MUSIC REVIEW : Talmi Displays Vision in Schumann Symphony : Concert: Strong leadership by music director of S.D. Symphony pays dividends midway through the season.

“Getting to Know You” is not programmed for the San Diego Symphony’s current subscription season. But this once popular musical comedy ballad might well be the theme song for music director Yoav Talmi’s first year on the local podium. Each time he conducts a concert, loyal symphony patrons learn more about their resident conductor.

On the surface, Talmi is a puzzle. He usually appears shy and reserved in conversation, almost hesitant to speak his mind.

In front of the orchestra, however, the Israeli conductor is forceful, extroverted and confident, especially when he conducts an effulgent score like Thursday night’s Second Symphony by Robert Schumann.

Working from memory, which he does for most of the major works in his conducting repertory, Talmi used large-scaled gestures to communicate his meticulously detailed and unequivocal vision of Schumann’s emotionally expansive symphony.

Talmi is willing to be a patient teacher. Before the orchestra played Bartok’s suite from the ballet “The Miraculous Mandarin,” he spoke to the audience, outlining the ballet’s bizarre plot and explaining some of Bartok’s musical symbolism.

It was evident that the music director was eager to ingratiate this unfamiliar piece with an audience not known for its musical curiosity.

From the orchestra’s well-groomed performance, it is clear that Talmi has gained the confidence of his players. The strings’ cohesive ensemble and the resulting breadth of the Second Symphony’s opening movement, as well as the burnished grandeur of the finale, attested to the strides the orchestra has made this season under its new leader.

Talmi’s programming is thoughtful, if not overly adventurous. Thursday, for example, he sandwiched the Bartok opus between Mozart’s familiar Piano Concerto In G Major, K. 453, and the Schumann symphony.

This insulated Bartok’s mildly dissonant, aggressive suite with familiar strains. Unfortunately, “The Miraculous Mandarin” is one of the composer’s least compelling works, a catalogue of clever special effects with too few serious ideas. If the ears of the audience are to be stretched, let it be for more challenging and worthy fare.

Talmi opened the program with his stylish view of the Mozart G Major Piano Concerto. Guest pianist Joseph Kalichstein gave a cool, unmannered account, but his approach was distancing rather than inviting.

Although Kalichstein displayed a polished, fluent technique, his attack tended to be brittle rather than transparent. He rushed over his ornaments as if they were irritating impediments. Only in the second movement did the orchestra and soloist mine the deeper emotional veins of Mozart’s idiom.

This concert will be repeated at 2 p.m. Sunday in Copley Symphony hall.