Just back from the all-Stravinsky program with Valery Gergiev guest conducting the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall — part of the orchestra’s “The Russian Stravinsky” series, and the orchestra’s 15,000th concert!

The first half of the concert yielded a maddeningly dull Symphony in C  and an uneven but energetic Capriccio for piano and orchestra featuring the very impressive soloist Denis Matsuev, who dispatched the solo part with the proper proportions of Russian rhythm and lyricism, neoclassical spikiness, and virtuoso panache (and a delightfully antithetical encore: Liadov’s Musical Snuff Box).

The single work on the concert’s second half was the original version of Petrouchka. Gergiev put the emphasis on the balletic storyline and personae with enormous success — somewhat at the expense of coherence — and drew some terrific Russian “street music” sounds from the Philharmonic. There were a couple of odd lapses in ensemble and some rushed passages, a few odd accelerandos, and a couple of unexpectedly abrupt tempo changes, but it was altogether a far more musical affair than the concert’s first half.

Gergiev has talent enough for a dozen musicians, but the lack of energy in the Symphony in C in particular provided yet another maddening example of his interpretive and artistic unevenness. When he’s on his game, however, he can be astounding.