Although the premiere of Antonin Dvorÿák’s Symphony “From the New World” in 1893 at Carnegie Hall has to rank as the most significant in New York musical history, an arguably greater work was given its second public reading here in town in 1855. That youthful masterpiece, the Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major of Johannes Brahms, was on the program Thursday evening as violinist Gil Shaham inaugurated a three-part series of the chamber music of the Hamburg master.

The piece was mounted only a month after its world premiere in Danzig by a progressive American trio, which included violinist Theodore Thomas, who later founded the Chicago Symphony. What Mr. Shaham and his friends played was a very different iteration, as in later life the composer extensively revised the trio to tone down its impetuous, ardent Romanticism. Having done so, he couldn’t bear to part with the original and so kept it in the catalog.

This reading of the trio began badly and never really recovered. Normally reliable cellist Lynn Harrell experienced a simply awful night. Flatting one of the notes of his big opening solo only increased the sense that his tone was much too wispy for this expansive work, which cries out for a zaftig, fullbodied sound. Problems of intonation dogged him the entire evening, and when he attempted to emphasize his accents in the Allegro conclusion, the resultant exhortations were unmusical, beastly utterances.

Meanwhile, Mr. Shaham played with a huge, creamy tone and layered on large dollops of warm vibrato. Normally, I would love this type of early Brahms interpretation, but stylistically it was at sixes and sevens with Mr. Harrell’s subdued approach. Pianist Akira Eguchi, a last minute replacement for Yefim Bronfman, performed yeoman service throughout and actually acquitted himself quite respectably having had such little preparation time. But he needed to concentrate on note accuracy and was at sea as far as any coherent direction of style. It was painfully obvious that these three people do not play together on a regular basis. Two short pieces were fine, as Mr. Shaham injected a good deal of verve into the Scherzo Brahms wrote for a compendium work known as the FAE Sonata, and Mr. Eguchi brought with him a transcription of Fauré’s Apres un reve that was handled rather prettily. But the mighty F Minor Quintet of Brahms, one of the towering works of the entire chamber repertoire, fared little better than the trio.

Mr. Shaham ceded the first chair to Cho-Liang Lin, whose declarative tone matched Mr. Harrell more closely, and Philharmonic principal violist Cynthia Phelps joined in, but the overall string sound wavered only from occasionally discordant to disappointingly pedestrian. It would have been grossly unfair to ask Mr. Eguchi to lead this piece, and he wisely did not even attempt to do so, but the work demands a commanding keyboard presence that was beyond his reach on such short notice.

This is Brahms’s most Beethovenian chamber essay and, performed well, it produces an excruciating intensity of tension in several dramatic places. This type of excitement was simply never forthcoming in this tepid reading; the amazing false ending of the Presto non troppo was hardly even noticeable. Mr. Harrell was not over his discomforts, coming a cropper in the solo passage of the Poco sostenuto finale and, more often than anyone could possibly deem acceptable, simply playing wrong notes.

Everyone has bad nights, of course, but somehow when the pieces are these two giants of the literature, the net effect is deeply disturbing.

***

For those for whom Easter means more than chocolate bunnies, there is music afoot, particularly that of Johann Sebastian Bach. All got started Friday evening as a core ensemble from Orpheus presented two cantatas of the season at the Metropolitan Museum. Playing in the visually impressive but acoustically challenged Temple of Dendur could have been problematic, but Orpheus, by offering two shows, seated everyone close enough to the musicians to keep the echo chamber effect to a minimum.

The two works presented this evening were unoriginal in very different ways. Am Abend aber dessellbigen Sabbats, BWV 42, is a parody cantata. This does not mean that it pokes fun at another work, but rather that it borrows thematic material from other sources, in this case those of Johann Walther and Martin Luther. It is more religious in nature than many of its mates in that it not only tells a story from the gospels, but also ends with a formal prayer in chorale form. The small group captured a very dignified sound to portray both the solemnity and the uncertainty of the piece — the text deals with fear — and the trio of two oboes and bassoon was quite impressive. A long, extended solo for alto was masterful.

Ein Herz, das seinen Jesum lebend weiss, BWV 134, is lifted in its entirety from an earlier secular work that Bach wrote for a former employer as a New Year’s celebration. The meister simply replaced the text with the good news of the resurrection. Noticeably different in character, it ends not with supplication but rather hilarity, a finish that recalled strongly the conclusion of “The Magic Flute” (Mozart wasn’t above a little creative borrowing either). Here Orpheus produced a different sound, a much more delicate and tasteful string blending that was notable for its lightness and dexterity. The tenor who carried the ball for most of the action was not at his best, but overall this was pleasant, buoyant music making. It is always disconcerting to applaud after a piece that ends with an amen, as had the first cantata, but this concluding work begs for an enthusiastic audience response, and it got it this night.

Conductor Fritz Reiner, formerly of the Chicago Symphony players, was known for making his performers stand while they played if they did not follow his instructions. Orpheus decided not to sit during this musicale, except for the lone cellist and, oddly, the double bassist, and this seemed to enliven the players’ approach and focus their energies. And they didn’t even need a conductor to force them.