Quite by coincidence I was sitting near Max Valdes, then music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, at an early 1990s concert in Slee Hall by the Greater Buffalo Youth Orchestra, when a young man was summoned from the trumpet section and handed the baton to conduct Verdi’s Overture to “La Forza del Destino.”

After a quite impressive performance, Valdes leaned over and said, “He seems to understand instinctively how to make an orchestra go.” That was the conducting debut by native Buffalonian Michael Christie, who has since proven that he also knows how to make his career go. At age 35 he has three important music directorships and is one of the leading conductors of his generation.

In Christie’s first guest appearance with the Buffalo Philharmonic this weekend one might expect that he would want to impress with one of the standard blockbusters. But Christie is content to conclude the BPO’s two-week Viennese Festival with a program illustrating Vienna’s dance tradition.

He opened with Schubert’s 1824 “Six German Dances,” in a 1931 orchestration by Webern. They can be seen as a forerunner to Vienna’s later waltz craze. Other than fuller wind scoring, Webern did not try to modernize Schubert, and Christie used modest dynamics to avoid overemphasis in a performance that nicely contrasted strict phrasing with a more flowing legato approach, which the reduced orchestra carried off very well.

Still, with the smaller orchestra, Schubert’s 1814 Symphony No. 2 displayed the ebullient style of the 17-year-old composer. The effervescent brio of the first movement came off well, and in the only slightly slower Andante, Christie pointed up emerging dance rhythms without losing sight of the over-arching line. The Menuetto may have been a bit too robust, but the chattering pulse of the final Presto was captivating, full-bodied and held short of Beethovenian heft.

After intermission the waltz king Johann Strauss Jr. took center stage in seven engagingly intermixed works. Three polkas included some amusing special effects such as train horns, vocal cheers and cuckoo sounds, while the Overture to “Die Fledermaus” reminded us of Strauss’ popular operettas.

But the main thrust was three internationally famed waltzes, “Tales From the Vienna Woods,” “Emperor Waltzes” and “On the Beautiful Blue Danube.” Despite their popularity, Strauss felt they were underrated as the truly symphonic works he had intended them to be. Christie and the BPO spoke eloquently of both the waltz pulse and the symphonic scope in performances that superbly projected the ebb and flow of the waltz rhythms. This was a unique program for the BPO, and very well done.

The audience echoed these sentiments and Christie responded with a bonus, Josef Strauss’ polka “Ohne Sorgen” (Without a Care), a sprightly romp with more vocal punctuation.

Concert Review

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra

“Viennese Festival: City of Dreams” classics concert with conductor Michael Christie, Saturday night and 2:30 p. m. today in Kleinhans Music Hall.