Alan Gilbert is stepping down, at 50, as music director of the New York Philharmonic, leaving an elder statesman’s post without actually being an elder statesman. His final program at David Geffen Hall, “A Concert for Unity,” is a pitch for gray-haired, cultural ambassadorhood from a man who’s still quite young.

The conceit is multicultural. Combining a few Philharmonic musicians — including Mr. Gilbert on violin — with Yo-Yo Ma and members of his Silk Road Ensemble, the program’s first half on Thursday consisted of a piece by a Syrian composer and a suite inspired by traditional Spanish dances. Then, for Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, musicians from orchestras around the world were invited to join the band. (The concert on Saturday will include only the symphony.)

This was intended as a preview of an international, Gilbert-led Unity Orchestra that could, he writes in a program note, be “deployed as a diplomatic tool” by the United Nations. The all-hands-on-deck symbolism is sweet, though it’s long past time to stop saying, as Mr. Gilbert did in remarks on Thursday, that music makes the world a better place. (Any political persuasion can claim “Nessun dorma” as a theme song. Music doesn’t make the world better; people do.)

And the event was in keeping with the American tendency to look abroad for bridge-building opportunities, when there remains plenty of work to do at home. Before positioning itself as a leader in cross-cultural outreach, the Philharmonic might, for starters, seat a second African-American member.