Last week’s subscription concert of the New York Philharmonic was a mini-festival of Russian Romanticism. And presiding over it was an Austrian conductor who studied in Leningrad (as it was then known), Hans Graf. He was making his Philharmonic debut. Among Mr. Graf’s teachers in Leningrad were Arvid Jansons, father of the conductor Mariss, and Evgeny Mravinsky, the great and longtime chief of the Leningrad Philharmonic. Mr. Graf had also worked with the unusual Romanian maestro Sergiu Celibidache, in Bologna.

Mr. Graf is now music director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra. But in the mid-1970s, he was elsewhere: serving as music director of the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra, in Baghdad. He must have stories to tell! Was Saddam as severe a critic as Stalin? But perhaps the Iraqi dictator did not have the Soviet’s artistic pretensions.

The New York Philharmonic program began with three brief symphonic poems, or legends, by Anatoly Lyadov. The first and third were “Baba-Yaga” and “Kikimora,” and the middle piece was Lyadov’s best known, “The Enchanted Lake.” On Friday morning – this was one of those 11 o’clock concerts – Mr. Graf handled this music splendidly. “Baba-Yaga” was tight, rattling, and interesting. “The Enchanted Lake” was hushed, warm, and, in fact, enchanting. You could practically see the water shimmer. And Mr. Graf was a model of taste, refusing to gush or emote.

As for “Kikimora,” it had drama, but also that helpful restraint. Mr. Graf imparted the right little swellings, emphases, and thrusts. And the piece has a not-very-easy ending, which the Philharmonic players brought off well.

Then it was time for Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, whose soloist was Helene Grimaud, the admired French pianist. This was not a performance by which she would want to be judged.

To begin at the beginning: She broke up Rachmaninoff’s chords, which is certainly acceptable for small hands. (I’m guessing at the reason.) And these opening measures built decently, except for a gross ritard at the end, before the orchestra comes in. That little transgression should have been read as a bad sign.

The first movement was awkwardly slow, and the pianist and orchestra were often not together. One sat in one’s chair nervously, hoping that these forces would unite. And Ms. Grimaud committed one exaggerated gesture after another, making a caricature of Rachmaninoff’s concerto. That’s one thing the Rach Second doesn’t need: to be caricatured.

Ms. Grimaud was heavy, choppy, overly “vertical.” This music need not be played that way – Ms. Grimaud might have played to her strengths. The opening movement can be fleet, impish, even gossamer in parts. It was as though Ms. Grimaud were saying, “I’m not just a pretty little French girl, you know. I can be just as big, loud, and brutish as anyone else.”

The notes were there, for Ms. Grimaud has considerable technique, but they were placed, not musical. This entire performance had a spirit of calculation (or maybe it is an anti-spirit). The pianist seemed incapable of playing a single phrase straight: They were all mannered, or eccentric. At one point, the music virtually stopped – that was less a ritard than an outright cessation. To play a familiar piece so eccentrically, and get away with it, you have to have a kind of interpretive genius. But I doubt even Horowitz could have succeeded with Ms. Grimaud’s notions.

In the slow movement, her notes were plodding, placed, balky. That was when she was accompanying the melody. And when she took it, she banged it out, with no feeling whatsoever, no sense of the musical line. The third movement went more reasonably than the first two, not that it was good. All in all, this was an atrocious Rachmaninoff Second. And Helene Grimaud is not an atrocious pianist. It is discomforting to report a performance this bad, but so it was.

After intermission came a Tchaikovsky symphony, the Second, known as the “Little Russian.” This is almost as satisfying as anything Tchaikovsky wrote, if performed with attention and conviction.

From Mr. Graf and the Philharmonic, the first movement was pleasant, unobjectionable. It might have been darker, more pulsing. And in the second movement, that little march was nice, but just that: nice. It can be more arresting. Mr. Graf’s approach throughout the symphony was rather relaxed, without rigor. This was especially true of the third movement, the Scherzo: It can be thrilling, leaving your heart in your throat. But on this occasion, it was simply … nice, modest.

The Finale was solid, if not enthralling: Unison playing in the violins was good; percussionists were smart. There is a touch of “Onegin” in this movement, and those moments might have been lovelier, and more winsome. But the ending was rightly emphatic, and Mr. Graf proved himself a competent leader. It’s just that this symphony can be more exploited. The excellence of the Lyadov pieces had prepared us for a more boffo “Little Russian.”

Before Mr. Graf’s arrival, the Philharmonic had last played this symphony under Kurt Masur, in 2000. I very much liked – and like – Mr. Masur’s Tchaikovsky. He approaches it basically the same way he does Beethoven: It is Classical, disciplined, very, very rigorous. In the aisles of Avery Fisher Hall, back then, a prominent critic disagreed with me about Mr. Masur’s “Little Russian.” He thought it too tough, too Beethoven-like. I said, “Well, in a way, Masur’s Tchaikovsky is Tchaikovsky for people who don’t like Tchaikovsky.” The critic responded – in a fairly loud voice – “Anyone who doesn’t like Tchaikovsky is an [expletive deleted].”

Quite so.