It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the Vienna Philharmonic never plays better than at Carnegie Hall—and another that the orchestra never plays better than under the baton of Riccardo Muti, whose season-to-season relationship with the institution goes back uninterrupted to 1971. At 83 going on 39, Muti returns to New York’s most prestigious concert stage for a weekend’s worth of music that suggests the grandeur of their joint odyssey. The Friday program pairs Schubert’s “Tragic” Symphony No. 4 with Bruckner’s beloved Symphony No. 7, sometimes known unofficially but suggestively as the “Lyric.” Saturday brings Schubert’s tremendous Symphony No. 9, “the Great C major,” preceded by the Carnegie Hall premiere of Catalani’s brief, operatically tinged Contemplazione and Stravinsky’s tart balletic tribute to Tchaikovsky, Le Baiser de la Fée. The Sunday finale juxtaposes Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 (the “Jupiter”) with Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”), illustrating Muti’s inimitable flair for Daedalian programming. How are the Mozart and Dvořák symphonies alike? Each is its composer’s last. And how are they different? The “Jupiter,” Mozart’s unchallenged apotheosis of symphonic form, appears to have been conceived purely for his Olympian satisfaction; whether a performance he was planning in Vienna ever came off is unknown. “From the New World,” inspired by Dvořák’s interest in the music of America’s First Peoples and the spirituals of the enslaved, was intended as a blueprint for American symphonists of the future and premiered at Carnegie Hall in the composer’s presence, to immediate acclaim. —Matthew Gurewitsch