It could have been ugly: During the same period of seven days, Carnegie Hall scheduled both Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Dutoit was music director in Montreal but was forced to abdicate after his musicians instituted open rebellion, accusing him of dastardly behavior and ill manners. Several prominent soloists, including Mstislav Rostropovich, immediately boycotted the orchestra in protest. The silliest part of the aftermath was the threat by the players that they would perform in union T-shirts rather than concert dress.

Mr. Dutoit is now semi-permanent caretaker of the Philadelphia Orchestra and will be here with his band this Friday. To avoid any ugly incidents, the Montrealers have already left town, but they sojourned long enough to offer a fine concert on Saturday evening.

Current music director Kent Nagano began with a rarity, the four orchestral excerpts from the incidental music to “The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian” by Claude Debussy. Written for actress and dancer Ida Rubinstein, of Ravel’s “Bolero” fame, the original music was meant to reinforce the dramatic impact of the Gabriele d’Annunzio play. politically incorrect portamento into the opening solo passage, identifying himself as an iconoclastic anachronism, gloriously interpreting music from a bygone era. Some castigate Mr. Bell for being old-fashioned; to them he seemed to be saying, “and what of it?”

Mr. Bell is a particularly excellent exponent for the lush Romantic sound, complete with unabashed vibrato. He is untouchable in terms of technical prowess, as his Allegro vivacissimo final movement proved with an exclamation point. It is always a treat to hear him and remember the likes of Nathan Milstein and Mischa Elman. Although his teacher was Josef Gingold, I swear that the ghost of Leopold Auer must have come to him in some early dream. Mr. Nagano, decidedly a modernist, opted for the accompanist’s role for his ensemble. This was Mr. Bell’s time, and the orchestra supported him well, but not ostentatiously.

Unsuk Chin is a South Korean composer whose “Rocanà” was given its American premiere this night. Unfortunately, Ms. Chin was snowed in at O’Hare International Airport and arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport only during the intermission of the concert. Mr. Nagano had good reasons for programming “The Poem of Ecstasy,” by Alexander Scriabin, as his final work — there was a satisfying bookend effect with the opening Debussy, which was written in the same period. Under the circumstances, presenting the Scriabin first would have been the gentlemanly thing to do (each piece is approximately 20 minutes). But this did not happen, and Ms. Chin missed her big “Carnegie” moment.

Sadly, Rocanà turned out to be Contemporary Music 101, a tired compendium of today’s orchestral clichés. Strings sawed away at a monotonous figure; there was a lot of loud dissonance, a cornucopia of percussion instruments, and a remarkably uninteresting plan of orchestration. The woodwinds might as well have stayed home, so drowned were they by their mates who struggled to create something vaguely frightening. Critics of the Baroque state that there is a crushing similarity to many of its instrumental pieces, but there is a veritable kaleidoscope of moods and colors compared to the lockstep of the contemporary composition crowd.

The Scriabin is a powerful test of an orchestra’s mettle, and this group passed with flying colors. String sound was plush, brass precise. Mr. Nagano went for the broadest possible approach, and it worked splendidly. Perhaps things have finally settled down at the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, although there is that nagging rumor that Mr. Nagano will soon be bound for the Chicago Symphony.

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Byron Janis is celebrating his 80th birthday by throwing two parties at the Bruno Walter Auditorium. On Saturday, he shared reflections on the three men who most influenced his musical life, and tonight at 6 p.m. he will present an evening of his own compositions. If the songs are half as moving as the memories, then this should be a heck of a night. Mr. Janis was a teenage pianist who captured the hearts of many of us who inhabited that magical vinyl universe of the 1950s. Then, rather mysteriously, he stopped performing on a regular basis — not dropping off of the planet exactly, but appearing less and less frequently over time. It was not until the 1980s, at a state dinner for President Reagan, that Mr. Janis disclosed his battle with arthritis, which had begun when he was but a child. Reinventing himself as a spokesman for the Arthritis Foundation, he launched another important career and is still active at it today.

Since Vladimir Horowitz was his teacher and Arturo Toscanini his discoverer, it would have been logical to expect most of the program to be about these two legends, but actually the lion’s share of the program was in honor of Mr. Janis’s friend Jascha Heifetz. The young pianist actually lived in the home of Heifetz’s sister Pauline here in New York, which meant that he shared the abode with both Mama and Papa Heifetz. After he anxiously rehearsed his debut piece, the Piano Concerto No. 2 of Rachmaninoff, for the father, Mr. Heifetz senior’s comment was that his shoes needed shining. He had made one star and was determined to assist another.

Mr. Janis did favor us with a little playing, including a beautifully liquid opening of the Piano Concerto No. 4 of Beethoven, following this charming musicality with the comments of Toscanini, who hated his approach and said so. The teenager, however, did not suffer the maestro’s wrath for long, as Toscanini quickly pointed out that “Serkin plays it that way too!”

Talk centered around Mr. Janis’s years in Hollywood — his wife is the daughter of Gary Cooper — and the amazing expatriate community of musicians living there in the 1940s. Thus we heard that Gregor Piatigorsky was always late because he only turned his automobile to the right. It was a great time to be an aspirant and to learn from such artists as Emanuel Feuermann, Heifetz, Toscha Seidel, Igor Stravinsky, and, of course, Oscar Levant, a veritable fountain of idiosyncratic stories. Mr. Janis praised the teaching methods of Horowitz, which were unconventional in their detachment but extremely effective. He marveled at the special action of the great man’s pianos, the keys returning to position faster than a normal Steinway, but difficult to handle for a mere mortal. The entire experience was moving, but also bittersweet. Like Byron Janis’s career as a whole, the afternoon contained too little of his magnificent playing and then was over.