Scott Cantrell

CHICAGO – The Windy City gave Jaap van Zweden a standing ovation and bravos Thursday night, and after a long Anton Bruckner symphony that doesn't give up its secrets easily. Symphony Center was far from full, but the audience sat in rapt silence for the Fifth Symphony, which ran an hour and 20 minutes.

This Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert was a landmark for the Dallas Symphony's new music director: his first gig with one of the so-called "Big Five" American orchestras (Chicago, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Cleveland). Although he's a growing presence on European podiums, on this side of the Atlantic the Dutch conductor previously had led only the orchestras of Dallas and St. Louis. But you can be sure American audiences will be seeing more of him.

Mr. van Zweden was booked by the CSO only three weeks ago, when guest conductor Riccardo Chailly had to cancel two sets of concerts because of tests for a heart condition. Originally scheduled for Mr. Chailly's second week, the Bruckner was moved up; next week, Neeme Järvi will conduct music of Rachmaninoff and Taneyev.

The Bruckner Fifth bursts with so many start-and-stop ideas that it challenges both conductors and audiences to make sense of it. But the sheer imagination amazes: huge contrasts of speed and volume; music conjured out of hushed pacings of cellos and basses; antiphonal volleys of horns vs. trumpets, trombones and tuba, blasting across frantic violin tremolos.

Mr. van Zweden was in sure control of every note, every nuance, in the first of four CSO performances. And he clearly relished the tricks this virtuoso orchestra can pull off: Violins pinpointing even the highest notes, but also pouring out superheated masses of sound; basses that can tiptoe pianissimo in perfect tune; horns that can play super-softly; but also those scorching blazes of brass that are virtual CSO trademarks.

If anything, the first two movements were a little too precisely etched; this seemed Bruckner more coolly Germanic than warmly Austrian. The slow movement wanted more give and take. And independent parts for first and second violins really begged to have the sections divided left and right, as Bruckner would have expected, rather than clumped together on the left.

Bruckner started out as a choirboy and organist, and even in his symphonies the massings of sound seem imagined for reverberant spaces. Dallas' Meyerson Symphony Center supplies that rich sonic halo; Chicago's Symphony Center, acoustically dry and analytical, can't. Maybe adjusting to so different an environment discouraged Mr. van Zweden from taking expressive chances.

But he started to loosen up in the scherzo, especially in the playful trios, and in the finale he skillfully, and grippingly, built tensions toward a thrilling apotheosis.

Repeats at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago. $17 to $199. 312-294-3000, www.cso.org.