ORONO – When “A Chorus Line” opened on Broadway in 1975, Marvin Hamlisch, the composer for the show, walked home with the newspaper in his hand and tears in his eyes. The theater critic Clive Barnes had praised the show but found the music merely passable. Hamlisch was devastated.

Undoubtedly, his spirits were boosted by winning the Tony Award for best musical score. And it wasn’t as if Hamlisch hadn’t met with earlier success. Even before “A Chorus Line,” which ran for more than 6,000 performances on Broadway and won a Pulitzer Prize, Hamlisch had won two Oscars for the music to “The Way We Were” and another for his adaptations of Scott Joplin piano rags in “The Sting.”

But the “Chorus Line” review hit him hard.

It is a testament to Hamlisch’s perseverance as an artist that, when his most recent Broadway show “The Sweet Smell of Success” garnered negative reviews in March, he didn’t shed a tear then or when it closed in June.

Hamlisch, who will give a concert Oct. 18 at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono, simply moved on to the next project: creating music for Nora Ephron’s Broadway-bound comedic drama “Imaginary Friends,” about a fictional meeting between the writers Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman.

“I love ‘Sweet Smell of Success’ and I really haven’t figured out what it was that people didn’t like – or I should say what critics didn’t like,” said Hamlisch last week speaking from backstage at the Pittsburgh Symphony, where he is principal pops conductor. “I think because ‘Chorus Line’ was my first show, I was wildly involved to the point that everything I read about it was eaten up. I ate it up. When you are 20, 25, 30, 35, you can bounce back no matter what. Your youth gives you that. At 58, this can become something you can take to the doctor. At that point, you say: Hold it! You don’t want to get sick over this stuff or in any way let it hurt you. These days, I think the best thing to do is to stay sane and do the very best you can. Period.”

Anyone tracing Hamlisch’s career – from playing the piano at age 5, to being one of the youngest students ever admitted to the Juilliard School, to the Oscar, Grammy, Emmy, Tony, Golden Globe Awards – can see that he is on an historical continuum with Richard Rodgers, Irving Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, Frederick Loewe and other masters of the musical in America.

“I wish!” Hamlisch said in response to the notion. “I unabashedly strive for that.”

And the result is a body of work that is recognizably popular whether it is performed live on a concert stage or piped in to an elevator.

“I don’t always keep it from slipping into sentimental,” said Hamlisch of his compositions. “But I think sentimental is not a bad word. I think when it gets to be sugary, that’s rough and over the top. But it’s a shame that everything has to have an edge. I’m still an old fogy. When I go into ‘Gigi,’ I practically cry it’s so beautiful. ‘If Ever I Would Leave You’ – beautiful. I think sentimental got a bad rap.”

During more serious times, however, Hamlisch has written music designed less for entertainment than for solace and solidarity. His 30-minute symphonic suite “Anatomy of Peace” has been performed internationally. He sometimes plays “A New Ending” at functions related to the Middle East. And “One Song,” which he often plays in concert, is an anthem for togetherness among all people.

While many would recognize Hamlisch’s music from movies such as “Sophie’s Choice,” “Bananas,” “Big,” “Pennies from Heaven,” “The Spy Who Loved Me,” “Ordinary People” and “Three Men and a Baby,” few think of him beyond his scope as composer. In fact, Hamlisch is frequently on a concert schedule – with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra, where he is also pops conductor, or on tour with his own show. He’s an entertainer, he said. And most people are surprised to find out – especially when he initiates an interactive audience game called “Rent-a-Composer” – that he’s a funny one.

“I love to work,” said the native New Yorker. “I love to be busy doing lots of things. I have a wonderful wife. I’ve got three terrific dogs. I’m basically content. I would have been much happier had the Yankees won. I would have been over the moon. But I’m fine.”

He is also happy to be heading north again.

“I’ve been to Maine. God knows it’s beautiful,” said Hamlisch, who will also be honored by Bangor’s Congregation Beth Israel at a service on Friday.

Would he care to give a teaser of what he might be playing at the concert?

“Probably the piano,” he said.

Marvin Hamlisch will perform 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 18, at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono. For tickets, call 581-1755.