MUSIC REVIEW : Talmi Comes in Focus With Bruckner Piece : Symphony: Music director’s abilities shine as players provide a cohesive ensemble, with clarity of line and depth of sonority.

When people want to know what San Diego Symphony music director Yoav Talmi is like, words such as soft-spoken, sincere and perceptive come quickly to mind.

But to discover who Talmi is , it is necessary to watch him conduct Mahler or Bruckner, especially Bruckner. The sprawling symphonies of these late Romantic composers provide a window into Talmi’s character, revealing more about the conductor than even the most exhaustive personal interview can unearth. As he unfolded Bruckner’s Ninth on Thursday night, which he did from memory, he disclosed his unmistakable affinity with the composer’s serene, majestic world view and concern with transcendent realities.

With Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, Talmi brought the Copley Symphony Hall audience into his own musical inner sanctum. It was a rich spiritual journey, and the orchestra illumined the way with a sonic brilliance and uncanny focus all too rarely encountered in this or in any auditorium.

The purpose of playing a work such as the Bruckner Ninth, of course, is not to celebrate the conductor, and Talmi’s low-key podium demeanor scrupulously avoids any hint of ego and focuses solely on the merits of the piece.

From Talmi’s interpretation of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony last season, it is evident that his key to conducting Bruckner is to select a sure, unhurried pace that keeps the furthest borders of Bruckner’s giant sonic fresco in clear view. His finely detailed account of the Ninth’s broad opening movement, as majestic as a row of columns on a Greek temple, affirmed the wisdom of this approach. He gracefully guided the orchestra through the scherzo’s bold transitions, maintaining an underlying vitality throughout.

Only in the final Adagio did a clear sense of underlying urgency waver, robbing the final scene of its otherworldly serenity.

Three years ago, the orchestra couldn’t have performed Bruckner’s Ninth at this level.

Since Talmi became music director in 1990, however, his persistent tutelage has coaxed from the players a far more cohesive ensemble, clarity of line and depth of sonority than it has ever displayed. Such progress is heartening.

Thursday’s performance was the three-movement version of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, although Talmi has recorded the larger version with the fourth movement completed by musicologist William Carragan from the composer’s unfinished sketches.

Because the Bruckner Ninth had not been performed by the local orchestra, Talmi took 25 minutes before he began the piece to give a music-appreciation lecture describing the work’s structure while the musicians demonstrated the principal themes.

To balance the Bruckner, which weighed in at 62 minutes, Talmi opened with Mozart’s effervescent Piano Concerto in B-flat, K. 450. Hungarian-born pianist Peter Frankl gave a fluent, urbane account of the work.

His bright, polished articulation gave every note a clear, ringing sonority, and his playful attitude to the cadenzas captured the spirit of Mozart’s Viennese bravura. Talmi fashioned a lithe, crisp accompaniment with a suitably scaled-down complement of players.