Kurt Masur was back in town this week for two concerts with his London Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. Seeing him up on the podium Tuesday evening brought back a flood of memories from his tenure at the New York Philharmonic, and hearing his rather dull performance strongly reminded me of a hundred concerts that he gave over at Avery Fisher Hall. He is a solid musician who unfortunately delivers stolid performances.

Soloist Sarah Chang is a technical whiz and has been so since she was a kid. I have great respect for her, especially after observing her at the empty Venetian Theater on the grounds of the Caramoor estate assiduously playing the Joachim cadenza of the Brahms Violin Concerto over and over again, attempting to adjust her sound ever so slightly to compensate for the tent’s unique acoustics.

Here she navigated the Sibelius Violin Concerto with ease, and had no concerns over the composer’s difficult double stops or harmonics. Sibelius was himself a violinist and this was the only concerto that he wrote in his lifetime. Ms. Chang’s rendition was duly impressive, but there was far too much reliance on romantic vibrato. She should have displayed a much more controlled intensity, with the passions just below the surface and unable to quite bubble up. Vadim Repin is the current master of this piece and his superb control makes it a stunning experience. Ms. Chang’s realization is fine on its face, but lacks that last degree of reflective maturity.

Mr. Masur, on the other hand, seemed unfamiliar with the piece, working from a printed score as he meandered through a rather unfocused orchestral accompaniment that turned quite shrill in spots. The argument mounted against him during his tenure in New York — that he did not program enough contemporary works — may have been frivolous, but it was certainly true that he demonstrated a certain discomfort with many of the standard works of the 20th century. This evening was no exception.

Mr. Masur has a very limited repertoire, centering on the German classics, but only a select grouping of masterpieces. He grew up in a Germany where Mendelssohn and Mahler were banned, and matriculated in a country trying to excise its past by rejecting the music of Richard Wagner. His Beethoven is disciplined, measured, strongly phrased, but it is also a bit bombastic, metronomic, Prussian. In an era where Beethoven is pushed and pulled in many differing directions at once, it is comforting to hear a foursquare performance now and then. This was such an evening.

This stamping of the “Eroica” came straight from the Masur cookie cutter. Mr. Masur is nothing if not a model of consistency and has been conducting Beethoven exactly the same way since his installation as the music director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchesta in 1970. There was nothing objectionable in this performance, but there was little inspiring either.

The expanded orchestra sounded much crisper once Maestro was back on familiar turf. It does not have the overall bright sound of the London Symphony nor the burnished string sound of a truly fine ensemble, but it is a gritty bunch and followed its leader in a steadfast manner. This would have been a good “Eroica” for a newbie, with nothing in Mr. Masur’s armamentarium to distract them from pure Beethovenian expression.

There is some controversy as to whether it was Toscanini or Mahler who first said tradition was “just the memory of the last bad performance,” but that bad performance of the “Eroica” was just this past Saturday with Lorin Maazel in charge. Now that Mr. Maazel has announced, after only three seasons in harness, his decision to move on in two years, it is legitimate to ask what the Phil gained by ushering out Mr. Masur in the first place.