Anyone who’s been following the world of classical piano for a while is familiar by now with Lang Lang and his profile. The Chinese keyboard virtuoso has spent years attacking pianos with the kind of unbridled fervor that shows off his prodigious technical gifts, but often at the expense of musical results.

So who was that guy who showed up in Davies Symphony Hall on Monday, Oct. 21, to give an eloquent, shapely and utterly beautiful performance of Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto with the San Francisco Symphony? He looked familiar, but he sounded different in all the right ways.

Could it be that there’s a new Lang Lang in town?

If that’s the case, it is enormously welcome news for listeners who have always admired what he’s capable of, anddeplored the uses to which he has often put his talents. Some of us have been waiting a long time to hear him play as thoughtfully and expressively as he did on Monday.

It may be that there’s a moral fable here about the benefits of adversity.

In 2017, Lang Lang suffered a bout of tendinitis in his left arm that kept him off the concert stage for more than a year. The loss of one of classical music’s most prominent (and bankable) stars sent ripples across this tightly intertwined world.

So his return to performing this year would have been notable in any case. But to hear him playing with newfound grace and transparency — well, that’s a whole different level of joy.

贝多芬第二协奏曲(他第一次混合涂料sed, though second to be published) would seem to be an unlikely vehicle for a virtuoso return. It calls for dexterous keyboard work, to be sure, but its demands are nothing compared to the Romantic extravaganzas for which Lang Lang has been best known; they’re modest even next to Beethoven’s later works in the form.

Yet this was how Lang Lang chose to introduce audiences to a newer, more cogent and thoughtful interpretive voice, and it worked perfectly. He dispatched the passagework in the concerto’s outer movements nimbly, replacing the old bombast with a new degree of subtlety and wit.

Perhaps most striking was his rendition of the slow middle movement, which got a glowing and often introspective reading. At the end of the movement, Lang Lang stretched the music out until it nearly subsided into complete stillness — the sort of dramatic effect that would certainly have sounded cheesy if it hadn’t capped a performance of such tenderness.

Of course, Lang Lang is still a virtuoso at heart, and he drove the point home delightfully with two brief, finger-busting encores, Mendelssohn’s “Spinning Song,” Op. 67, and a tiny etude by Carl Czerny.

Leading the orchestra for this one-time event was Romanian conductor Ion Marin, whose first appearance with the Symphony left one eager to hear more. He led off with a swiftly and impeccably controlled account of Glinka’s “Ruslan and Ludmila” Overture, and returned after intermission to lend breadth and ardor to Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony.

On any other evening, Marin’s strong debut would have been the headline news. But a newly rejuvenated and purposeful Lang Lang is an even more compelling development.