“Music is a miracle,” Czech composer Sylvie Bodorova said Sunday at the opening concert of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra’s 1998-99 season. On a lecture tour in the United States, the Prague-based Bodorova showed up at the Maine Center for the Arts to hear the American premiere of her one-movement work, Concerto dei Fiori, a lyrical, lovely piece which, in the hands of Czech violinist Pavel Sporcl, has a touch of the miraculous in it.

As its name indicates, the concerto (written in 1996) is flowery, with an ornate centerpiece for solo violin and a finale that is a reverent epitaph to Bach. Conductor Christopher Zimmerman did not succumb to embellishment but showed the flinty restraint necessary to make this piece sing. Bodoreva appeared to whisper the word “perfect” to Sporcl as she congratulated him after the dashing performance — and no one would be surprised if she did.

Sporcl outdid himself in dynamism during Antonin Dvorak’s generally underplayed Violin Concerto in A minor. One wonders at the number of times Sporcl, 25, has been called precocious in his lifetime because he has the pugnacity of a little brother and the talent of a virtuoso.

You couldn’t rightly say Sporcl has a light touch because he is youthfully serious and dramatic. But he does — already — have a profound relationship with his violin, and although some might have located his technique just this side of the punk-rock energy field, he is one of the brightest soloists Zimmerman has invited to town. You can’t help but wonder, too, about the promise the next 10 years hold for him.

On the other side of the spectrum, Bedrich Smetana was 50 and deaf in 1874 when he wrote “Ma Vlast,” his major contribution to orchestral music. An epic collection of six symphonic poems, “Ma Vlast” (My Homeland) is an enthralling cornerstone of patriotic music. Although Sunday’s presentation of the first three parts of this ferocious piece got off to a terse and grisly big start, the Smetana ultimately proved that the BSO has grown as an orchestra. The string section showed its usual muscle tone in this as well as in the Bodorova and Dvorak. But the entire esprit de corps on this all-Czech concert was heartfelt, intense, narrative and engaging.