Fri­day’s Pitts­burgh Sym­phony Orches­tra con­cert was per­haps the best of the sea­son to date.

Guest con­duc­tor Ra­fael Pa­yare, a young Ven­e­zu­e­lan with an an­i­mated yet fluid style, led the or­ches­tra in mu­sic by Ven­e­zu­e­lan com­poser Ino­cente Car­reno, Rach­ma­ni­noff’s sec­ond pi­ano con­certo fea­tur­ing award-win­ning pi­a­nist Kirill Ger­stein, and Mahler’s first sym­phony.

Mr. Pa­yare’s rap­port with the or­ches­tra was a de­light to watch; he coaxed an enor­mous va­ri­ety of tim­bre from the mu­si­cians, from the in­trepid op­ti­mism of the open­ing horn calls in Mr. Car­reno’s “Mar­ga­ritena” to ar­dent lyr­i­cism in the strings dur­ing the Rach­ma­ni­noff and bright, cut-your-fin­ger sharp­ness in at­tacks from the winds through­out Mahler’s opus.

A Rus­sian-born U.S. cit­i­zen, Mr. Ger­stein was the young­est stu­dent ever to at­tend Berk­lee Col­lege of Mu­sic in Boston. His play­ing was im­pec­ca­ble through­out the con­certo, cap­ti­vat­ing from the first eight tones that in­tro­duce the open­ing move­ment. His tem­pes­tu­ous­ness proved a de­light­ful jux­ta­po­si­tion to his pa­thos, par­tic­u­larly in the slower sec­ond move­ment. Mr. Ger­stein raced through the fi­nale at a break­neck pace, glid­ing through Rach­ma­ni­noff’s gnar­l­ier mo­ments with pa­nache.

The Mahler, too, yielded en­chant­ing mo­ments. Com­posed in re­sponse to some of the com­poser’s less fruit­ful af­fairs in the late 19th cen­tury, the sym­phony tra­verses a sound­scape in­clud­ing nat­u­ral birdcalls in the winds, hunt­ing calls in the brass, a rus­tic peas­ant’s dance, a mi­nor treat­ment of the folk song “Frere Jacques” paired with a wick­edly mock­ing fu­neral march, and a thun­der­ous fi­nale that re­vis­its each afore­men­tioned el­e­ment.

Even though they be­gin the sym­phony off­stage, the PSO’s trum­pets’ ini­tial hunt­ing calls were ut­terly clear and main­tained a nat­u­ral zing when­ever they re­curred through­out the hour­long work. Mr. Pa­yare kicked off the sec­ond move­ments with a bit of ex­tra heav­i­ness, start­ing slow be­fore ac­cel­er­at­ing into the mel­ody with en­thu­si­asm. Prin­ci­pal bass­ist Jef­frey Turner’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the open­ing of the third move­ment (the sad “Frere Jaques” bit) was breath­tak­ingly mourn­ful, and the fourth move­ment showed off the or­ches­tra’s horns to their full­est maj­esty.

The eve­ning be­gan with Mr. Car­reno’s mu­sic. Born on the Ca­rib­bean Island of Mar­ga­rita in 1919, Mr. Car­reno is widely con­sid­ered to be one of Ven­e­zu­ela’s mu­si­cal trea­sures. His mu­sic isn’t of­ten per­formed in the states, a shame re­ally — it dis­played a keen sense of drama and nar­ra­tive, un­fold­ing slowly and bounc­ing back and forth from a sense of rhyth­mic in­ten­sity to a more pleas­ant, bum­bling ami­abil­ity. Mr. Pa­yare led the Pitts­burgh pre­miere of “Mar­ga­rita” with flair and el­e­gance, demon­strat­ing a strong con­nec­tion with the or­ches­tra from the first notes.

The PSO was in fan­tas­tic form Fri­day, and one hopes that Mr. Pa­yare will re­turn in fu­ture sea­sons.

This con­cert re­peats Sun­day at 2:30. Tick­ets: $20-$99; pitts­burghsym­phony.org.

Jeremy Reynolds: jreynolds@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1634; twitter: @Reynolds_PG. Mr. Reynolds' work at the Post-Gazette is supported in part by a grant from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Getty Foundation, and the Rubin Institute.

First Published: January 27, 2018, 5:00 a.m.