Last night's Pittsburgh Symphony gala concert was a prelude to the tenure of new music director Manfred Honeck, but his impact on the orchestra has already been felt.

The festive mood of patrons at sold-out Heinz Hall, many just as excited to hear star pianist Lang Lang, was immediately elevated by the announcement that the PSO musicians had signed a contract earlier in the day.

Then Austrian-born Honeck took to the podium for the first time as the orchestra's maestro for Strauss Jr's Overture to "Die Fledermaus" and a lovely sound emerged: delicacy in the strings, easy elegance in phrasing overall, precise accents and quick changes in tempo. It was as if we had been transported to a New Year's Day concert of the Vienna Philharmonic.

The chemistry between conductor and orchestra has already arrived, and both are learning from each other. Honeck is clearly in love with this versatile orchestra, and went for other timbres and approaches in the rest of the program, finding wide vistas in Mussorgsky's Prelude to "Khovanschina" and comic antics in Rossini's Overture to "La Gazza Ladra" and Berlioz's "Roman Carnival Overture," with fun off-stage playing.

All of this would have made for a fantastic gala even without the charged performance by Lang Lang of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2. At present, there is no classical artist who can electrify an audience more than the Chinese superstar, in large part because of his animated stage presence. That's needed in this industry, even if he again exaggerated some of the phrasing too much for my liking. But under Honeck, even some of the biggest stretches of the score still had an underlying musicality to them.

Bringing a different sonic palette and smoothing out a soloist's eccentricities -- that's quite a first day, and plenty reason to come to hear the days to come.