The audience arrived to find Zankel Hall arranged as a theatre in the round, encircling a concert grand sharing the stage with a Lumatone, a MIDI controller with a keyboard resembling the left box of an accordion (or the Jankó keyboard), illuminated in ethereal pinks and blues, the room splashed with atmospheric lighting effects. Tao is a pianist who functions thrillingly within traditional classical music trappings, but it was no mere gimmick that his solo return to Carnegie Hall brought a downtown sense of avant-garde to midtown. It’s in his soul.

Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with eloquent gravitas as he introduced the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and his own mother, in advance of their monumental Carnegie Hall performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3, “Kaddish,” commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. James Conlon conducted the sizable forces — large orchestra, chorus, children’s chorus, soprano soloist, and two speakers.

Liu tore into the Prokofiev with a lion-like focus, slicing through the thorny exterior — occasionally at the expense of rhythmic definition — to savor the protein beneath. I missed some of the rattling bones and militaristic brass in the first movement, Allegro inquieto, but heard the second movement, Andante caloroso, anew. Liu handled the middle section, in which alternate realities seem to collide, with deft clarity.

Taking the stage as soloist in Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Minor, Op. 21, Lim emerged from the wings and greeted the audience dutifully, in a stupor— as if he was performing under duress, or sleep-walking. Not emitting so much as blink or a smile, you wouldn’t have predicted the sensuality that would soon drip from his fingers. Accompanied meticulously by Yamada, who juiced as much color out of Chopin’s subtle orchestration as possible, Lim and the Philharmonic gave a stunningly nimble and entertaining account of Chopin’s early showcase for his own talents.

If conducting technique was an Olympic sport, Mäkelä gave a medal-worthy performance. Perhaps the clearest conductor I have ever seen, embodying in equal parts the physicality, and spirit, of the music, he propelled the music’s rhythmic and dynamic energy into orbit, while also infusing it with emotional character. Svelte and debonair — and impeccably tailored — he does so without losing that Stokowski silhouette.

Grammy-winning Pacifica Quartet painted a monumental portrait of the United States in their recent American Snapshots: JFK, Vietnam, and Ellis Island at 92NY, indemnifying music from two of America’s darkest moments — from two of America’s worthiest twentieth century composers, Samuel Barber and George Crumb — with a symbol of its optimism and possibility, Antonín Dvořák’s “American” Quartet.

For Orpheus — New York’s 52-year-old democratic chamber orchestra that operates without a conductor — the answer is “no, thank you.” But, Maxim Vengerov, celebrated Soviet-Israeli violin virtuoso engaged as soloist in a two-concert survey of Mozart’s complete works for violin and orchestra at Carnegie Hall, apparently did not get the memo.

The Junction Trio is more than a piano trio. The triad of violinist Stefan Jackiw, cellist Jay Campbell, and pianist Conrad Tao is a juggernaut. The threesome made an impactful debut at 92NY on Friday in a daring gambit, deploying two warhorses of the genre alongside a bit of indignant commentary in the form of a spunky world premiere.

The centennial of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue continued into its fourth quarter with The Knights’ latest at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, featuring a world premiere as part of their multi-season Rhapsody-themed commissioning project. The Brooklyn-based orchestra welcomed pianist Aaron Diehl for a unique take on Gershwin’s familiar piece for piano and orchestra, a new composition for the same combination by Michael Schachter, balanced, in a stroke of programming ingenuity, with Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony.