One of the interesting corollaries of a festival such as Mostly Mozart is the concept of period instrument authenticity. In a month of 18th-century music, there has to be at least some argument for the modern or the ancient approach. The programmers at Lincoln Center handle the situation deftly, allowing Maestro Louis Langree to lead a standard, if smallish, contemporary ensemble, while other groups that specialize in earlier instruments and styles are imported for selected concerts. But when the work is a staple of the 19th century and it celebrates Romantic excess, shouldn’t the most “authentic” version be the one with the most outrageous portamento?

What makes Joshua Bell so appealing as a musician is that he is a throwback to a time when soloists truly enjoyed the music they were performing and lived for the opportunity to communicate that joy to their audience. Mr. Bell immerses himself in a work – becomes it in a meaningful way – and when that work is Romantic, he expresses its inner passions with a decidedly anachronistic vibrato. It takes a lot of gut to play like Joshua Bell, who possesses a marvelous disregard for modern trends of bloodless restraint and questionable scholarship. Hearing this fine artist put his all into the old Tchaikovsky chestnut Tuesday evening at Avery Fisher was to experience a reawakening of the stirrings of older bloodlines, Mischa Elman or Nathan Milstein redux.

The audience for whom Bell toils is encouragingly younger than average for classical music, and sat spellbound Tuesday evening, experiencing his deep dive into these swirling waters. Not always the most accurate of practitioners, he more than compensates by nimbly extricating the hearts of his fans and attaching them firmly to their sleeves. This is not just passive listening; it is active empathy. Mr. Bell is also a fine chiaroscuro artist, shading delicately and using a wide range of dynamics to enliven the proceedings.

What could have been a jarring experience was actually quite a communal one: Even with flashbulbs going off and a huge ovation after the first movement, Mr. Bell never compromised his musicianship by pandering to the neophytes. He acknowledged the applause perfunctorily but did not encourage it. Instead of going for the splashy gesture, he used his proselytizing opportunity to display his immense talents in a sensitive and intellectual manner, revealing in the process his supreme ability to play eloquently in the piano and pianissimo range, judiciously dropping down to sotto voce for a decidedly lump-in-the-throat effect on occasion.

Of course, the Tchaikovsky concerto is a soloist’s dream – the orchestra is mostly an afterthought – and Mr. Bell kept us all involved (and centered on him) with subtle variations of attack and dynamics throughout the otherwise repetitive passagework. He even made the castaway second movement interesting. Far from being guilty of excess or schmaltz, his approach was actually quite restrained, given the sliding style of string play so warm, affable, and perfect for such a perfumed warhorse. And Mr. Bell, with great aplomb, brought us all back to frenzy with a stunning final Allegro vivacissimo.

Mr. Langree was extremely fortunate to have Mr. Bell on hand to close the show, since the first half was rather a disaster. I have often stated that it is impossible to present a bad performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony because the music is just so infectiously joyful. But these forces came close. The first movement started out much too fast and never recovered. The overall coordination of the group was slovenly, the normally crisp staccato line muddy and unfocused. There was a palpable attempt to prettify the piece as well. Without doubt, the influence of the Parisian neoclassical is deep within this score, but Mr. Langree out and out French-fried it. The music had a rather under-rehearsed feel, perhaps because the familiar symphony was preceded by an unfamiliar bauble that probably ate up a lot of precious practice time.

“Moz-Art a la Haydn” by Alfred Schnittke is altogether too clever by half. Full of heavy-handed jokes and full of itself, the work thrives on being different for its own sake. The idea of a concert titled “Mozart in Russia” in a series about the young composer’s actual travels is patently ridiculous, but let’s not go there (Mozart certainly never did). The stage was arranged with music stands for all the string players, but once they were safely settled in place, the entire house was plunged into total darkness. The bowings and scrapings went on for quite some time without illumination, and I wondered why the stage crew had bothered to bring out the music. Eventually, however, the lights were rekindled, yet I was still left pondering the same question.