed unsure of how to energize the space without actually dancing steps. Vincent Paradiso and Christian Tworzyanski, Ms. Lowery’s partners in the Pas de Trois, initially seemed as inhibited as the rest of the male ensemble. But when they began to dance with Ms. Lowery, they ignited a Roman candle intensity that lent these roles an increased importance.