Afamiliar figure was before the New York Philharmonic on Wednesday night: Kurt Masur, the orchestra’s music director between 1991 and 2002. He now leads orchestras in Paris and London; the German maestro will be 80 in July.

His program on Wednesday night began with Mendelssohn, for whom he has long had an affinity. Most people would say this makes sense, given Mr. Masur’s decades with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra — this was Mendelssohn’s own band. Mr. Masur conducted “The Hebrides Overture,” one of the great souvenirs in the musical literature. Mendelssohn wrote it after touring wild Scotland.

To see Mr. Masur on that stage was to smile at an old friend: no baton, low podium, a nobility of bearing. He was doing what I called, in a thousand reviews, “the Masur shuffle”: The maestro shifts sideways from foot to foot. When Mr. Masur is before an orchestra, you know that you are in good musical hands.

For the “Hebrides,” he drew from the Philharmonic a warm sound, one that glistened. He gave the music an unusual intensity, and he kept a steady pulse. Mr. Masur has never been a sloppy Romantic. In fact, I don’t think I had ever heard a “Hebrides Overture” so intense. Relatedly, Mr. Masur thinks all through a piece, does not zone out — does not put his conducting on cruise control. This is an uncommon and invaluable trait.

Moreover, this account had considerable subtlety, and many notable details. (A list will be supplied on demand!) I’m afraid that the piece ended with a lousy pizzicato — but that was tolerable.

There are some small pieces over which Mr. Masur exerts a special mastery. Rachmaninoff’s “Isle of the Dead” is one of them; he builds that thing with an almost alarming intensity. And “The Hebrides Overture” is another of them.

After intermission, he conducted not a small piece but a big one: Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, known as the “Pathétique.” Mr. Masur has always conducted this piece with rigor, wisdom, and, ultimately, pathos (as the nickname would dictate). The performance on Wednesday night had many, many problems: It was blunt, noisy, and inaccurate. The subtlety that existed in the Mendelssohn was missing here. Seldom will you hear a less profound and emotional last movement.

And yet and yet: For all of these problems, Tchaikovsky came through. Mr. Masur’s heart and mind — his understanding — made sure of that. The music was speaking largely for itself, without much interpretive “help” (or hindrance). And that Masurian nobility was unmistakable — so was Tchaikovsky’s.

There was a concerto on this program, and it was the Sibelius Violin Concerto, in which the soloist was Sergey Khachatryan. Do you remember this name? (No, not the composer of the Saber Dance.) Mr. Khachatryan is a young Armenian violinist — barely into his 20s – and he made his New York debut at the Mostly Mozart Festival last summer. He played the Beethoven Concerto, and it was excruciating: self-indulgent and bizarro. Tempos were so slow, they were deathly. The young man was in his own private Idaho, heedless of Beethoven, heedless of all. That he had talent, however, was obvious.

Mr. Masur is the least bizarro conductor alive, not one to put up with any nonsense, from anybody. And there was very little nonsense in this performance. Mr. Khachatryan played with command, reason, and effectiveness. He started softly and purely. As the music progressed, he dug into his strings, soulfully. He caused his instrument to emit great, wrenching cries. The cadenza in the first movement was slow, but sensible. And though he had some technical problems — including missed notes — his fingers were sure.

In the second movement, he suffered some bad intonation, and the music did not quite cast the spell it might. But Mr. Khachatryan was not unsatisfying (and neither were conductor and orchestra).

The last movement requires almost cruel virtuosity, as does the concerto at large, come to think of it. And Mr. Khachatryan was fantastically virtuosic, while at the same time producing a beautiful, gleaming sound. He was incisive and smoking — smoking, yes, but measured, just as Sibelius wants. Mr. Khachatryan ended the concerto badly flat. But, as I said earlier — tolerable.

Most important, he was equal to the Sibelius Concerto. Not every violinist can manage it, even very good violinists, of whatever age. And it was perhaps especially appropriate that he played this concerto: In 2000, when he was barely out of short pants, he won the Sibelius Competition, the youngest winner ever. Five years later, he won the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. I’m not sure whether the late Queen Dowager of the Belgians wrote a concerto, but I doubt it.

Please have a tonsorial note, too: When Mr. Khachatryan played in New York last summer, he had huge, crazy, upward-shooting hair — and I said that he was reviving the grand tradition of the big-haired virtuoso, exemplified by Paganini and Anton Rubinstein. Somewhat sadly, Mr. Khachatryan’s hair is of normal proportions now.

Finally, a couple of general remarks on Wednesday night’s concert: It was in the overture-concerto-symphony format, which critics love to sneer at. But has this format ever been improved on? Also, B minor is a fairly rare key — and both the “Hebrides” and the “Pathétique” are in that key. It is a highly effective one, for those who know how to use it.