The New York Philharmonic’s September 25 performance of the fragment, led by its music director Lorin Maazel, made one hunger to hear the whole five-movement piece. The musicians seemed beautifully attuned to each other, and to soprano Kiera Duffy’s clear, unforced singing. With her clean, accurate attacks, Duffy seemed to act as another percussive instrument, and Maazel’s technical mastery held the whole thing in exquisite balance.

After the intermission, Kiera Duffy was the eloquent soprano soloist in Mr. Boulez’s “Pli Selon Pli: Improvisation sur Mallarmé II” (1957), a work in which the vocal line soars above, within and around a delicately pointillistic keyboard, harp and percussion fabric.