From the opening moments yesterday when an audience of remarkable old ladies gave Serge Koussevitzky a standing ovation through the last measures of a program that was sometimes mannered, but more often brilliant, one was convinced again that some things do not change. For among the more notable characteristics of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, now in its sixty-seventh season, is its continuity of quality from the closing concert of the previous year to the opening of the next. This season finds New York again without a permanent leader, while Chicago is introduced to that efficient but cold orchestra builder, Artur Rodzinski. Boston audiences, however, find the same faces and the same music.

Works by three Germanic masters, Bach, Hindemith, and Beethoven were the meaty substance of this first program. Bach's First Brandenburg Concerto, as rendered by Dr. Koussevitzky, lacks the lightness and intimacy preferred by these familiar with the old Buseh recording; however the lush Boston reading found as much life and meaning in this music as its first performers must have in 1721. The horn and oboe soles, particularly in the irrepressible third minuet trio, were superlative.

Unquestionably a high mark for the remainder of the season to aim at, Dr. Koussevitzky's performance of Hindemith's moving symphony, "Mathis der Maler," was a unique marriage of a composer's conception and an orchestra's performance. Hindemith's re-creation of Matthias' paintings from the Isenheim Alter, the Angelic Concert," the "Entombment," and the "Temptation of St. Anthony," in sound brings out all the unearthly power of the artist's work and a hint of his personal distractions and struggles. In Dr. Koussevitzky's hands, the intense score glowed and shuddered almost hypnotically until the final great D-flat Major chords. It would be difficult to conceive of a greater performance of this work.

Unfortunately, the closing work, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, not heard in Symphony Hall since 1945, seemed almost anti-climactic. The reading was quite straightforward and warm, outside of an unnecessarily funereal second movement, and great care was spent on fine details; but the fire and urgency that sweep everything before them when Toscanini plays this favorite, were somehow lacking.