That hit the spot.

A hallmark of the best classical music is its ability to usher in a world, taking you with it. Sometimes that place will do little for you, but sometimes it will be just what you need. It is subjective to the nth degree, but when it happens, you'll be shocked everyone didn't have the same experience.

Take last night. From the moment the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra took to Dvorak's Symphony No. 7 at Heinz Hall, it felt like they were playing for me. It didn't matter if Dvorak had the dense woods of his beloved Bohemia in mind. The dark, alto range of this tone poem-like score came across as my own personal musical massage as one robust chord progression after another rolled off the stage. I am betting more than a few other audience members felt the same way.

Critics don't write much about how music fits one's mood because it's simply so subjective. Yet its is a major component of the experience at a live concert.

Sure, I can point out that conductor Marek Janowski let the orchestra play out, and the musicians responded by digging into the symphony's churning phrases and oaken timbre. The joy of performance on the fingertips and lips of everyone on stage, and that trumped the occasional ensemble issue. The strings captured an epic tone and the woodwinds lovely musical characters. I also can mention Janowski built the work teleologically so that the finale arrived like both closing argument and victory speech. But in the end, the symphony just enveloped me in a shroud of sound that fit my mood after a long week (and even a long concert to that point), and this kind of effect is hard to explain.

The concert opened with the PSO premiere of Mozart's Symphony No. 30. This frustrated because the early work (from 1774, when he was a teenager) teases you, only hinting at the greatness of symphonies to come. It has its charms -- especially the surprise ending, but it is simply not a work of the first rank.

Janowski, while amazingly conducting this lesser-known score by heart, didn't imbue the symphony with much color, so it took on the quality of pleasant background music. Not even a few turns to the dramatic minor could muster much more than a wistful quality to the work. Hearing mediocre Mozart (it hurts even to write that) helps you define what makes him masterful in later works, but that doesn't mean I want to experience that in a concert.

The flip side of mood is taste, and when it comes to such a well-known work as Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto everyone has their own. Soloist Chee-Yun did not play to mine. There is a difference between a fast tempo and a rushed performance. Last season, Gil Shaham gave the former to great effect; Chee-Yun offered the latter.

She outpaced her own tone and bulldozed over some of the score's poignant moments, such as the arpeggios at the end of the first movement cadenza or the exquisite harmonic that ends its second theme. And she occasionally got out of sync with the orchestra. It was a dramatic reading, to be sure, but not a poetic one.

Critics Andrew Druckenbrod and Scott Mervis talk about music on "The Beat," available exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.