A trip out to Fairfax requires some justification, which the concerts hosted by the George Mason University Center for the Arts occasionally provide. This was the case Saturday night, when that venue distinguished itself as the only local stop for the current U.S. tour of the orchestra of the Leipzig Gewandhaus (recently in Chicago and Boston, but also in smaller places like Schenectady). That venerable ensemble, founded in 1781, is one of the oldest orchestras in the world. The musicians, who have always played at a high technical level, are making news again because of their new conductor, Riccardo Chailly, who now holds the podium occupied at various times by Kurt Masur, Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Carl Reinecke, and Felix Mendelssohn. How embarrassing that the hall at GMU was not sold out, although the audience that filled perhaps three-fourths of the modest house was certainly appreciative.

Of the two programs the Gewandhausorchester has on offer for this tour, its first with Chailly, it was the one devoted largely to Richard Strauss that was selected for Fairfax (the other features Mahler's fifth symphony, as well as Mahler's arrangement of Schumann's first symphony, to go along with the orchestra's most recent recording of Mahler's Schumann arrangements). The evening opened with an excellent rendition of Strauss's tone poem Don Juan, op. 20, a brash and difficult work that tells the story of the legendary seducer of women and his eventual downfall.

The hero's loud, daring theme arrested the ears immediately, because of the orchestra's excellent unanimity of sound. All sections sounded strong and well-proportioned, especially the clarion brass (except for a few misplaced notes buried down somewhere in the horn section) in Straussian swells, which Chailly often cued as if his hand were crushing an orange. Particularly fine solo work came from concertmaster Frank-Michael Erben, whose music represents Donna Anna: in its first appearance, Strauss leans heavily on sounds quite similar to the Venusberg music in Wagner's Tannhäuser, with the violin surrounded by trills, harp, bells. At the moment of Don Juan's greatest exaltation, the score abruptly cuts to silence, to give way to the mysterious music heralding the hero's undoing.

As if the Gewandhaus Orchestra were not enough of an attraction, Chinese virtuoso Yundi Li joined the group for Liszt's first piano concerto, a bombastic piece of Romantic excess featured on Yundi Li's most recent recording. (In a programming coincidence, Li will be back in the area next month to play the same concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra, on April 5 to 7.) Since winning the International Chopin Competition in 2000 — at age 18, the first winner of a First Prize in 15 years — Li has focused on his greatest strengths, the daring Romantic works of Chopin and Liszt. He stretched and drove the Liszt concerto almost to the breaking point, impressing with devastating forte playing, iron-clad technique, and a gossamer lightness for contrast. This performance has all the flash and anguish one could hope for Liszt, which brought some much-needed life to this very familiar concerto, whose first theme almost any listener would recognize. Li obliged the enthusiastic audience with an encore, Liszt's demanding arrangement of Schumann's lovely song Widmung, which revealed a few technical flaws but was still fine.

There is something perverse about Strauss's decision to have the middle section of a work for massive orchestra — the Gewandhaus musicians occupied every square inch of the mid-sized stage — dominated by extensive passages for solo violin. In a later Strauss tone poem, the autobiographical Ein Heldenleben, op. 40 (also reviewed on a concert by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra last year), the concertmaster again distinguished himself in the soliloquy portraying Strauss's wife, alternately tender (as in the exalted love duet) and shrewish. The battle section was not as raucous and clashing as it can be, but the excellent wind section was hilariously pedantic as the shrill voices of Strauss's critics. The gorgeous postlude brought a lushly, tragic quality to the resignation of the composer late in life. One minor snag occurred when the camera at the back of the orchestra, needed to relay the image of the conductor to the offstage brass at a crucial point in the score, was somehow knocked over. Fortunately, a quick-thinking trumpet player discreetly righted the camera's stand during a loud section of music.

For an encore, it was more Strauss, a welcome and not insubstantial offering of the Dance of the Seven Veils from Salome, a sultry and rhythmically driven performance. We look forward to the return of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, perhaps on the schedule of Washington Performing Arts Society, which has brought them to Washington before.

The Gewandhausorchester is also forward-thinking in their approach to recording. Through the program Decca Concerts, you can download live recordings of their best concerts with iTunes.