By Marc Geelhoed
Enquirer contributor

While Leila Josephowicz's name preceded his on the program, it was Johannes Brahms who saved the Cincinnati Syphony Orchestra's concert Saturday night. In an evening of works by Janacek, Bartok, and Brahms, it was the performance of Brahms' Symphony No. 2 that made a good concert great.

The Suite from Janacek's opera "The Cunning Little Vixen" began the concert in a calm and relaxed mood. Tinged with melancholy, due to, among other reasons, the title character's death, the two-movement suite is filled with lush string writing and woodwind solos depicting the forest's animals gamboling about. The orchestra produced a fine, round sound in the first movement's climax, and the soaring theme of the Vixen's Discussion of Her Amorous Desires in the second received a grand treatment in the hands of the trumpets.

Ms. Josephowicz's performance of Bartok's Violin Concerto No. 2 was not as fulfilling. While possessing technical agility and stage presence, it was parts of the concerto that don't require virtuoso's fingers that gave her problems.

The first movement begins with a Gypsyesque lyrical melody, which she played well enough, but it was the slower and much more angular second theme that she failed to invest with any forward motion. Her sound is also rather small and she was fighting a losing battle with the dissonant eruptions coming from the orchestra. Paavo Jarvi did a fine job keeping them in check, but there were many times when Ms. Josephowicz's compact sound simply could not keep up. The challenging cadenza was overly mannered, as she tried to shape it rather than actually doing so.

Her playing in the Andante second movement was extremely deliberate, with no clear thread connecting one note to the next. It is these juxtapositions of lyrical and violent which make this work great, and Ms. Josephowicz did not make this clear.

Brahms' Symphony No. 2 was absolutely thrilling, banishing any post-intermission disappointment. The orchestra was a model of excellent phrasing and balance throughout, and individual soloists all rose to the occasion.

Mr. Jarvi gave the first movement's spacious melody all the room it needed and then some, and the violins took it with aplomb. There was no micro-managing at all: at one point he simply cued entrances and let the musicians take care of the music.

The quiet beginning of the final movement perfectly set up the bracing playing that followed, and Mr. Jarvi drove the orchestra hard to the finish, with utter joy.