This week is Cleveland Orchestra Week at Carnegie Hall. The Clevelanders are here for four concerts, the final two of which are Friday and Saturday nights. They are led by their music director, Franz Welser-Most, and each of their concerts has a soloist: the pianist Radu Lupu. He is playing all five Beethoven concertos (two in one concert). He ends with the Concerto No. 4, which is perhaps fitting, because many judge it the greatest. The poor “Emperor” (No. 5) will have to settle for Friday night billing.

Mr. Welser-Most took over Cleveland in 2002, and many of us have had reservations about him. Orchestra management, however, has evidently not shared these reservations, as they have extended the conductor’s contract through 2011-12. That would give him 10 years, same as Lorin Maazel in Cleveland during the 1970s (and early 1980s). Will he match George Szell’s nearly 25 years? I wouldn’t bet the ranch, but who knows?

There were two works on Tuesday night’s program, which opened the Cleveland series: Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Major, Op. 15 (which was actually composed second, if we’re playing the numbers game – it was merely published first), and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 in G Minor, Op. 103, called “The Year 1905.”

Mr. Lupu is about to be 60, which may come as a jolt to those who remember him as a young, hairy phenom. (He is still plenty hairy, and sometimes phenomenal.) His reputation is not unlike that of Alfred Brendel: an intellectual pianist with a deep understanding of the central literature. Earned or not, that reputation is cemented.

Beethoven’s C-major concerto is a great, great piece of music, featuring that typical Beethoven combination of nobility and merriment. The orchestra, under Mr. Welser-Most, began fairly nimbly, and extremely softly – too softly, really. The sound was insubstantial. Worse, the rhythm was uneven. The opening pages at large could have used more clarity and definition, and Mr. Welser-Most might have made more of Beethoven’s marvelous modulations.

Mr. Lupu’s initial playing was more characterful than the orchestra’s had been. But he emitted a certain tinniness, as he would throughout the concerto. This was particularly a problem in soft playing: We seldom heard a true piano.

The soloist’s conception of this work proved rather small-scale: In his hands, the concerto was Haydnesque, delicate. That happens not to be my conception, but it is an argument. Still, we could have used more sound – a touch more grandness – from Mr. Lupu from time to time. No pounding, mind you, but a little more sound. For one thing, that might have made the quiet, shivering moments more striking.

In the first movement, pianist and conductor could not quite agree on tempos, and Mr. Lupu clipped more than a few notes. His playing was an unusual mixture of care and indifference.

Early on in the Largo – that vision of loveliness in A-flat major – the orchestra was not together. But they soon cohered, and Mr. Welser-Most shaped this movement nicely (along with Mr. Lupu).At times, the pianist might have been too retiring for his own good. You wanted to say, “Sing out a bit, please.”

Mr. Lupu was quite relaxed in the Rondo, and that’s no sin – but he might have been crisper, zippier. Those qualities showed up only occasionally. Mr. Lupu committed some very odd accents, then, at other points, notes failed to sound. The (brief) cadenza was quite mousy, meaning that the ensuing, soft, surprising B-major section had less effect.

As with Beethoven’s modulations, more could have been made of this concerto as a whole. It wasn’t a bad performance – but the work was hardly exploited. Radu Lupu and the Cleveland Orchestra are two shining names, and one has the right to expect more.

Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 addresses “Bloody Sunday,” the tsarist attack on worker and peasant demonstrators in January 1905 (100 years ago, as it happens). Mr. Welser-Most’s treatment of the work can be faulted on the following grounds: It was lacking in tension, terror, rawness. It wasn’t rattling, throttling. It was too polite.

Yes, this was an unaccustomed Eleventh – but it was an Eleventh with a case: It was composed, measured, unhistrionic. Mr. Welser-Most had the sweep of the symphony in hand. He seemed in greater control than he had been in the Beethoven. And the Cleveland Orchestra showed that its individual strengths have not disappeared.

You need a good trumpeter in this symphony, and the Clevelanders had one (aside from one glitch). You need a good snare drummer – as you do in a lot of Shostakovich – and we had one. The unison playing in the violas was superb, as was the double-bass accompaniment of them. The English horn’s moment was not quite a wail, and not quite a lament; it was a sad, dignified song – well done.

No, this was not a performance on fire – not one to keep you up at night – but it was perfectly competent, and convincing enough.

I have written before about Mr. Welser-Most that I pity him, in a way. Mainly owing to the Szell legacy, many of us have the highest expectations of the Cleveland Orchestra. We are easily – perhaps too easily – disappointed. But Mr. Welser-Most did, after all, accept the job.

The Cleveland Orchestra will perform again February 4 & 5 (Carnegie Hall, 212-247-7800).