When you go to hear the New York Philharmonic — particularly under its music director, Lorin Maazel — you never quite know what you’re going to get. The concert may be a dud, or at least unfizzy; or it may be highly accomplished, crackling, first-rate. Friday night’s concert was in the latter category.

Mr. Maazel was on the podium, and he led a program of Berlioz and Prokofiev. It began with the overture to Berlioz’s opera “Benvenuto Cellini.” In this, the Philharmonic was solid and brassy, even in the strings, it seemed! And the orchestra played with extreme virtuosity, as if it were, indeed, one of the best orchestras going.

We heard some sweet resignation in this music, to go with mischief, wit, and other “Benvenuto Cellini” qualities. And while the playing was big — very big — it was free of bombast. Mr. Maazel got a roundedness, not hard edges.

When the overture was over, I heard the comment, “That is a weird piece.” Yes, and it kicks off a weird opera, too.

Next, Mr. Maazel tucked into a Prokofiev symphony — the Seventh, the composer’s last. Mr. Maazel certainly had the measure of it. In the first movement, he was judicious, doing nothing extreme — but nothing boring, either. And when Prokofiev opened up, lyrically, Mr. Maazel and the orchestra opened up too. They threw out sound, wonderfully.

There’s always the question, in Prokofiev, of whether the playing will be principally “Western” or “Russian.” That is, will it be polished and elegant or grainy and stark. In truth, it should usually be a mixture, and Mr. Maazel obviously knows this.

The second movement had its underlying anxiety, but that anxiety remained underlying: Mr. Maazel did not commit the error of overtness. And the ending of the movement — that extraordinarily imaginative, unexpected, and exciting thing — he judged very well. Prokofiev’s third movement is, in part, a song. And Mr. Maazel took it at a nice, walking pace. You could have asked for a touch more sentiment in this “song,” and I did. But it had enough.

And in the finale, we see Prokofiev as the master of rhythms and textures that he is. Of course, we see this throughout the symphony — and throughout Prokofiev’s oeuvre — but it is especially noticeable here. And our conductor was equal to those rhythms and textures. He did nothing showy or calculated, knowing that the music, as written, packs a punch — which it did. The concluding pages were not the best. They had a bad onset in the brass, and some untogether playing from the percussion, and, finally, a faulty pizzicato. But that’s show biz. And these fumbles could not spoil a very satisfying performance.

I could not help contrasting it with a recent performance of the Philharmonic, in which Gustavo Dudamel, the 26-year-old sensation from Venezuela, conducted another Prokofiev symphony: No. 5. When Mr. Dudamel was hired by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, there was a sense in New York of, “What a pity, that L.A. gets such a hotshot, while we’re stuck with this antique maestro, pushing 80.” Well, the antique maestro pushing 80 outconducted the hotshot in their respective Prokofiev symphonies (and Mr. Dudamel, by and large, was quite good). Mr. Maazel might be termed a senior hotshot.

After intermission, Susan Graham, the mezzo from Midland, Texas, walked out to sing “La Mort de Cléopâtre,” Berlioz’s “scène lyrique.” Ms. Graham loves French music, whether it is song, opera, or in between. And she was distinguished in her Berlioz. She had the right sense of the dramatic, and plenty of vocal technique. The piece requires a big range, plunging low and vaulting high. Ms. Graham was flat in some top notes, but not ruinously so.

She is a medium-sized mezzo, if you will, and you might prefer a bigger, lusher, plusher voice in this music — something on the order of Olga Borodina. Now and then, Mr. Maazel and the orchestra covered her. Nonetheless, she got her job done.

And Mr. Maazel, in this piece, was “fully committed,” as the restaurant people say. He was as engaged dramatically as his soloist. In this long death, they were noble, defiant, grand, and shudder-making. From the orchestra we heard a terrible pulse — terrible, that is, in what it suggested.

The evening ended with more Prokofiev, this time the “Scythian Suite,” an exercise in primitivism, mystery, and exoticism. And, in this performance, the piece had all the qualities it must. The orchestra was steely and hot, as well as supple and tingling. Mr. Maazel ruled with an iron fist but did not stifle, or crush. And could there ever have been so much sound coming from a classical stage? It was almost literally deafening. Yet not unjustified.

You may have noticed that Mr. Maazel has been maintaining a very busy schedule lately: conducting the Philharmonic’s subscription concerts, plus a Wagner opera at the Metropolitan, “Die Walküre.” Unusually for him, he used scores all through Friday night’s concert. Could that have been a concession to so busy a schedule? Did he not fully trust his memory? If this was a concession, it was the only one detectable.