Odessa show full of color

If Hobart Earle weren’t music director of the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra, he’d make a good preacher. At least, it looked that way Friday when he and the Ukrainian orchestra performed a program of music good enough to make believers out of the listeners at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono.

Just to stick with the imagery, it’s worth noting that Earle wouldn’t be one of those fire-and-brimstone, holy-roller preachers. He’d be one whose style relies on poetry and prayer, one who looks out on the flock and invites them with a welcoming sweep of his hand to play forth God’s music.

That combination of tenderness and conviction showed most expressively in excerpts from Rheinhold Gliere’s ballet “Taras Bulba.” Although thought of as a Russian composer, Gliere was born in Kiev, Ukraine. His work has largely fallen from the popular repertoire, but thanks to Earle’s commitment, the ballet has been restored and recorded.

The orchestra performed with intense color for this home-grown work. There was the vastness of the steppe and the glee of whirling dances. Add to that the heroic battle the Cossack Taras Bulba waged against Polish oppression, and the music surely represented not only the particular gifts of this orchestra, but also the patriotism of Ukraine. This was the type of performance that keeps you on the edge of your seat waiting for each note and comsuming you to the point of having to remind yourself to breathe.

In a gracious move, the Odessa Phil performed Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2, Opus 30. Hanson, an American composer, wrote the “Romantic” symphony to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1931. The piece has a popular history, too, as it was for years the signature theme of the NBC weekly broadcasts from the National Music Camp at Interlochen, Mich. Movie buffs might have recognized it as the background score for the sci-fi thriller “Aliens.”

But concertgoers heard it performed live as an exacting piece of music. Earle is an American himself and conductor of the symphony since 1991. With large, Hollywood-style finesse, the “Romantic” moved from sentimental to glorious. Even if the brass section of this orchestra is not as exhilarating as the magnificent string section, the French horn solos in this piece were the type that melt you on the spot.

When this concert is talked about years from now — and it’s likely that it will be even though the hall was shamefully only half full — it will be both the Gliere and the Hanson for which it is remembered.

That’s not to slight the final piece on the program, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, Opus 47. Earle kept this direct and dug deeply for the irony of the score. That is to say, the drama of the music was chilling in some parts and quite humorous in others — all in Shostakovich’s enforced — if not lucid — ambition for “social realism.” This piece is filled with nuance — fat Russian marches, giggling profanity, childlike vulnerability and rotund optimism. By the explosions in the final allegro, no one could possibly bear another measure without coming undone. The orchestra — and you’ll hardly ever hear a finer string section — had a definite feel for the rhythms of this symphony.

There is a brightness and warmth to the Odessa Phil that makes it both appealing and revealing. Which is, of course, the prophetic gift behind Earle’s mission.