A whole is divided into two parts, nearly equal in size. While sharing a fundamental character, they diverge just as fundamentally. A section that could be described as recalling the color blue even if its the midnight variety is connected by a tiny, fragile bridge to an evocation of dark, churning red.

Esa-Pekka Salonen doesnt mention Democrats and Republicans or Leavers and Remainers, or other bitter bicameral oppositions of our time in the program notes for his new orchestral work, Gemini. But thoughts of politics, of face-offs between countrymen, were inescapable as the New York Philharmonic gave the local premiere of this two-headed piece on Wednesday at David Geffen Hall.

Gemini is the union of Pollux (2018) and Castor (2019), which can also be performed individually and are named for the half brothers of Greco-Roman myth: both sons of Leda, but Castor mortal and Pollux divine.

Conducting the Philharmonic in these performances, Mr. Salonen has nestled the twins amid works written by Hindemith and Schoenberg in the 1920s and 30s. Those German composers looked toward the past for inspiration and consolation at a time of national and international unease; with his classical subject matter and our similar moment, Mr. Salonen has placed himself in their company.

To his credit, he has not drawn the contrast too sharply, or used his structure to represent good and bad, pretty and ugly. Pollux (played first) and Castor emerged from a single rhythmic germ, and they also share an ominous, nocturnal mood, brasses brooding and drums menacing.

The world he depicts is angry on both sides. Pollux, though, is misty, swirling, altogether starry; delicate violins at one point are joined by a gentle motif in the flutes that becomes a gradual, dawnlike blossoming of winds.

Mr. Salonen leans a bit too heavily on Polluxs divinity, overloading that music with galactic twinkling. Castor is the tighter and more compelling half, whooping and whining in feverish strings and pounding with rhythms that echo the gallop of horses, upon which Castor and Pollux are often depicted riding. In the loud, grim ending, there is little trace of the hopeful conclusion of the twins myth: When Castor is dying, Pollux chooses to share his immortality with his mortal brother, and the two spend eternity alternating between the heights of Olympus and the depths of the underworld. In other words: compromise, which is so elusive today.

Hindemiths Ragtime (Well-Tempered), from 1921, which opened the concert, whips one of Bachs fugues into a tart carnival. Without pause, the Philharmonic then played Schoenbergs rich yet focused 1922 arrangements of two Bach chorales. The program closed with Hindemiths Mathis der Maler Symphony (1934), a sonic portrait of Matthias Grnewalds bracing 16th-century Isenheim Altarpiece.

By the mid-1930s, Hindemith had been blacklisted by the Nazis. He had grown fascinated by the story of Grnewald, who 400 years before had also seen his livelihood suffer over political differences, and whose work was then largely forgotten for centuries.

In the Philharmonics elegantly impassioned performance, the symphony seemed intent on preserving, as if in amber, the spirit of a distant past but also on puncturing it, over and over, with the violence of the present. This was an energetically played but altogether melancholy evening.

New York Philharmonic

This program repeats on Friday, Saturday and Tuesday at David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center; nyphil.org, 212-875-5656.

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Review: Mythical Twins Inspire Music Divided in Two - The New York Times