In the early 1960s, when the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane were just germs in their members’ ears and psyches, the really rebellious music of youth was being written in the classical arena, specifically in the hothouse environment of Italy. The next wave was already crashing on the shore of the musical establishment and formed itself into a second Venetian school with Bruno Maderna as the Schoenbergian father figure, Luciano Berio as the Bergian romantic and, in the iconoclastic Webern role, a young firebrand named Luigi Nono.

Fast-forward to the end of the decade and Berio was writing a piece for the New York Philharmonic that Maestro Lorin Maazel revived this weekend at Avery Fisher Hall. Titled “Sinfonia,” it made its premiere not at Avery Fisher, but rather at Philharmonic Hall (same place, different era), and employs eight embedded singers deep within the orchestra.

These vocalists, originally the Swingle Singers but now a group calling themselves Synergy Vocals, are difficult to see but easy to hear, as each is provided with a microphone. They intone a variety of sounds, from spoken word to sung pitches, to nonsense syllables, to pips and squeaks. The work as a whole is clever, atmospheric. But a little goes a long way, and this current realization, expanded to include another movement that the composer penned after the death of Martin Luther King Jr., was interminable.

Berio was essentially a traditionalist and wrote numerous compositions that swim in the mainstream. He composed an alternative ending for Puccini’s “Turandot,” and fashioned highly colorful orchestrations of the music of Brahms and Schubert. In “Sinfonia,” he quotes liberally from the repertoire, including some snippets from “La Valse” by Maurice Ravel.

The most satisfying movement was the third, wherein Berio simply presents most of the third movement of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony, but overlays the odd sung note or passage from Samuel Beckett from the voices. This was the era of the Happening — when John Cage simply turned on the radio and pronounced his actions performance art — and there is a decidedly arbitrary quality to the inclusion of these ornamental embellishments. Mr. Maazel being a fine Mahler conductor, this movement went along gracefully, but when the next did not begin with the words “O roeschen rot” — the opening of the next part of the original Mahler — this listener was profoundly disappointed. Time telescopes events in an unusual manner. Hearing a Vivaldi opera today, it seems fresh and new, but re-experiencing Berio’s type of vocal collage from such a pretentious time seemed stale and dated. Too bad my bell-bottoms were at the cleaners.

Mr. Maazel, who has been conducting “Die Walküre” at the Met this week along with his full stint of Philharmonic concerts, appeared tired when he strode out to lead a frustratingly inconsistent version of the Symphony No. 4 of Johannes Brahms. The Phil sounded very good, both as an ensemble and as individuals, and I am coming to the realization that Mr. Maazel has improved their overall professionalism. Certainly the second movement was first-rate, the last few measures featuring a heart-melting solo from principal clarinetist Stanley Drucker.

But the leader never established a proper flow for the opening movement and was not really engaged during the third. The finale is the type of music that landed Brahms in hot water at the Vienna Philharmonic, as he was accused of looking backward, not forward — ironically, the same unjust charges that are regularly leveled at Mr. Maazel. The music contains a number of short variations and can be fascinating to hear unfold. In this rendition, however, every section sounded as if it were written in the same style; there was little sense of variety. This sameness led to staleness and the concert did not end on an exhilarating note.