The New York Philharmonic and Lorin Maazel will cap their Brahms festival tomorrow night, with a program they first performed on Saturday night. On it are two works: the Variations on a Theme by Haydn and “A German Requiem.”

It is always a question, whether to perform the Requiem alone or offer something else, as a kind of appetizer. About an hour long, the Requiem is not quite a complete program — and yet, given its holy and satisfying substance, it can certainly stand alone.

I remember, when I was small, André Previn came to town to conduct a program of Brahms’s “Tragic Overture” and the Requiem. Only he decided to scrap the overture, announcing from the stage, “You really don’t need anything with the Requiem. And when we come again, we’ll play the ‘Tragic Overture’ twice.” My boy self was not amused or mollified.

As I’ve written a hundred times, Lorin Maazel is a fascinatingly strange and uneven conductor. On Friday morning, he conducted two Brahms symphonies — the Third and the Fourth — and did so balkily and upsettingly. You know: Much of the music was stop-start, push-pull. Mr. Maazel was like an orator stuttering through his speech, only doing so on purpose. He was without flow — without Maazelian mojo.

And Saturday night? He conducted the Haydn Variations sanely and satisfyingly. He was a little deliberate, but he was also logical, having a firm grasp on the score. The variations built intelligently. And the orchestra sounded rich and disciplined. The Finale — a wonderful capstone — was warm, stately, and uplifting.

When he put down his baton, Mr. Maazel smiled broadly — you don’t always see that — and he should have.

The Requiem, too, was somewhat deliberate, with Mr. Maazel elongating the music, and sometimes overmanaging it. As so often happens, we heard unusual emphases from him. But you know? Maybe those emphases are right — and maybe other conductors are wrong to overlook them. Mr. Maazel was always defensible, and musical.

He conveyed the gravity of the piece, of course, but a gravity leavened with spiritual calm and happiness. Standing before sprawling forces, he deployed his famous baton technique to worthy ends. He was magisterial and wise — and he was giving the performance his all. No phoning in on this occasion.

In many hearings, I’m not sure I have ever heard the New York Choral Artists (Joseph Flummerfelt, director) perform better. They were light and transparent where they should have been, stormy and fearsome where they should have been — and laudably on pitch.

Matthias Goerne was the baritone soloist, proffering that astonishingly beautiful voice. In this music, you may ask for a bigger and sterner voice — Mr. Goerne may be a tad lyrical, even beautiful, for it. But he still did the job. And the soprano soloist was Celena Shafer, not to be confused with another soprano, Christine Schäfer. She had a beatific look on her face, and she sang her music the same way.

Incidentally, New Yorkers may remember the last time the Philharmonic had performed “A German Requiem”: about a week after September 11.

In any case, Mr. Maazel and the orchestra are finishing up their Brahms festival. Next season, they will open with a Tchaikovsky festival. They seem to have a slogan: “It’s hip to be square.” They may not win the love of critics, but they should win the love of audiences. And if they perform the music well — freshly, instructively, memorably — who can really complain?