By Jonathan Blumhofer

The whole effort culminated in the finest orchestral performance these ears have heard in Boston since, well, the last time the Berliner Philharmoniker was here.

Music director Kirill Petrenko directing the Berliner Philharmoniker. Photo: Rob Davidson

“A German joke,” Mark Twain once allegedly quipped, “is no laughing matter.”

He might have been talking about the Scherzo movement in any of Anton Bruckner’s symphonies. Often, those come out as tough, sturdy, dour 10-minute-long interludes between an entrancing Adagio and a weirdly structured, Heaven-storming finale.

That wasn’t the case, however, at Symphony Hall on Wednesday night, when the Berliner Philharmoniker and music director Kirill Petrenko ambled, swooned, and tripped their way through that section of Bruckner’s towering Symphony No. 5. Here, for once, was a reading of a Bruckner scherzo that fully embodied its title (which means “joke” in Italian): impish, shapely, characterful, even — gasp! — humorous.

The Fifth was the lone item on the Philharmoniker’s latest visit to town, which was presented by the Celebrity Series. One of just two symphonic acknowledgments of the Austrian composer’s bicentennial at the corner of Huntington and Mass. Ave. this year (the other was the Boston Philharmonic’s rendition of the Ninth in April), the event proved rightly festive, though, clocking in at less than 80 minutes, a bit on the short side.

Nevertheless, it was more than enough time for the Berliners, who were back after a two-year hiatus, to again demonstrate that they remain the gold standard. The orchestra’s ensemble is virtually flawless, the rapport of its players — how they move together, maintain eye contact, clearly listen to one other, follow their conductor, and, in the process, infuse palpable enthusiasm into their efforts — a model of collaboration.

All of this was reflected in Wednesday’s performance. The dynamic range of the night’s Bruckner was colossal, emerging from absolute nothingness at the start of the first movement to resplendent, blazing fffs by the end of the finale (and many times in between). Throughout, the quiet spots were never tentative or anemic nor the grandiose ones shrill or out of balance.

For character and sweep, too, the Berliners left little to be desired. Tempos were largely ideal. The big first movement, warmly blended and shaped with complete naturalness, unfolded as a series of stirring, logical paragraphs, its many silences charged with electricity.

Music director Kirill Petrenko directing the Berliner Philharmoniker. Photo: Rob Davidson

So, too, the even more involved finale, the clarity and strength of whose fugal episodes were offset by moments of enchanting, preternatural delicacy (like the strings’ echoes of the first statement of its brass chorale). In this movement, too, the vigor and articulative unanimity the orchestra brought to the score’s various contrapuntal sections was thrilling.

Fervency and precision were likewise the hallmarks of their traversal of the Fifth’s slow movement. As in Mahler, one of the challenges of Bruckner is a lack of metronome markings. Accordingly, this Adagio was expansive though not exactly spacious. Even so, the reading managed burnished lyricism of the first order as well as metric and textural exactitude: every line of its denouement was audible and in its place.

And then there was that Scherzo, with its demonstration of the character-defining properties of rhythm and tempo.

Petrenko presided over everything with a benign disposition and an aura of joy. He’s the most unprepossessing of maestros, hardly a martinet of the Karajan or Furtwängler models but clearly no pushover. The Philharmoniker, which can be a notoriously unruly bunch, respect and trust him: the responsiveness of the night’s performance can’t be explained any other way.

Often on Wednesday, he seemed more than happy to return the favor; two of the night’s most striking moments came when the conductor stepped back, let his arms hang, and just allowed his orchestra to play. The first, at the apex of the first movement’s development, showcased an ensemble in total control, their running, unison eighth notes perfectly aligned. The other, during some of the most texturally treacherous passagework in the middle of the finale, was downright breathtaking.

The whole effort culminated in the finest orchestral performance these ears have heard in Boston since, well, the last time the Berliners were here. True, the night didn’t offer the last word in spiritual transcendence. But that hardly mattered. Instead, Wednesday was about music-making of the highest order. In that, this orchestra is in a league entirely its own.

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.