Symphony gamble pays off beautifully> Offbeat BSO program a big success

If you were in the mood Sunday for some high-flying adventure, then the Bangor Symphony Orchestra concert at the Maine Center for the Arts was the place to be. There were old sounds and new sounds and things that really did go bump. There was some chick-a-boom and some Sturm und Drang.

Thanks to music director Christopher Zimmerman, who had the guts to take some chances with the afternoon’s program, and to the hot-shot performances of the musicians and a few guest artists, the concert was a bountiful success. It would be fair to say the BSO blew the roof off the joint with this rather enigmatic concert which included Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D Major, Alfred Schnittke’s avant-garde Concerto Grosso No. 3, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s walloping Symphony No. 15 in A Major.

So maybe it’s not the stuff you want to hear at every concert. (And in fact some people left early.) But it’s the type of programming you have to admire, as well as the type of ambitious performing you have to respect in a community orchestra.

The diverse elements of the lineup were matched by several soloists both from the home team and from Zimmerman’s connections through his teaching role at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. BSO concertmaster Lynn Brubaker and principal flutist Susan Heath joined harpsichordist Eiji Hashimoto for the Brandenburg. The three formed an elegant lead ensemble for this intimate piece, but, clearly, this was Hashimoto’s baby. The Brandenburg No. 5 is marked by a monster of a harpsichord solo in the first movement, and Hashimoto unleashed some staggering zip to make it ferocious. The audience didn’t dare take a breath or make a move, and the payoff was both amusing and amazing.

Schnittke’s work picked up on the baroque elements of the opening concerto, bringing the themes into a modern setting. Violinists Sha Ye and Min Tze Wu, both undergraduates at Cincinnati, played this turbulent piece with seeming effortlessness. Many young performers might not be able to grasp the depth of Schnittke’s ideas, but these two young women were undaunted, and gave technically fascinating reads of the score.

The BSO was in rare form for the Shostakovich, which is filled with elephantine moans and heartache-inducing tenderness. Almost every instrument you could think of piped in for this epic symphony, which was bitingly urgent and unpredictably quirky — with strains from Wagner as well as from Rossini’s William Tell Overture.

For all the bigness of this generally winning concert, however, there was one small moment unrelated to the BSO but fully in the spirit of the afternoon. Young Andre Winters, a 7-year-old trumpet player — whose father sometimes performs on trombone with the BSO — dropped his hat at the front doors of the Maine Center and collected a respectable booty entertaining passers-by with jaunty songs. “I’m going to take him to the store to buy a billion oranges,” his father said. “He eats 10 a day.”