By Jonathan Blumhofer

Conductor Benjamin Zander put the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra to challenging work at Symphony Hall, while, on record, Isabelle Faust delivers a vital, urgent, and engrossing traversal of the Britten Violin Concerto.

Benjamin Zander conducting the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and pianist Anna Fedorova.  Photo: Hilary Scott

How does a conductor celebrate his 85^th birthday? Well, if you’re Benjamin Zander you tune up the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra (BPYO) and take the stage at Symphony Hall with a program no group of adolescents ought to be playing, let alone rendering creditably.

At least, that’s how it went on Sunday afternoon for Zander, whose big day arrives March 9^th, and his young charges. Their lineup of works by Benjamin Britten, Tchaikovsky, Charles Ives, and Ravel was one of the freshest things – on paper or in practice – to turn up at Symphony Hall this season. Best of all, the concert (which was also streamed) brought back an old friend in the form of pianist Anna Fedorova.

Fedorova made her local debut with the BPYO in 2018, playing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. On Sunday, she took up another Romantic staple, Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto.

If ever there’s a pianist meant to perform this fare, it’s her. Playing with sumptuous tone, bold strokes of character, and no shortage of electricity, Fedorova offered a rhapsodic account of this favorite.

The sprawling first movement unfolded in sweeping, improvisational-sounding paragraphs, while the pianist’s precise, playful delivery of the Andantino’s fast middle section neatly framed the songful reveries in its outer thirds. Meanwhile, the boisterous finale’s headlong, driving thrills never came at the expense of the music’s dancing impetus.

Throughout, Fedorova’s phrasings were the picture of flexibility: shapely and unpredictable but never fussy or wanting for direction. Her voicings, too, always ensured that the melodic line didn’t get lost in the Concerto’s dense layers of filigree.

In a word, Fedorova’s reading of the Tchaikovsky and her encore of Chopin’s “Minute” Waltz were demonstrations of old-school, Romantic performance practice at its best.

As a conductor, Zander is often about drawing out the naturally breathing musical line. So he proved here, leading the BPYO in a fluent, rubato-filled, well-balanced accompaniment, an unexpected highlight of which was the orchestra’s lean realization of the finale’s syncopated theme.

The ensemble had the stage to themselves for the rest of the afternoon.

Their account of Charles Ives’s Three Places in New England, dedicated to the late John Heiss, boasted a combination of warmth and textural lucidity one doesn’t always encounter in this composer’s music, especially in “The ‘St. Gaudens’ on Boston Common” and “The Housatonic at Stockbridge.” “Putnam’s Camp” emerged, aptly, as a riot of sound, bluster, and good humor.

The Second Suite from Ravel’s Daphnis at Chloé, a work that Zander noted, the Boston Symphony all but owns, sounded in this young orchestra’s hands fully BSO-worthy. Throughout, the BPYO’s woodwind playing was superb, especially Sadie Goodman’s solos in the “Pantomime.”

Likewise engaging were the “Four Sea Interludes” from Britten’s Peter Grimes, which emerged with spirit and color, both in delicate movements (the mesmeric “Dawn”) and violent ones (the teeming “Storm”).

As a youth, Zander studied with Britten and the afternoon’s program included a reprint of charming photos of the pair at a cricket match, circa 1950. Sunday’s performance was a fitting tribute to that relationship, as well as to the great composer’s continuing influence on his former pupil’s career.

For more Britten, cue Isabelle Faust, who’s latest release features new recordings of the Violin Concerto and three short works written in the decade leading up to that opus.

Completed in 1939, the Concerto is one of the masterpieces of the genre. It’s hardly a repertoire staple and one reason why comes across clearly in Faust’s account: this is an incredibly challenging piece to play well.

Yet through all its technical demands – the knotty passages of triple stops, runs of artificial harmonics, stratospheric acrobatics, and the like – Faust is never thrown for a loop. Rather, she dispatches the high-tessitura double stops (especially those in the Passacaglia) with uncanny evenness and ease.

Nor does the German violinist get bogged down, interpretively. Instead, hers is a shapely reading, sweet-toned and soaring to start, growing in tension and acerbity during the vertiginous Scherzo, and culminating in a resonant, ferocious account of the cadenza.

The finale, fervent and rhythmically taut, culminates in a shattering denouement. Though at certain climaxes, Faust’s sonority takes on a harsh edge, it’s one that’s apropos to her larger reading.

Accompaniments from the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Jakub Hrůša are – for clarity, color, and balance – outstanding. Taped live in Munich three years ago, this is as vital, urgent, and engrossing a traversal of the Britten Concerto as they come.

Three short pieces fill out the disc, the earliest of which – the Two Pieces for violin, viola, and piano from 1929 – gets its premiere recording here. Though Faust, violist Boris Faust, and pianist Alexander Melnikov play it well, there’s not much going on thematically to recommend it as anything more than a curiosity.

The Suite (from 1936) and Reveille (from ’37) leave somewhat stronger impressions. In the former, Faust and Melnikov give vigorous voice to the “Moto perpetuo’s” wild figurations, while the closing “Waltz” unfolds with lusty brio.

Reveille offers increasingly involved violin solos over a mostly pulsing piano accompaniment. Faust and Melnikov navigate its dry wit with aplomb; coming after the Concerto, it functions as a necessary palate cleanser.

Jonathan Blumhofer is a composer and violist who has been active in the greater Boston area since 2004. His music has received numerous awards and been performed by various ensembles, including the American Composers Orchestra, Kiev Philharmonic, Camerata Chicago, Xanthos Ensemble, and Juventas New Music Group. Since receiving his doctorate from Boston University in 2010, Jon has taught at Clark University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and online for the University of Phoenix, in addition to writing music criticism for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.