Mr. Tovey may be reconfiguring his approach. He still did plenty of talking during the series opener, a Russian program, on Tuesday evening at Avery Fisher Hall. But he did less quipping, speaking instead about more substantive matters, like the history of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, or Glazunov’s place in the pantheon of late-19th- and early-20th-century composers (second level but not to be dismissed lightly).

You could argue, of course, that this is what program notes are for. And to be fair, Mr. Tovey suggested as much, at one point, when he mentioned in passing that Glazunov’s “Raymonda,” from which the orchestra played a few dances, was worth reading about.

In any case, neither the works nor the performances needed special pleading. Mr. Tovey began with the March and Scherzo from Prokofiev’s “Love for Three Oranges,” a pair of energetically brassy movements that sizzled here. Tchaikovsky’s “Marche Slave” and the dances from Act III of “Raymonda” were similarly splashy, and though these scores offer lovely moments for the strings, they are mainly opportunities for the orchestra’s brasses, woodwinds and percussion to revel in the sheer power and precision of their collective sound.

Mikhail Simonyan was the soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, and if his tone was thin at first, he refocused it nicely in time for a sweetly lyrical reading of the Canzonetta and an impressively speedy reading of the finale. He was at his best, though, in an encore, Rodion Shchedrin’s “Gypsy Melody,” a richly detailed, unaccompanied showpiece. The orchestra played an encore too, a nimble, light-textured account of the “March of the Toys” from Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker.”