Conductor James Gaffigan saves the best for last in L.A. Phil’s Brahms and Strauss concert

Conductor James Gaffigan is becoming known around these parts for turning conventional program configurations on their heads. In Gaffigan’s world, the big pieces -- usually a symphony -- often come first, occupying the space before intermission. After intermission comes the concerto, followed by a short orchestral showpiece to top things off.

So it was in his terrific concert of Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff and Bernstein at Walt Disney Concert Hall in late 2014, and so it will be to a modified extent in February when Brahms’ huge Piano Concerto No. 2 is followed by a new James Matheson piece and then Ravel’s “Daphnis and Chloé” Suite No. 2.

Gaffigan’s inversion of the usual concert sequence with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Saturday night at Disney Hall, then, couldn’t have come as a big surprise. Nor was it much of a novelty to place Brahms’ Symphony No. 3, with its relatively quiet endings for all four movements, first on the program. That has been done before and it feels more natural in this slot anyway.

Rather than treat the piece like a divisible symphony, Gaffigan played it with only short pauses for breath between the four movements, trying to make it seem like a single, unified, unbroken stream of thought. He could maintain the line throughout the first three movements, keeping the underlying rhythms going and flowing, patiently building up a head of steam that exploded in the climax of the fourth movement before fading down to a peaceful close. That worked fine, but Gaffigan had to overcome a rather foggy, thick-set opening in which the winds covered up the big string tune; it sounded more like Schumann than Brahms.

Following intermission, along came the Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1, with the eminent British pianist Stephen Hough in charge of the Steinway. For all of Hough’s virtuosity and Gaffigan’s energy, this performance sounded best in its quieter moments, where Hough could ripple through crystalline, delicately inflected little runs, and not so good in the bombastic passages.

The closer turned out to be the best performance of the night: Richard Strauss’ tempestuous “Dance of the Seven Veils” from the opera “Salome,” heard at last on the big, wide symphonic concert stage instead of being confined to an orchestra pit. Now and then, this excerpt really needs to be performed this way so we can savor Strauss’ stupendous orchestrations in a good hall that reveals every audacious, salacious detail.

Gaffigan took full advantage of the opportunity, using as large a band as he could fit onto the Disney stage (with eight percussionists), gesticulating in a manner extroverted even for him, reveling in the exotic washes of color, revving things up to a slam-bang rush almost to the finish line. Gaffigan has been making a name for himself in opera in Europe, and a performance like this -- which the orchestra seemed to be enjoying hugely -- made one want to see him do some opera here.

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