About twice a year, the New York Philharmonic plays in a church. At Christmastime, they play Handel’s “Messiah” at the Riverside Church. And on Memorial Day, they play a concert at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, in roughly the same neighborhood. The concert is free – but you hope to get more than you pay for.

This year, as last, the concert was conducted by Xian Zhang, formerly assistant conductor of the Philharmonic, now associate conductor. She’s a movin’ on up! Ms. Zhang is a protegee of Lorin Maazel, and Mr. Maazel has made sure to accord her the podium from time to time.

You might have thought that the evening would begin with the national anthem – it was Memorial Day, after all. But no. Orchestras used to play the national anthem before a concert, or opera, quite a bit. But this tradition has been lost in America, even in wartime.

Maybe even especially in wartime!

The dean of the cathedral, however, delivered some nice introductory remarks. He said, “Today is the day on which we pay tribute to those who sacrificed their lives for freedom and justice for all.” That was marvelous, mainly because unexpected (by me, at least).

The concert was a short one, consisting of an opera overture and a great symphony. That the symphony is also popular doesn’t subtract an iota from its greatness.

The overture was that to Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino,” and it is often used as a standalone orchestral piece. George Szell, for example, liked to conduct it (and he did so bracingly, as he did nearly everything). And it was interesting to see in the evening’s program that it was Szell who led the Philharmonic’s first-ever performance of the “Forza” overture, in 1948.

Don’t you wish you had been there?

Ms. Zhang is a competent conductor, and whenever she performs, I say that she is “emphatic” in her gestures. This overture happens to be a good piece for that quality. Ms. Zhang is also a tidy, assured conductor, and those qualities are good for basically anything.

When the orchestra began, I thought, Batman-style, “Holy reverberation!” The reverberation in the cathedral was so great, you had to wait forever for the sound to clear. And from where I was sitting – at the front – the orchestra could have been playing in a bathroom. It was very hard to pick out the notes and lines, because everything was indistinct, blended, overlapping. Kind of a mush. I believe the orchestra played together, but I couldn’t really tell.

I can tell you this: Ms. Zhang’s tempos, in the slower sections, were quite slow indeed (but not quite spoiling). And it was grand to hear Verdi’s tunes, from this wonderful opera. Made me want to sit down and see the whole show. The Met put it on this year. The night I went, it was a disaster, or near disaster, but it was absorbing all the same.

And that great, popular symphony? Tchaikovsky’s Fifth. And the orchestra didn’t begin together, at all. That wasn’t the cathedral, or my position – that was the musicians. Throughout the work, Ms. Zhang was spacious in her tempos, not to say slow. The playing was correct, and often beautiful. But it was also a little languorous, bland, unstirring.

I don’t mean to say that the members of the Philharmonic were phoning it in – they were not. They seemed attentive to Ms. Zhang. And the Philharmonic did not send its junior varsity, for this free, holiday concert. Most of the first-chair men and women were there.

Not in the horn section, however. Playing the famous solo music in Tchaikovsky’s second movement was the associate principal, Jerome Ashby. He was steady as a rock, most satisfying.

Ms. Zhang went right into the third movement, with no pause. She had done the same with the second movement, and would with the fourth. She allowed no talking, and no coughing, this lady. Lorin Maazel likes to move in on a movement, too. In fact, Ms. Zhang seems to have adopted quite a few Maazel moves, and one could do worse.

There was nothing really wrong with this performance of Tchaik 5. And there was nothing really right. The performance was basically free of errors, and free of excesses. But the music lacked its majesty, its swagger, its thrill. It never gripped, and, hackneyed or not, this is a gripping work.

I thought there would be an encore: the Trepak from “The Nutcracker”? “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”? “The Stars and Stripes Forever”? No, nothing. I thought that was a bit of a cheat. But I heard no grumbles from the crowd.