Three of the Big Five orchestras are launching seasons with Berlioz: Alan Gilbert started his New York Philharmonic tenure with the Symphonie Fantastique; the Boston Symphony Orchestra begins its Carnegie Hall series with the Roman Carnival Overture. But only the in-distress Philadelphia Orchestra is playing the intoxicating, rarely heard Te Deum, abetted by the Philadelphia Singers Chorale in repertoire they do best; the grand, newish, ultra-versatile Fred J. Cooper organ; and the sure interpretive hand of chief conductor Charles Dutoit.

Whatever is happening on the orchestra's business/leadership side, a reality check on the artistic end prompts positive appreciation for how the ensemble is stepping outside typical programming in this setting-the-season-tone moment. Anyone who knows the Te Deum has full confidence in its "wow" factor, but surprisingly few know the piece at all.

Wednesday's performance - not the formal season opener (that's tomorrow), but the orchestra's first Kimmel Center concert, this one free to college students - was an ingeniously conceived follow-up to the Dutoit-led Berlioz Requiem last spring. That occasion exposed the Requiem to longtime orchestragoers who had never ventured far enough into the choral subculture to hear it. In another clever stroke, Dutoit started Wednesday's concert with Berlioz's "Resurrexit" from his student-age Mass, showing where the apocalyptic trumpets of the Requiem were first conceived.

The Te Deum, while a summation of both works, also maintains a celebratory character with victorious, militaristic fanfares rather than the Requiem's lurid, Bruegelesque visions of Judgment Day. However gigantic, the piece is surprisingly songful - possible because Berlioz rarely stopped at just writing a tune, but assembled a series of short melodic episodes, each with its own rich harmonic implications and together forming a compelling emotional arc that also maintains architectural strength.

Perhaps a concession to finances, the performance lacked the optional children's chorus that adds a dimension to the piece's sound palette - which left the Philadelphia Singers overshadowed by the orchestra in the last of the six movements. Otherwise, the performance was a model of Dutoit's typically integrated, homogeneous music making. The piece never felt bombastic, but colorful wind writing was disappointingly downplayed. The emotional complications of the final movement - the words suggest typical spiritual petitioning, though the emphatic repeated rhythms, aided by growling brass, challenge God to action - were there only if you looked for them. (In fact, those repeated rhythms that help climax the piece dragged a bit.)

Tenor soloist John Tessier was a definite asset, and organist Michael Stairs showed great understanding of his role in any given musical sound picture, working with particular subtlety in the non-Berliozian portion of the concert, Saint-Saens' Symphony No. 3 ("Organ").

The Saint-Saens performance couldn't help prompting comparisons to the gripping Christoph Eschenbach reading, recorded during the organ's inauguration. Dutoit's approach was more idiomatically French and, in its way, perfectly exciting as layer on layer of instrumental color was placed and balanced in the final movement. Indeed, Dutoit is a master sonority builder.

Yet I would trade some of that civilized rationality for the underlying terror that aided Eschenbach in making this symphony seem like a matter of life and death. Not everything needs to go to the edge, I suppose. Or, in great art, does it?

Repeated at 2 p.m. today and 8 p.m. Tuesday at Verizon Hall. Tickets: $10-$120. 215-893-1999 or www.philorch.org.

Contact music critic David Patrick Stearns at dstearns@phillynews.com.