The most eagerly awaited event at Symphony Hall this season, apart from the appearance by new Boston Symphony Orchestra music director James Levine this past weekend (Lloyd Schwartz’s review is on page 14), was surely the scheduled performances last October of Robert Schumann’s rarely heard Scenes from Goethe’s "Faust" by Seiji Ozawa, the BSO, and an all-star line-up of soloists that included José van Dam, Barbara Bonney, and Mitsuko Shirai. But after September 11, the Schumann was scrubbed in favor of the Berlioz Requiem, which Ozawa has programmed frequently with the BSO. The explanation Ozawa offered the Boston Globe was that Mephistopheles appears in a good part of the text that Schumann chose to set, and Ozawa didn’t want to take the Devil to New York.

This is hard to figure — New York could hardly imagine worse devils than the ones who attacked the World Trade Center, and anyway, Goethe’s Faust is the one version of the story that casts doubt on its hero’s fate. Schumann (like Mahler in his Eighth Symphony) is in no doubt whatsoever: this D-minor work ends in its relative major, F, as the "Ewige-Weibliche" that Faust loved in Gretchen draws him up and away from the clutches of Hell. Schumann’s Mephistopheles doesn’t even have much in the way of stage time or good lines — he’s the externalization of Faust’s self-centeredness; and this "Bildungsoratorium," which omits entire acts of Goethe’s text, focuses on Faust’s good impulses, the striving toward God that, along with God’s grace, saves him.

It was surely by grace that I found myself in Berlin (for the film festival) the same week that Claudio Abbado had scheduled Schumann’s Faust for the Berlin Philharmonic, with Thomas Quasthoff as Faust/Dr. Marianus and Karita Mattila as Gretchen. The Philharmonic press office generously offered a ticket at short notice, but Faust (any Faust) is an experience is to share, so I snagged two of the eagle’s-nest tickets that go on sale late (and only if the conductor is happy with rehearsals) and took my friend Elke. From the very top of Hans Scharoun’s in-the-round circus-tent Philharmonie (in the days of long-time BPO director Herbert von Karajan it was called the "Circus Karajani"), we had a clear view of the orchestra, the Schwedischer Rundfunkchor and Tölzer Knabenchor, the 10 soloists, and Abbado. Faust from arguably the world’s best orchestra, in the world’s best concert hall, from one of the world’s great conductors, and with a Faust who knows hardly any peer. We were children of Paradise indeed.

Abbado’s live 1994 BPO recording, with Mattila and the same choirs but Bryn Terfel as Faust, set the standard for this work; this year’s performance was, no surprise, not very different. The Overture seemed more meditative and less dramatic than I remembered, though Abbado showed the same tenderness in the second subject of its foreshortened sonata form without slowing down the tempo. Quasthoff — also no surprise — was warm and weighty and unforced, sweet in his high notes, and he phrased like a mensch (or an angel, same thing). Mattila sounded a tad formal, even operatic; there’s probably a better Gretchen out there but you could spend a long time looking. The "Waldung" ("Forests") beginning of part three was seraphic; Pater Ecstaticus was accompanied by a soulful cello, and at Dr. Marianus’s "Höchste Herrscherin der Welt" ("Highest Mistress of the World"), the oboe didn’t stint on the allusion to Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto.

Abbado, who is still in recovery (we hope) from the stomach cancer that was detected in 2000, conducted as if he were leading us all to Heaven. Through much of his career, he interpreted the German Romantic repertoire as if it were Italian; but in these last 10 years he has learned to interpret the Italian in the German Romantic repertoire — a subtle but essential difference. He’ll never be Furtwängler, but as his Beethoven Fifth and Sixth last October proved, he doesn’t have to be. His Mahler performances have steadily grown in stature; the Bruckner Ninth he did with the Berlin Philharmonic in Symphony Hall two years ago had more than one listener begging to trade his or her extensive collection of recordings for a tape. The week before this Faust he conducted Beethoven’s Choral Fantasia (with the world’s finest pianist, Maurizio Pollini) and Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang Symphony; and he made (with considerable help from Pollini in the Beethoven) both works sound better than they are. He’s a class act. As for why he performed Schumann’s Faust and Seiji didn’t, I’d refer Seiji to the end of chapter 55 of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, where after Farmer Boldwood is reprieved, Jan Coggan cries, "God’s above the devil yet."