With pianist Inon Barnatan. At the Orpheum Theatre on Saturday, September 27. Continues Monday, September 29

It’s good that audiences don’t have to sing “O Canada” at every Vancouver Symphony Orchestra performance; this ain’t hockey, after all. But as a way of pumping up the crowd for the venerable organization’s season opener, it was effective—and it also allowed timpanist Aaron McDonald a chance to fine-tune his quintet of copper kettledrums to the national anthem’s martial beat.

He didn’t get much of a breather after that, jumping immediately into the attention-grabbing intro to Kelly-Marie Murphy’s A Thousand Natural Shocks and then, after intermission, adding simian swing to Richard Strauss’s equally dramatic Also Sprach Zarathustra.

Timpanists don’t normally get the props accorded violinists, or even violists. But featuring the band’s back line so prominently in the VSO’s kickoff concert—not to mention opening with a work by a living Canadian composer—is indicative of the way music director Bramwell Tovey thinks. He’s a democrat, a modernist, a realist, and a strategist of almost Machiavellian subtlety.

Playing to a near-capacity crowd of corporate sponsors and season-ticket holders, Tovey and the VSO stroked their desire for sophistication with Murphy’s accessible innovations, filled their yearning for virtuosity and familiarity by featuring the brilliant young pianist Inon Barnatan in a Brahms concerto, and hit the pop-culture button with the Strauss, a rather overblown concoction but one immortalized by Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001.

Nicely done! And the performances were as impeccable as the programming.

In her program notes for A Thousand Natural Shocks—commissioned by Tovey for his first concert as the VSO’s music director, back in 2000—Murphy speaks of her desire to honour the individual voices of the orchestra, which she accomplished by allowing harpist Elizabeth Volpé Bligh, oboist Roger Cole, and flutist Christie Reside brief but scintillating solo spots within the context of an otherwise fast-paced, complex score.

Speaking before the performance, Murphy added that Shocks’ somewhat abrupt ending could be explained by her having given birth to her daughter just days before the piece was due. Even without knowing that, however, it still would have seemed an appropriate ending for a work populated by surprises both small and large.

That Barnatan’s reading of the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor was going to be something special was evident even before he’d played a note. Brahms’s score opens with a long and elaborate orchestral passage; sitting mutely at the piano, the young Israeli visibly shook with every rhythmic shift. Concert artists talk about giving themselves over to the music, and Barnatan was clearly in its thrall. Better yet, he has the ability to draw the audience in after him. If anyone can wring more nuance from this youthful and slightly showy concert, I’d love to hear them—but for now, Barnatan has set the gold standard.

Also Sprach Zarathustra was understandably anticlimactic, not because of any orchestral deficiencies but because the work itself is such a curious blend of schlag and sturm. All those string-section glissandos left this listener feeling more than a little seasick, but that may well have been the composer’s intent. What’s certain is that this 1896 composition pointed the way toward the polytonal discoveries of the early 20th century.

Similarly, the VSO’s strong performance offers a reliable indication that the season to come will be both challenging and rewarding.