This year’s Philadelphia Orchestra opening gala happened, but it was a cliffhanger

The show went on.

This simple bit of news might seem routine, except that Thursday night’s opening of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 2023-24 season at the Kimmel Center has been far from assured.

It’s contract negotiation time. The musicians’ labor deal with management expired earlier this month, and while everyone agreed to talk and play, this year’s approach of the merry fundraiser came with the threat of a potential strike.

The music is continuing, but a new pact remains elusive. Musicians began voting Thursday on the latest contract proposal, with the results expected Saturday. On Friday, the musicians’ union lodged an unfair labor practice complaint against management with the National Labor Relations Board — a charge management called “meritless.” A strike authorization vote taken in August remains in effect, and the music could be silenced at any moment.

At Thursday’s gala, aside from a nervous undercurrent of labor-trouble chatter, the mood was light, the party talk polite, and the music, well, if not celebratory, then at least emblematic of what’s at stake.

As the orchestra played one of its great signature pieces, Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, everything the ensemble has meant and continues to mean was made beautifully obvious. Even if you’ve heard this work dozens of times — as many have — it still hits as a brilliant marriage of melody and orchestration.

The second movement was a particularly lush whirlwind. Opening the program in a single, six-minute stroke: Jennifer Higdon’s short, rhythm-heavy Fanfare Ritmico.

The star of the evening was Yo-Yo Ma, and he played like a dream.

”Yo-Yo Ma is music,” music and artistic director Yannick Nézet-Séguin told the audience after the cellist’s performance of a Shostakovich concerto. “And you know who else is music? The musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra.”

And with that the conductor introduced concertmaster David Kim, celebrating his 25th anniversary with the orchestra, as well as other members of the quarter-century club.

Kim and Ma rewarded the audience with a short encore — a tango duet by Albeniz. The concert was heard by 2,400 patrons — a nearly full house — with many attending a reception before and dinner afterward. Slightly more than $1.1 million was raised (before expenses) to benefit the orchestra and Kimmel, a spokesperson said.

The musicians had considered striking on opening night to exact maximum leverage in talks. It might have been an effective strategy in 2016 when a night-of-the-concert walkout yielded a new labor agreement in under 48 hours. But that episode angered some deep-pocket donors, and players this time decided against a repeat — in part out of deference to the orchestra volunteers who organize the fundraiser.

Nézet-Séguin — a lover, not a fighter — showed support for the musicians this summer when he donned a blue union T-shirt in a rehearsal at the orchestra’s summer home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Thursday night in Philadelphia, he looked festive in black glittery pumps and wide French cuffs, but showed no outward signs of supporting his players, sartorially or otherwise.

He has played the role of blithe host on other nights; on this one he had few words for the audience, and there were no speeches.

In Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1, Ma brought his trademark intensity and nuance, qualities matched by the ensemble, particularly in the heroic playing of hornist Jeffrey Lang. The piece was an unusual choice for an ostensibly happy occasion: edgy (first movement), bleak (second and third), and angst-ridden (last). And while the repertoire for this concert was chosen months ago, you couldn’t help but feel that the cellist was channeling what has become yet another difficult chapter in the orchestra’s labor history.