The orchestras of America are headed by the "Big Five," after which come all the others. They are so well known that just the names of the cities get a nod of affirmation: Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York and Philadelphia.

The same phenomenon holds true in Japan, where it's a "Big Three," NHK, Tokyo-to and Yomiuri, that have access to the largest operating budgets and the foremost international names.

In Europe, the list begins with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic, to which might be added the Gewandhaus Orchestra and the London Symphony.

The European community is more complex, due to the strong cultural identities of the several nations. The French, Bohemians, Italians, Scandinavians and Russians, not to mention the Israelis, might well wish to add their candidates to this list. Which ones can unquestionably be said to rank with the "Big Three" of Europe? I'd be interested to know your opinion.

Naturally it takes plenty of lucre to pay the salaries of 100 or more players for 100 or more performances a year. It also takes superb leadership, both administrative and artistic, to insure that the players, programs and performances are world class. To build a great company in any field, the essentials are the same: capital, leadership and management -- and planning, patience, persistence and perspiration.

Het Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest: Feb. 20, Riccardo Chailly conducting in Yokohama Minato Mirai Hall -- Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 23 in A Major, K. 488 (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1756-91; orchestrated by Gustav Mahler, 1860-1911) featuring Stefan Vladar; Symphony No. 7 in E Major (Josef Anton Bruckner, 1824-96)

The Concertgebouw's 111 seasons under no more than five chief conductors is an enviable record, and this is one of the very few world orchestras to have made 10 tours of Japan. Its 116 members view the Concertgebouw as the peak of their careers. That this orchestra should exist in a nation of only 14 million people is remarkable.

The Concertgebouw is not perceived to be linked directly with any particular national repertoire, and thus is free even when touring abroad to program a broad spectrum of music. Interestingly, Chailly, now in his 10th season with the Concertgebouw (and the first chief conductor not to be Dutch), has not leaned toward the music of his own birthplace, Italy. This year's tour programs focused on the German/Austrian part of the orchestra's musical tradition.

You can tell a great deal about an orchestra from the way it plays Mozart. Everything is revealed in Mozart's music, grace and grandeur alike. Yokohama Minato Mirai Hall ranks among the great halls of the world, and the wonderful combination of music, orchestra and hall seemed to bring us close to heaven.

The finale was vibrant, vigorous and vital. It was fun, a side of Mozart which often remains unrealized in the mistaken notion that he wrote music without virility.

Stefan Vladar has grown musically in the past several years. His delicate touch and sensitive, poetic phrasing would have pleased the demanding teacher of Vienna in 1786. Mozart often wrote to his father about making the musical line sing, and the refinement of his own hand on the keys and the extraordinary grace of his phrasing was described by many of his admirers. The audience was completely drawn in here, too, by the purity of Vladar's tone and taste.

Mozart's music was perfectly paired with the most singing of Bruckner's symphonies, the E-major symphony, No. 7. In this symphony Bruckner first explored the use of a quartet of tenor tubas to expand the orchestra's sonic palette, and directed the bass tuba player to use a still larger contrabass tuba in the even-numbered movements, to ground the solemn column of sound.

When I first heard the Concertgebouw Orchestra perform in its own wonderful hall in Amsterdam many years ago, it revealed to me a truth: Greatness and perfection are not one and the same. Art is a creation of human beings; and humanity, by its very nature, is imperfect.

Ages ago a squabble among the wind players in this orchestra led the entire section of bassoons to sit behind the flutes instead of in their normal position behind the oboes. The feud is forgotten, the players involved are long gone, but the bassoons still sit that way, the only orchestra in the world with this anomaly, and somehow it works.

The musicians I had heard warming up years ago didn't impress me, cocky young symphony player that I was, but the ensemble they produced when they performed together was quite beyond my experience. In such an orchestra, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Once again I reveled in the sonorities of the Royal Concertgebouw in a great hall, and I thrilled at the organic ebb and flow of musical elements in the lengthy expanses of Bruckner. I still prefer the normal arrangement of the wind sections, brasses and woods both, with complementary instruments seated next to each other instead of across the orchestra, but somehow the Concertgebouw makes it work.