Mention La Scala and sonic images of Verdi and Puccini fill the mind’s ear. So it was a bit disorienting for Maestro Riccardo Chailly to feature the music of Richard Wagner at the concert of the orchestra of the fabled old opera house Saturday evening at Carnegie Hall. Wagner intoned by this particular ensemble calls to mind those storied, pre-weight loss Maria Callas recordings from the late 1940s, when she sang Kundry, Brünnhilde, and Isolde in Italian.

Mr. Chailly is the very model of the modern internationalist, having been at the helm of both the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestras. He led his charges in an extremely well executed and highly enjoyable concert with a decided pops feel.

Beginning with the Prelude to Act 3 of Lohengrin, Maestro Chailly immediately established a light and airy tone for the proceedings. This is certainly not how this music sounds in Germany, or even at the Metropolitan Opera, but it was still very satisfying to experience such a buoyant reading.

Post-weight loss Ben Heppner was on hand to deliver Wagner as well. There is no doubt that he looks much healthier since his surgery, but it is undeniable at this point — I have heard him several times in this current svelte version — that he has lost considerable heft of voice. In a rather odd choice, he presented the Wesendonk Lieder, a competent but somewhat unexciting reading of a song cycle meant for a woman, and created for the composer’s paramour, who was the inspiration for the character of Isolde.

Mr. Heppner suffered some audibility problems, a marked contrast from his former self, and appeared unfamiliar with the piece, consistently looking downward at the score, causing his voice to be aimed often at the floor. But the ensemble was impressive in the background, offering a kaleidoscopic palette of color that recrystallized often as the mood changed throughout the quintet of earthy vocal vignettes. The special interplay of lower female voice and solo viola in Im Treibhaus, the original sketch for Act 3 of “Tristan und Isolde,” however, was simply missing in action.

Mr. Heppner finished his set with the last three minutes or so of “Die Walküre,” Act I, as Siegmund pulls the sword from the tree and carries off his sister for an enchanted dawn of lovemaking — and these pop stars think they are sensual! Again, some of the bottom may have been lacking, but this is music that this tenor knows well. He hit that third and last “Waelse” note sounding hale and hearty, and that alone was worth the price of admission.

The Filharmonica Della Scala catapulted Ottorino Respighi to fame when Arturo Toscanini conducted the second performance of his “Fountains of Rome” after the Roman premiere had been a bust. Together with the later and more popular “Pines of Rome,” it formed the second half of Saturday’s program. Here the descriptive powers of this fine orchestra were on display. The fountain of the Valle Giulia was surrounded with faintly oriental exoticism, that of the Triton merry and bright, the Trevi was alight with excitement and the Medici overflowing with holiness.

“Pines” was a bit less successful, starting out in a burst of color but leading to the conductor seeming to pull his punches just a tad; he failed to imbue the final Appian Way scene with the slow relentlessness that makes it such a frightening description of the advancing legions in their quest for known world domination. The ultimate crescendo could have been a lot more intense. Mr. Chailly chose just the wrong time to demonstrate the refinement of his players.

To end the evening, Maestro chose the Italian piece that has everything, power, passion, pity, poetry, even a thunderstorm: The Overture to Gioacchino Rossini’s “William Tell.” The performance, featuring ferocious trombone work, was thrilling, febrile, if superficial, music making that — and I mean this as the highest form of praise — would have made Bugs Bunny proud.

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There are three ways for a pianist to present the Preludes of Frederic Chopin, as individual, standalone pieces, as a set of two dozen separate pieces, or the method adopted by Peter Orth on Friday evening at Zankel Hall, as one continuous work comprising 24 far-flung variations with no initially stated theme.

Mr. Orth is a Naumburg Award winner from the 1970s, whose career has since radiated from his home in Cologne and rendered him perhaps less well known in America as a result. His recital was quite thrilling, notable for a secure combination of passion, technique, and poetic expression.

The Preludes are almost exclusively given as a set, although the composer did not necessarily hear them that way. Mr. Orth’s version stressed their structural unity and reinforced the modern view that Chopin was truly a classicist in the thrall of Mozart and, especially in this set, Bach. The two dozen little gems are, of course, reminiscent of the Well-Tempered Clavier and are even more closely intertwined than the original Bach preludes around both the circle of fifths and the concept of the relative minor, a device that solidifies their natural order in the inner ear. In Mr. Orth’s confident and capable hands, the experience seemed like one continuous essay in profundity.

Highlights included a lovely version of the famous A Major, a very dark reading of the E Flat Minor, a steadfast and stouthearted “raindrop,” a rousing cannonade of an F Minor, and a somber but stately C Minor. Mr. Orth is adept but not flashy, ceding the spotlight to the music itself, refreshingly emphasizing the inner conflict of the composer rather than the agility of the current performer.

Interpretively, his most impressive offering was the Sonata No. 30 of Beethoven, a rendition that painstakingly delineated the Herculean struggle of the protagonist auteur with chilling results. Mr. Orth is a commanding presence and one perfectly willing to shape phrases with his own signature. Only three measures into the Beethoven, this listener was captivated.

There were certainly no rest stops on this particular musical journey, as Mr. Orth chose one of the most difficult works in the literature as his final piece. Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor is not for the lily-eared, as Charles Ives used to say, and Mr. Orth spat it out full-blown, on the edge and dangerous. Some of the louder passages were a bit clangorous for my taste, but I probably would have had the same cavil had I had the opportunity to hear Liszt himself launch into this essay that is part lurid imagery and part circus act.

Suffice it to say that Mr. Orth is the master of this piece and can, at any given time, hit 98% of the notes, an especially high batting average. For sheer excitement, he is difficult to surpass.