The New York Philharmonic presented two shows for the price of one Thursday evening, performing Sergei Prokofiev’s monumental score for the film “Alexander Nevsky” and projecting the original Eisenstein epic at the back of the orchestra.

At Avery Fisher the stage was extended to hold not only the full orchestra but also the huge forces of the New York Choral Artists. It was a good night to be a first violinist or a violist, as these lucky folks, being in the front of the ensemble, were able to watch most of the movie. In addition to a high riser, the conductor’s area was equipped with a computer monitor so that she could follow the visual imagery and glance at the score simultaneously.

Those not familiar with both the cantata and the film might have been jarred a bit as associate conductor Xian Zhang signaled the opening downbeat and that incredible chord, both modal and Oriental in nature, did not emerge from her instrumentalists. But the film has credits and Prokofiev also composed some rousing martial accompaniment for them. Soon enough, however, we were immersed in that exotic musical passageway to another era, quite possibly the most arresting first measures in all of 20th-century music.

The film is terrific, filled with stark imagery of helmeted skulls and equine skeletons, frozen lakes and wooden huts so ancient they come full circle to futuristic. It is the year 1242 and the armies of the Teutonic knights are about to invade Russia. In a remarkable parallel to our own day, during this time of appeasement and nonaggression pacts — the film was shot in 1938 — every Russian knew he or she would have to fight the monster sooner or later and knew it was better to get on with it.

Ms. Zhang did a very good job of keeping the orchestra on a pace with the visual, and exhibited a strong sense of discipline and coordination. The overall experience of seeing such an affecting film and hearing the music live was thrilling.

The musical performance itself, however, was a bit ragged. This is the third time I have heard Ms. Zhang and I must diagnose her as addicted to decibel level. It seemed as if this entire score was played double forte. Certainly all of the battle music was ratcheted up in volume. This might work interpretively in such a unique multimedia setting, but the New York Philharmonic has intonation problems even at mezzo forte.They are prone to extremely out of tune enunciation when their leader exhorts them to play ever louder.

Some of the most powerful imagery in the film is Eisenstein’s evocation of musical instruments from these dark ages. A monk plays an organ orgiastically.There are many shots of soldiers and peasants blowing ram’s horns and other animal appendages.But the problem this night was that the Philharmonic trumpets, tasked to provide the actual sounds, were often woefully off the mark.The horns, by contrast, were superb.

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The Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse is a great room, high above the fray at Lincoln Center Plaza, and used most frequently for public pre-concert lectures. At the Mostly Mozart Festival in 2005, management tried an experiment, rolling in cabaret style tables and chairs and arranging them around a piano, dubbing the hour-long recital that began at 10:30 PM “A Little Night Music.”

The series was so successful that it was repeated this past summer, and now programmers are banking on a similar experience for the regular season.Although one might have expected Bobby Short to be the keyboardist for the inaugural evening on Thursday, it was instead the classical pianist Anne-Marie McDermott.

Ms. McDermott, a veteran of the Chamber Music Society, has generated passionate critical disagreement, a phenomenon first fostered by her frequent collaborations with violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. Historically, I have found most of their duo recitals extremely eloquent, but I do understand my colleagues who think of them as over the top.

Ms. McDermott took on Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and began well.Elongating the melody of the original air, her introductory style was more like a Bach fugue, each note given precisely the same rhythmic value.Usually, the source song is presented with a great deal of stopping and starting, as if to make sure that its listeners absorb all of its aspects. However, this straightforward approach was itself a variation on the theme in perfect imitation of “old Bach.”

The performance as a whole, though, was quite disappointing. Although there were brilliantly played variations, there were at least an equal number marred by sloppy enunciation and wayward landings. Only one had a major disaster with which to contend, but there were simply too many mistakes to classify this reading as accurate.

Ms. McDermott chose a rather bracing tempo for many of the variants.This is fine, particularly since Bach himself is little or no help in even suggesting metronome markings. But the extra pressure necessary to maintain this alacrity seemed to wear on her dexterity in several spots.There were, in fact, only two tempos in this entire set, the other being a moderate stroll. Even as Ms. McDermott demonstrated subtle variations of dynamics, she failed to impress with correspondingly interesting changes of speed.

It is not necessary to know anything about Augenmusik to appreciate this numerological music, but the Goldberg Variations do benefit from a spiritual aspect to the presentation (Bach was supposedly writing the piece so that a nobleman could fall asleep listening to it). At some point, the variations need to coalesce architecturally. With little variety of attack or tempo, much of this late night performance was rather tedious.

Lincoln Center unveiled this first of three night-owl concerts as an introduction to their film series on Glenn Gould, and Ms. McDermott suffered significantly by comparison to this revered memory. And she didn’t even hum along.