With Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden in for Esa Pekka Salonen on this week’s subscription concerts, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra dusted off two war horses of symphonic virtuosity Saturday night at Symphony Center.

Violinist Christian Tetzlaff ripped into the Brahms Violin Concerto, its juicy double-stops ringing in octaves through the hall.  Though his tone weakened in the middle range, Tetzlaff danced in the upper register; the orchestra’s rich string passages kept the soloist grounded.  The middle adagio is a palette cleanser, almost lost between towering bookend movements.  The melody, introduced by Eugene Izotov’s oboe, is a lullaby not unlike that other famous Brahms tune.  Hardly soothing the audience to sleep, Tetzlaff turned inward with playing that sang, albeit intimately.  Galloping into the finale, Tetzlaff shrugged off every finger-twisting lick with ease, and drove the orchestra to a triumphant conclusion.

Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony is a work that engulfs the listener at every angle: from undulating waves of sound to teasing solos and the most delicate of fleeting moments, the symphony is an unavoidable force, looming on the program.  Luscious strings and woodwinds opened the largo’s expansive melody.  Van Zweden hit the accelerator into the allegro, allowing the brass to give away too much too soon.  The conductor seemed to overemphasize the pulsating rhythm in the horns, producing a jarring buzz from the section.  The movement was highlighted by glowing solos from hornist Daniel Gingrich and artfully crafted lines from flutist Mathieu Dufour.

The strings showed off their versatility in the scherzo, the biting staccato giving way to bits of saccharine melody, and back again.  The brass finally provided a sense of calm with hymn-like incantations in the end.

The third movement shows off Rachmaninov’s gift for melody in twenty-two of the best measures he ever wrote: the weeping clarinet solo melted the audience, and come-hither solos from the English horn and oboe flirted with the listener.  The movement ended softly before van Zweden turned the orchestra loose in the finale.  Thoughts from the first movement returned, though deeper, and full of buoyancy.  The orchestra roared to the end, and the audience returned the volume, giving well-deserved ovations for oboe, flute, horn, and violin solos, hoping the orchestra would towel off and run the whole thing again.