For three weeks, on behalf of Rachmaninoff, the New York Philharmonic is putting itself at the disposal of the dazzling 24-year-old Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov. On Wednesday night at David Geffen Hall, Mr. Trifonov was a brilliant, uncommonly poetic soloist in that composer’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Piano Concerto No. 2. Given the familiarity of these pieces, you might wonder why a Rachmaninoff festival was called for.
But this one does have Mr. Trifonov, who is playing three of the four concertos, as well as the Rhapsody, with three different conductors. There are also two substantial orchestra works in store, including the Symphonic Dances, Rachmaninoff’s final composition. Wednesday’s first installment offered the impressive Romanian-born conductor Cristian Macelaru in an auspicious Philharmonic debut, beginning the program with a weighty, surging account of the 1909 tone poem “The Isle of the Dead.”
Yet the festival is built around the slender, mop-haired Mr. Trifonov, whose career has been zooming since 2011, when he took first prize in the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Tel Aviv, then weeks later won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
Though he brought astounding technique to his performance here, Mr. Trifonov favored subtlety and clarity over sensationalism. In the Rhapsody, when the pianist has a first go at the Paganini theme that Rachmaninoff puts through endlessly inventive variations, Mr. Trifonov played with subdued sound and seductive mystery. Even when the music broke into intricate passagework and brilliant flourishes, Mr. Trifonov demonstrated crisp brio and an ear for detail, though there was plenty of fiery virtuosity as well.
His account of the Second Concerto was also unusual for its transparency and sensitivity. There was not one bombastic moment, hard to avoid in this piece, which is at times dense with repeated chords and bursts of octaves. In passage after passage, Mr. Trifonov seemed swept up in the moment, even if it meant slowing down considerably to explore some wondrous touch in the music. The result was a performance that lacked some measure of overall structure. Still, Mr. Trifonov took us on a bracing walk through the work, and it was a joy to pause with him as he pondered something beautiful.
To his credit, Mr. Trifonov will not just play orchestral programs but will also take part in a Rachmaninoff chamber music concert on Nov. 22 presented by the Philharmonic and the 92nd Street Y. And to kick off this Rachmaninoff festival, on Tuesday night at Merkin Concert Hall, the New York Festival of Song presented “From Russia to Riverside Drive,” a program mostly devoted to his songs. The pianists Steven Blier and Michael Barrett accompanied two fine singers — the soprano Dina Kuznetsova and the baritone Shea Owens — in both classics and rarities.
Mr. Trifonov’s one miscalculation, so far, was his solo encore on Wednesday. After playing such admirably tasteful Rachmaninoff, he offered his own shamelessly flashy arrangement of Strauss’s Overture to “Die Fledermaus.” Why not a Rachmaninoff prelude or étude?