On Monday night, James Levine brought his Boston Symphony Orchestra to Carnegie Hall,for the second time this season. The big work on the program was the Mahler Fourth Symphony – and Mr. Levine, of course, is a big Mahler conductor. Strange that this performance wasn’t better. But we will get to that in due course.

The evening opened with a Strauss tone poem, “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks.” What is this piece like? Snappy,charming, impish, witty, bold. The performance was like that, too.What do you want, within the orchestra? An incisive concertmaster, unflubbing horns, fearless drums, a sassy, impudent clarinet.The BSO supplied those.

Was this “Till” as fun as can be? No, but it was fun enough.

(By the way, New Yorkers should remember that Kurt Masur, the former music director of the New York Philharmonic – and often marked down as stodgy – was riveting, thrilling, and a hoot in this piece.)

After the Strauss, Mr. Levine turned to a new work, Peter Lieberson’s “Neruda Songs” for Mezzo-So prano and Orchestra. Mr. Lieberson is pretty well established as a song composer, given his “Rilke Lieder” of several years ago. It may well be that, if his reputation survives him, he will be known as a songwriter (though he has written a slew of concertos and other pieces).

Mr. Lieberson has set five sonnets of Neruda, the bad old communist who wrote such splendid love poetry. The songs are dedicated to “my beloved Lorraine,” the composer’s wife, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. This mezzo-soprano – beloved by the whole world, it seems – was the soloist on this occasion, fittingly.

The songs are Romantic in nature, and slightly Latin American, though Mr. Lieberson composes in his own (non-Latin American) voice. Frankly, the presence of the Spanish language can make virtually any notes sound Hispanic. And Mr. Lieberson uses a Latin American percussion instrument or two. His orchestration is light, almost chamber-like, and it is effective. The last pages of the last song are slightly Mahlerian, which is a very good thing to be.

And I believe these songs can be sung singly. (Alternatively, you can sing two of them, or three, or – in any case – fewer than five.) Not everyone, in every circumstance, will want the entire set, which runs to about 25 minutes. Relatedly, let’s hope that Mr. Lieberson has written a piano accompaniment – a recitalist will not have an orchestra.

About Mrs. Lieberson, there has been much worry lately: She has canceled several appearances. But she sang magnificently on Monday night, rolling out her usual carpet of sound, and showing her sure technique (which included absolutely rock-solid intonation). She sang the songs touchingly, and without affectation. Now and then she was a little smoky, a little bluesy. She seemed to relish rolling the Rs of Spanish, and why not?

After the set was over, husband and wife – composer and soloist – embraced, and the audience applauded like mad. I imagine that other singers – other mezzos – will hesitate to sing these songs, as they seem so personal, between the Liebersons. But, if they are to last, they will have to rise above person.

Mahler’s Fourth Symphony is his “Mozart” symphony, some people say, or his “Classical” symphony – a work that recalls and incorporates that period. In his Carnegie Hall program note, the musicologist Michael Steinberg wrote one of the best opening lines I can remember reading: “Many a love affair with Mahler has begun with the sunlit Fourth Symphony.” You betcha.

Mr. Levine’s Mahler tends to be nononsense, straightforward, unwallowing. He brings to it a Classical discipline – whatever the symphony, 1 through 9 (or 1 through 10, if you care to count that orphaned Adagio). He is not an emoter. Not everyone likes the Levine way – they say he is too brusque and unfeeling. I have never found him so.

Or rather, I hadn’t. In the first movement on Monday night, he did not seem to be his musical self. The whole thing went by rather indifferently. It was fast, bordering on rushed – almost nothing was savored. The second movement, if anything, was worse: cold, uninteresting, and also sloppy, technically.All this was very disappointing. Back in September, I wrote that I expected this performance to be a highlight of the season – so far, so not.

But the third movement, the slow movement – one of the greatest slow movements in the entire orchestral literature – was beautiful. It was sung with holiness, and its pacing was wise. I believe the triumphant E-major bit toward the end was too brisk and insufficiently grand – but Mr. Levine made a defensible choice.

The fourth movement requires a soprano soloist, one who offers purity, innocence, and what you might or might not blush to call goodness. Often, conductors ask Heidi Grant Murphy to fill this role, and they are quite right. Mr. Levine had her with him on Monday night; she was substituting for the German soprano Dorothea Roschmann, who, we were informed, had a family emergency.

Mind you, I don’t contend that Mr. Levine’s Fourth was bad. But it was far from great,and he conditions you to the highest standard – the standard of George Szell, under whom he worked, and who made an exemplary recording of this symphony. When Mr. Levine gives you something ordinary, instead of exemplary … why, it’s hard not to feel let down.