I have always had a special fondness for the Symphony No. 2 of Robert Schumann. Primarily because its perceived problems of compositional coherence were intriguingly unresolved; it has come down to posterity in a rather wild, raw state. I was thus disappointed to learn that James Levine had acquiesced to the demand of his Boston Symphony players that the work be replaced next season by the heavily revised Fourth. When I discovered the reason for the substitution, my annoyance turned to shock. The switch was made because the D Minor is shorter than the C Major (by approximately twelve minutes), and therefore less taxing for the musicians.

These same instrumentalists have already complained about the increase in rehearsal and programming time under Mr. Levine. The net result for Tanglewood patrons this summer is that the Maestro has jettisoned the overtures for his proposed concerts. In an effort to resolve the situation, BSO management, the Boston Globe reported, hired a consultant, who pointed out that a Mahler symphony can demand as many as 6,400 left-hand finger movements from a string player. Yes, the honeymoon is definitely over at Symphony Hall.

Of course, much of this extra rehearsal time is the result of Mr. Levine’s penchant for contemporary or unfamiliar music, and three of these works were featured on Monday evening’s Carnegie bill of fare.

After vilifying Arnold Schonberg and his school for three decades, Igor Stravinsky embraced dodecaphonism in his later years. Especially admiring of Webern, he wrote that although the miniaturist was “doomed to a total failure in a deaf world of ignorance and indifference he inexorably kept on cutting out his diamonds…”

Peter Serkin, whose father was rehearsal pianist for Webern in the 1930s, offered one of Stravinsky’s efforts in this style, the Movements for piano and orchestra. The Russian was older than Webern, and so, strictly speaking, the piece cannot be described as epigonic. But it is a pale imitation of the Viennese. Messrs. Serkin and Levine played it expertly, the spidery interplay between timbral extremes and long, silent backgrounds evocative of the mountain atmosphere of Webern’s futuristic Tyrol.

Charles Wuorinen has had a big year for a serialist. His opera “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” was premiered at City Opera, and, although I was not especially impressed and rather submissive in my notice, I do feel a certain bond with a composer of almost exactly my own age, who obviously grew up with the Second Viennese sounds in his ear.

Mr. Wuorinen’s music evokes the 1950s for a certain group of us as perfectly as Elvis does for others. Messrs. Serkin and Levine caught just the right idiom in the Fourth Piano Concerto, a derivative piece relying heavily on the Schonberg work in the genre and also the First Piano Concerto of Leon Kirchner. My only dissatisfactions with the BSO were blaring trumpets and an overall dominance of belligerent orchestral sound over keyboard delicacy.

The concerto was a Levine commission, as was the opening, “Darkbloom” of John Harbison. Of considerably less consequence than the Wuorinen, this overture in search of an opera was decidedly inspired by Hollywood – there is some messiness about a stillborn Lolita opera – and sounded like scraps from Bernard Herrmann’s cutting room floor. The Boston strings, who overall had a terrific night, played the stuffings out of the piece. Both composers were on hand to receive the accolades of the crowd.

After intermission (and a lot of carping in the lobby concerning the Maestro’s programming), Mr. Levine led a rugged and only occasionally ragged Brahms Symphony No. 2, marred somewhat by wayward trumpets; a heartbreaking cracked note in the second movement horn solo; and a deliberate tempo for the Adagio that rather maddeningly isolated each and every note. There was much redemption, however, in a glorious finale, one of the most exciting – after a first note of less than precise coordination – that I have heard live for many years. This conductor has no problem allowing his players to breathe. Phrasing and bowing decisions worked very well. The horns were allowed to sing out strongly at the work’s conclusion.

Significantly, under the circumstances, Mr. Levine chose not to take the repeat in the first movement of the Brahms, shortening the proceedings by a good three minutes. I don’t think that the players would have minded too much if he had exercised his option to follow the printed score, however. After all, I counted only 2,784 left-hand movements in this particular piece.