When the London Symphony Orchestra opened the Great Performers Series at Avery Fisher Hall last season, I wrote in these pages that their performance of Vaughan Williams and Walton symphonies would probably stand as the best of the entire year. This turned out to be true, and this season they’re back with a vengeance, inaugurating, under guest conductor Bernard Haitink on Saturday evening, a five-concert survey of all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies, quite simply the cornerstone of Western music.

Beethoven’s Third Symphony is the first actual piece of thoroughly Romantic music, classical proportions shattered by depths of emotions never before plumbed. A successful performance of the “Eroica” must both convey grandeur on an epic scale and express the most intimate of feelings. Among living conductors, no one has achieved this delicate balance better than Mr. Haitink.

Having recorded the definitive version of the symphonies in 1987 and reissuing them as part of the 100th anniversary of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra (they weren’t yet “Royal” in those days), Mr. Haitink has rethought the nine slightly. Tempi are brisker now, closer to the composer’s original metronome markings, and are unfurled in his new set of CDs on the LSO’s own record label. On Saturday, the Allegro con brio was indeed faster than the norm, but not inordinately so.

The playing was absolutely stellar, entrances and exits crisp and precise, phrasing decisions confidently coordinated. When maestro wanted forte, he got forte. He gestured to indicate a small accelerando, and it appeared organically. Wind passages were clean, with individual notes avian in clarity. The overall string sound was remarkably limpid, never overlapping.

The performance had its flaws, however. The funeral march was the weakest movement, the bouncy tempo simply out of place. Only the most proficient of conductors can highlight the chilling juxtaposition of Hegelian historical synthesis and Tolstoy’s descriptive sense of a soldier’s death, and none of the solemnity and grief was thoroughly processed at this speed Saturday night. The scherzo fared much better, with the net result note-perfect expostulation.

The finale began with such alacrity, it seemed no orchestra comprised of human beings could pull it off without errors. This extremely well-rehearsed ensemble, however, was up to the task, creating a solid sense of propulsion and excitement while hitting every note in its exact center. Seldom have I heard such accurate, sustained intonation.

Still, there was a sense of enunciation for its own sake. I would have happily endured a few clunkers in exchange for more empathy. Great “Eroicas” are more than just sharps and flats, staccatos and legatos.

If anyone other than Beethoven had written the Symphony No. 2, he or she would be heralded as one of the great masters of the late Classical era. But as part of the Beethovenian oeuvre, this elegant and graceful work is often overshadowed by its mates. Mr. Haitink was really in his element here, shaping an ideally proportioned group of statues to stand as reminders of man’s ultimate godly nature. This much smaller version of the full orchestra managed an unexpectedly compact and fresh performance.

There are still three concerts left in this series. If there are any tickets available, grab them and go.You won’t have an opportunity to hear the London Symphony perform with so much discipline again, once Valery Gergiev gets his hooks into them.

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As Lincoln Center begins its week surveying the nine symphonies of Beethoven, it is fitting that the Juilliard Orchestra started things off with a performance of the work that quickly became known as “Beethoven’s Tenth.”

After Otto Dessoff conducted the world premiere of Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 in 1876, the composer approached him excitedly and exclaimed, “I never thought that my music could sound so good!” Had he been in attendance at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater on Thursday evening, he would have been amazed at the high level of play of an ensemble of young players.

A longtime director of the Minnesota Orchestra, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, led a rough-hewn and dignified performance of the mighty work. Individual performances were extraordinary, especially in the wind section. Although the overall orchestral sound was a little top-heavy with violins, the net result was a solemn rendition of an undeniable masterpiece. The piece can easily be made or broken at the back of the orchestra, stage right, but this night the horn section — Danielle Kuhlmann, Alana Vegter, Megan Marranca, Tianxia Wu, and Sydney Braunfeld — was spectacular. From the calls in the finale to the “voices ascending to Heaven” (Brahms’s own description) to the splendid chorales, this was music-making of a very high order. Don’t worry, mom and dad, each of them can make it as a professional hornist, if that’s what they really want in life.

The conducting, all business and little poetry, was a bit too straightforward for my taste. The “Un poco Allegretto e grazioso” didn’t have that magical rocking lilt, so intimately comforting in the midst of so much grandeur. But perhaps Mr. Skrowaczewski, a savvy leader of youth orchestras, knew this was the right approach for the group at this particular time of year. Elasticity of phrasing and 19th-century strophe lengths are probably topics for the second semester syllabus.

Regular readers of these pages will know that last week I commented on how often I write the phrase “a student of Seymour Lipkin.” Well, here I go again, as You You Zhang supplied exuberant physicality as she wove a finely wrought and surprisingly elegant blanket for that old warhorse, the Piano Concerto No. 4 of Camille Saint-Saens.

Also on the program was Music at Night, a work from 1960, Mr. Skrowaczewski’s first season in Minneapolis. With a beginning straight out of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, we quickly entered the world of 1940s modernism. This evening, the Polish octogenarian re-created the bebop he wrote back in the day, and it was positively endearing. He doesn’t appear to have lost a single step, and his young charges responded with colorful and invested excitement.

London Symphony Orchestra until October 10 (Lincoln Center, 212-721-6500).