Ensemble heeds composers’ wishes> Prague Chamber Orchestra gives wonderfully classical performance in Orono

Allegro con spirito.

Presto.

Boisterous, playful, frolicsome.

These are words that become the Prague Chamber Orchestra. In last night’s classical music concert at the Maine Center for the Arts, this 35-member ensemble performed with infectious vivacity and virtuosic talent for which composers have certainly hoped as they wrote directives (such as the ones above) on the notes to their music. If musicians didn’t get it, of course, conductors surely would enforce it.

The signature characteristic of the Prague orchestra, however, is that it manages to soar — and mighty high — without a conductor. But it’s not as if the musicians are completely without leadership. The concertmaster wondrously manages to watch over his shoulder, give a cue to a nearby violist and check up on the cellists — all while playing his own piece masterfully.

When ensemble playing is great, as it often has been at the Maine Center, it’s a thing to be admired and enjoyed. That’s exactly what the audience did in this two-hour concert that included a spirited presentation of the Overture to Gioacchino Rossini’s opera “Tancredi” and a perilously brisk rendition of Mozart’s Symphony No. 35 in D Major, K. 385 (“Haffner”).

There was something entertainingly absurd about watching this all-male group perform Benjamin Britten’s Simple Symphony, Opus 4, a humorous piece which requires the string players to pluck at their instruments in amusing rhythms and with a certain sophisticated bounce. Indeed, these typically unsentimental guys tickled the audience with charming finesse. This is a serious piece of music technically, and the Prague Chamber Orchestra is one serious set of musicians. But Britten’s work brought chuckles all the way around the concert hall.

Italian pianist Simone Pedroni, gold medalist of the Ninth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 1993, was the soloist for the concert. He performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major, K. 453, and did so with crisp articulation on the piano and dynamic personality in his interpretation. Pedroni followed up his primary performance with Rachmaninoff’s Melody Opus 3, No. 3, a romantic solo piece that he unfolded with dazzling warmth, melancholy and skill.