If your second season is your “sophomore season,” is your third season your junior season? Somehow it doesn’t sound right. In any event, Lorin Maazel is completing his third season as music director of the New York Philharmonic. And he is doing so with a Mahler symphony, as has been his custom in New York. He ended his first season with the Mahler Second; he ended his second with the Third; and this week, we get the Sixth.

In a concert two weeks ago, he seemed to me tired, out of sorts. The next week, he was forced off the podi um, with illness. Would Mr. Maazel be himself on Wednesday night, for the first performance of the Mahler Sixth?

The answer, in a word, is yes and no. (That’s three words, I realize.)

The opening movement was quite strange, even for a quirky maestro. It wasn’t arresting, crackling, threatening, as this music often is. It was rather gentle, tame, introspective. Did you ever think you would hear a mellow reading of the first movement of the Mahler Sixth? It was also on the slow side, sometimes bordering on sluggish. And execution in the orchestra was wanting.

Mr. Maazel messed with the rhythm, and messed with Mahler’s phrases. He never let you forget he was there; you were never quite able to enter that Mahlerian world, divorced from ours. Unashamedly idiosyncratic, Mr. Maazel seemed to be fishing around in someone else’s symphony. But everything he did had intelligence – had an argument – and this would have been even more apparent if the orchestra had been playing decently.

Readers may wish to know that Mr. Maazel used a score – surprising for him, in a piece so familiar. Mr. Maazel dispenses with a score even in rarities.

The conductor placed the slow movement second, before the Scherzo, which is his right: Mahler himself did it both ways, and the best Mahler exponents have done it both ways. I happen to prefer the slow movement in the third position, but we need not argue that out now.

The movement’s first notes – which are pickup notes, no less – were mannered, unnatural. Very annoying. And much of the rest of this movement was similar: stilted, as well as ragged, which is a bad combination. Mr. Maazel indulged in huge, barely sensible ritards, and the music lost shape. But, again, his intelligence came through: He did some marvelous milking toward the end of the movement, and the very final pages were gratifyingly accurate: Even a pizzicato note was together, which was a semi-miracle. (We would not be so lucky later.)

Most successful of all the movements was the Scherzo. From its downbeat, it was compelling and right: It had some of the musical sinew that Mahler should have. The Scherzo’s trio was bizarre – more bizarre than it needs to be – but Mr. Maazel was being Mr. Maazel. He applied his funny emphases, his weird elongations, a hundred characteristic touches. Seventy percent you could accept; about the other 30, you could say, “Well, maybe.”

As surprising as the opening of the first movement was the opening of the last: It was rather subdued, not rhapsodic or straining. And like the first movement, the finale did not bristle, crackle, or threaten. At times, it struck me as soulless, too clinical – too intellectual, in a way. But Mr. Maazel always makes you listen, whether you’re happy in your chair or not. And you got the feeling that he would conduct the symphony differently the next night, and differently the night after that. The ending of this work was excruciatingly manipulated: Every note was conducted, placed – but it was almost gripping.

A strange and brilliant conductor, in a strange and brilliant piece, by a strange and brilliant composer. Sort of fits.

Wednesday night was Retiree Night at the Philharmonic, with many former members in the audience – wearing red boutonnieres – and this season’s retirees announced from the stage. Three of them spoke, all gracefully and enjoyably. Joseph Robinson, the principal oboist, went in for Shakespearean allusions, and remembered “scraping reeds like an idiot.” Of course, Mr. Robinson never did anything like an idiot.

Years ago, he recalled, he asked Marcel Tabuteau, the renowned oboist and teacher, what had been the most satisfying period of his career. The older man reflected and said, “There were a few good notes – and they’re still ringing.”