Staging a classical concert on Super Bowl Sunday — and a sunny one at that — is a daring move. But the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, which played to a loaded Maine Center for the Arts, gave the pre-game crowd something impressive to take home.

While the program was unusually varied and included fierce playing on the part of the BSO, the front-running moments belonged to Alisa Weilerstein, a 17-year-old guest cellist from Cleveland. Weilerstein comes on strong with her cello and clearly has been schooled to express emotion in every note. She delivered a performance of Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto that was tenacious and tender. This is the very same piece that brought Jacqueline du Pre world recognition, and it was hard to ignore similarities of style between du Pre and Weilerstein.

Except that you sense that no two performances of Weilerstein’s are the same. Her youthful gifts are in poeticizing the music with romance, but also in making the moment come alive freely and compellingly. Her speeds are careful but never stifling. Add girlishness, which never disappeared in the midst of her sophistication, and Weilerstein is both dignified and darling.

But she wasn’t alone in her success. The afternoon began with two virtuoso percussion pieces performed by Stuart Marrs, Cindy Brooks Bastide and David Halvorson.

Paul Smadbeck’s intoxicating “Rhythm Song” for marimba and Russell Peck’s primordial “Lift-Off” for drums were dynamic conversations among these three meticulous players.

This is the second time in recent years that a BSO-based group has brought the immediacy and verse of percussion to local audiences, and even though some listeners may have found the pieces repetitive, they were unquestionably eloquent and bright.

All of this means the first half of the program was a hard act to follow. But the BSO, with Christopher Zimmerman conducting, charged forward into Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8 in G Major. This symphony erupts with Bohemian boldness — sometimes galloping, other times storming or cascading or blooming into roselike richness. The various sections came forward with gypsyesque suaveness, and the performance was attractively vivid.