NEW YORK — The Philharmonia Orchestra of London paid a visit to New York on Sunday and Monday with conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, and all I want to talk about is its sound.

But if I had to name the standout moment that’s stayed with me from their two concerts at David Geffen Hall, it would be a brief pause that was filled to bursting with tension.

It happened twice, actually, in the finale of a glittering performance on Sunday afternoon of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7, where the composer writes in a short silence before a fortissimo onslaught. Both times, the hall filled with a mighty unison inhalation, a collective gulp of oxygen and nerve as powerful as that of an Olympic swimmer coming up for air in the butterfly.

With good orchestras, you can sense the mental energy of 90-odd players bundled into one force. What I actually heard in those brief rests in the Bruckner were probably only the brass players reloading for the next big blow — but that breath was so dramatic as to seem to truly unify this massive ensemble.

The Philharmonia under Salonen is a wondrous creature to behold. Painfully good, from the perspective of New Yorkers who had hoped that he would take over the leadership of the New York Philharmonic from Alan Gilbert. Their disappointment was softened only by reports that Salonen simply wasn’t in the market, wanting more time to compose. Then came the news in December that he is to become the next music director of the San Francisco Symphony.

Salonen has worked with the Philharmonia Orchestra for over three decades. In that time, he has helped shape a sound that is stunningly muscular, smooth and cohesive. Those fortissimo salvos in the Bruckner had power but also a high-gloss polish — especially across the brass section, where individual colors were alloyed together, with just the gleaming trumpets sailing on top.

These players know how to form impromptu combinations when the music requires it, as when the cellos and horns made a hybrid of oaky mellowness in the first movement of the Bruckner. Salonen’s obsessive attention to sound also found expression in two unusual placements: the one designed for greater blend, the other for disruption.

In the Bruckner, the orchestra’s tuba player repositioned himself between movements. He joined the horns and Wagner tubas in the Adagio — their joint sound taking on a gnomish melancholy — before returning to his regular spot next to the trombones for the heavy lifting in the fortissimos of the final two movements. In Monday’s performance of Stravinsky’s “The Firebird,” a single trumpeter took up position in a balcony of the auditorium, startling listeners with notes of anarchic exuberance.

Both Bruckner’s symphony and “The Firebird” require a careful marshaling of forces so that the climactic moments late in the game really soar. The composers’ approaches couldn’t be more different: In his sprawling, methodical works, Bruckner seeks the sublime within the strict confines of protocol. Stravinsky breaks rules; he questions and quarrels, and yet finds a consensus that tips into transcendence. Salonen found the balance between discipline and freedom in both works.

That same balance informs Salonen’s own charismatic Cello Concerto, which here had an eloquent soloist in Truls Mork. Ever in pursuit of unusual sound constellations, Salonen shapes the final movement as a riveting contest of will between the solo cello and a percussionist stationed at a set of bongos and congas at the front of the orchestra. Besides the visual appeal — a blur of hands on skin and bow on string — the unlikely pairing makes you hear the rhythmic capability of the cello and the vocal quality of the drums.

The concerto’s first two movements are a fascinating study in density and translucence, with sounds morphing from silvery and wan to red-blooded and impassioned. Orchestral textures that start off as a hollow whistle gather force like a storm that buffets the solo cello. The conclusion, after the kinetic fireworks of cello and drums have burned themselves out, sends slivers of electronically processed cello harmonics ricocheting around the auditorium like the distant keening of gulls.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.