The downside of the splendid decision by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to engage Riccardo Muti as their new music director is that it underscores the finitude of their current regency, now destined to last only two more seasons. Having two of the world’s greatest musical minds, Pierre Boulez and Bernard Haitink, as caretakers, the ensemble could afford to take its time and make the proper decision. In its first appearance in New York since the inception of the Muti era, Maestro Haitink led the CSO at Carnegie Hall on Thursday evening in a distinguished performance of Symphony No. 1 of Gustav Mahler.

Mr. Haitink earned his reputation as a stellar Mahler conductor with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, but, as he demonstrated last season in New York with the Beethoven symphonies, he has rethought many of his earlier conceptions. This reading of the first symphony was decidedly on the slow side and concerned more with clarity and contrasting timbre than with drama or power. In the first movement, the playing of the orchestra was immediately impressive, the strings intoning the melody from Mahler’s song “Ging heut morgen übers Feld” with delicious sweetness and rounded lyrical line. The ensemble sound as a whole was superb, each family of instruments clear and distinct. I sometimes have to turn my head 90 degrees to catch some beloved inner voices, but this maneuver was completely unnecessary during this extremely well-defined performance.

The second movement continued at a glacial pace, allowing the listener to relax and enjoy such exquisite coloristic contrasts as the slight but meaningful dichotomy between muted and non-muted violins. The playing throughout was flawless, but the Maestro’s studious approach neglected the lilt of the dance music, the imprimatur of the Viennese dance band. A good bit of the nostalgic atmosphere of the movement was simply left back on Lake Michigan.

The third movement was the most successful, Mr. Haitink building a complex structure beginning with the tomfoolery of the “Frère Jacques” theme played in the bass fiddle section and ending with a glorious chorale. The slowness fit the funereal side of this Grand Guignol and the players accomplished much with very tight discipline. The winds in particular were delightful.

But Haitink giveth and Haitink taketh away. The finale was rather on the dull side, the persistent trek beginning to wear thin. This orchestra’s ability to play at a sustained double forte without any perceptible loss of intonation is astounding, the lower brass arguably the best in the world. However, some of the spirit and much of the élan vital of the work was absent.

Did the French horn players stand at the conclusion of the movement to intone their final flourishes? Indeed not, but for once I agreed with the conductor’s decision to keep them seated. This was clearly not that kind of performance, relying on scholarship rather than fealty to the score’s wilder effects. The Minnesota Orchestra was in town last month with the same piece. Although they committed a few gaffes and did not have the polished sound of the Chicago Symphony, their rendition under the dynamic Osmo Vanska was much the preferable performance.

The program was augmented by an interesting account of a piece of Ravel’s juvenilia, the “Menuet antique,” and Mr. Haitink and the richly hued mezzo of Kelley O’Connor did what they could with the “Neruda Songs” of Peter Lieberson. Those of us who heard the Boston Symphony performance with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson could not help but feel the pangs of loss, but the ditties themselves are little more than Hollywood retreads. Mr. Lieberson does make one smell the bougainvilleas, however, and that’s a neat trick.

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Mahler may have been the model for the protagonist in Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice,” but it was rather Wagner who expired there in 1883, prompting his father-in-law Franz Liszt to pen “La lugubre gondola” in his memory. On Saturday evening at Zankel Hall, pianist Llyr Williams opened a superb chamber concert with this atmospheric piece.

Beyond the heartfelt emotion of the work describing the conveyance of Wagner’s body in a black-draped barque, the ear is astounded to experience such an advanced harmonic language. Liszt succeeds in transporting the soul of his daringly progressive nephew with a fine example of what they in tandem called the music of the future. Mr. Williams produced a stately performance, holding individual notes poetically and grandiosely, allowing time for the thoughtful and the cathartic. Even the spaces between the notes breathed the air of profundity.

Although it is true that Benny Goodman commissioned Béla Bartók to write “Contrasts” in 1938, it is a myth that the composer was the pianist for the world premiere performance upstairs at Carnegie Hall. Bartók was not here yet and that honor went to Endre Petri, Bartók performing an expanded version during subsequent evenings that included violinist Joseph Szigeti.

Clarinetist Martin Fröst and violinist Soovin Kim joined Mr. Williams for this lively and disciplined version. There are many similarities to the Liszt. Both composers were Hungarian. Both were trailblazers in the science of ethnomusicology, Liszt publishing the first scholarly book on the subject of Gypsy music and Bartók taking his tape recorder into the wilds of the Balkans to document thousands of disappearing melodies. But most amazing is the sense of common vocabulary. Had the Liszt been written in 1938, it would still have seemed futuristic.

This rendition was notable for its dexterity and nimbleness, each of the three men skipping expertly across minefields of rhythmic complexity. There was much spirit and boundless energy, with kaleidoscopic color changes, and expressive runs and trills. However, an ideal rendition of this unusual piece needs to emphasize why Bartok titled the piece “Contrasts” in the first place. There was just a bit too much homogeneity of sound in this otherwise laudable realization. The Zankel crowd rewarded the players with an enthusiastic and prolonged ovation.

What Olivier Messiaen once called his “mere striving and childish stammering,” the “Quartet for the End of Time,” rounded out the program. Cellist Christian Poltéra, who, along with the other artists on this program, has been a beneficiary of the largesse of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust, joined Messrs. Kim and Fröst, while a trustee of their donor foundation had her turn at the piano. Her name? Mitsuko Uchida.

Ms. Uchida led a dazzling performance, emphasizing pinpoint precision and thrilling coordination. Each of the three men was excellent in his solo movement, but what really made this a very special reading was the ensemble work in the faster roller-coaster rides laced with avian outcries and angelic fanfares. The end of time is glorious for Messiaen, but does not show itself before much cataclysmic and multicolored activity. Messiaen takes the Lisztian concept to the next level: This is not music of the future but rather music after the future has passed.

It was challenging to listen to such dynamic music making at Zankel Hall. The obtrusive sounds of the subway made the pianissimos of Mr. Fröst in the movement titled “Abyss of the Birds” difficult to appreciate and often seemed to arrive on the scene just as the ensemble was gliding into a particularly delicate passage. But perhaps it is a bit precious to complain about the physical surroundings when experiencing this particular work. At the world premiere, conditions were slightly worse. After all, the setting was a Nazi prison camp.