Johannes Brahms lived just long enough to have his voice recorded by Thomas Alva Edison. In a high-pitched greeting, the autodidact composer introduced himself as “Doctor Brahms,” so proud he was of his scholarly reputation as a collector of scores. To open part three of the New York Philharmonic’s six-installment Brahms festival, conductor Lorin Maazel chose the composer’s Academic Festival Overture, written on the occasion of his being presented with an honorary degree.

George Szell used to despair of modern American musicians catching the unique phrasing of this piece, due to its dependence on old German drinking and fraternal songs. Mr. Maazel had drilled his charges well, though, as after some initial muddiness, they confidently captured the rough-hewn spirit of the piece.

Mr. Maazel apparently admires violinist Julia Fischer, as he often appears with her and we have heard her more than once in New York in recent years. Ms. Fischer is young, makes a pleasant appearance, and is excruciatingly dull. Her tone is thin and unremarkable, but her biggest flaw is her commitment to drain the music before her of any lifeblood or emotional content.

Had it not been so irritating, it would have been comical to observe the interplay between Ms. Fischer and the Philharmonic violins, who had a very good night under the leadership of principal associate concertmaster Sheryl Staples. When the violins imbued their phrases with the warmest of plush Romanticism, they were answered back by a soloist who employed no vibrato and little elongation of line. If anything, the dynamic should have been the other way around. Knowing that first chair players Glenn Dicterow and Carter Brey would be the soloists in part four of the festival, we would all have been better served if Ms. Staples had been the featured violinist this night.

The Philharmonic has a new principal oboist this season and Liang Wang made the most of his lush solo at the beginning of the Adagio. He was so involving, in fact, that even Ms. Fischer turned around to watch him. Sadly, once the violin took over, the elastic melodiousness of the theme was replaced with a desiccated laboratory specimen. It is difficult to know who was responsible for the snail’s pace of the movement — although Mr. Maazel is fond of those glacial tempi — but the combination of skeletal and enervated was simply deadly. The title of the festival as a whole is Brahms the Romantic. In Ms. Fischer’s hands, it could be renamed Brahms the Prosaic. An encore of solo Bach only added to the tedium.

After intermission, Maestro took the measure of the First Symphony, encouraging his players to intone powerfully and shaping this majestic work like a Greek Classical statue. There were microphones every few feet and the configuration of the orchestra, with the lower brass separated from the group deep in the far stage left corner, indicated that some sort of recording was taking shape. If the Phil releases just the overture and the symphony, then I would recommend it for your CD collection.

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Part four of the festival began Friday with a wise programming decision. Since the menu featured the two sunniest Brahms orchestral works, Mr. Maazel opened with a contrasting effort, the “Tragic” Overture.

This concert was all over the map, but at least it consistently improved. The performance of the overture was not a good one, unfocused and rather flabby. Missing was that sense of the inevitable, inexorable fate that dogs the hero, the clenched Beethovenian fist replaced this day by only a wagging finger. Brahms composed this serious dramatic tone poem as a companion to the Academic Festival and conducted its second performance on the same evening as the world premiere of the happier piece at the University of Breslau. The composer, who once asked his publisher to place a picture of the suicidal Werther on the cover of his Piano Quartet in C Minor, does not seem to have had a particular tragedy in mind this time, although there is speculation that, like Wagner, he wished during this period to set the Faust story to music.

The crowd seemed to recognize the missing elements in this performance, as there was a vivid contrast between Thursday’s response to the Academic Festival, wherein Mr. Maazel was compelled to come back for a second bow, and the tepid and fleeting applause for this effort, which hardly allowed him to get off of the stage accompanied by any appreciative noise whatsoever.

The Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra, known as the Double, was inspired by walks that the composer took on his vacations, the sound of the gigantic Alpenhorn, and his own Second Symphony. It is a masterful mood piece not often performed because of its requirement for two outstanding soloists. The Philharmonic used its own principals, with predictable results.

Cellist Carter Brey began the work with a declarative soliloquy that set the bar for his yeomanlike performance. His tone is pleasant and crystalline, but not rich or burnished. Answered by concertmaster Glenn Dicterow with a much brighter sound, Mr. Brey was perhaps the cleaner enunciator. The two gentlemen did a splendid job when the music turned conversational, sounding in spots like chamber music, but were less impressive when Brahms calls for the big solo statement. There is, after all, a reason why these fine musicians are not professional soloists. Mr. Maazel, a violinist himself, has an unusual quirk in which he tends to conduct every individual note of one of his soloist’s — or, in this case, dyad’s — unaccompanied passages. His men paid him a lot of heed, in contrast to Ms. Fischer the night before, who hardly ever even glanced in his direction.

Saving the best for last, Maestro led a fabulous reading of the D Major Symphony. This is the orchestral essay, above all others, that achieves pure joy. Mr. Maazel quickly established that unique, downward flow of the piece that so adroitly represents nature in absolute sound, playing on the circadian biorhythms of existence that pulse through the unconscious. The ensemble sounded warm, resonant and comforting. Principal hornist Philip Myers was great in the all-important solo parts. Consistency is not his strong suit — he literally blows hot and cold — but when he is on, as he was this day, he is as good as any horn player in the world.

There were many hundreds of high school students in attendance and it was heartening to see them. From my seat at the back I had an opportunity to observe this rarely spotted species. Two cellular telephones sang their own songs during the course of the event, but this is par for the Avery Fisher course. And only a couple of these otherwise rapt guests were surreptitiously listening to their own iPods.