"I like to do heavy programs," guest conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto said, "but I didn't realize how heavy this one was."

"It was long and intense," he said, mopping his brow as he talked to the audience after the concert.

For the program, the Honolulu Symphony drew from some of the greatest of the great German Romantics, but chose works less frequently performed: Schumann's "Spring" Symphony, No. 1, last presented many years ago, and the "Good Friday Spell" from Wagner's "Parsifal," which left people whispering that they had not heard it before.

The best known work on the program was Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 1. "A big undertaking for any orchestra," Prieto said. "It's 45 minutes long, and the orchestra is integrated in every phrase. It's like a courting: (the piano and orchestra) embrace, and separate, then embrace again."

Prieto's musical partner was pianist Dubravka Tomsic, a Slovenian pianist who studied with Rubinstein and has made scores of recordings.

The two made for an interesting contrast: Prieto tall, slender, energetic, and at the beginning of his career; Tomsic quieter, with the calm of a successful career well-established.

Tomsic has mastered the illusion of tranquil power, gliding through the music's considerable physical demands with grace, as though dancing with a good friend. She played with an expansive tone, silky smooth and pliant, but with a tensile strength closer to steel. She could shift from explosive chords to fairy-dust runs in a second without even blinking.

ENTRANCING SOUND

Young musicians are often flash and angularity, but Tomsic's flash was contained inside the music, which took on a deep, mellow warmth throughout.

For Tomsic, "pacing is very important. You have to feel it inside." When Tomsic played, her pacing entranced everyone, so that Brahms' second movement felt like the gentle unfolding of a flower into sunlight.

Tomsic's was an inspiring performance, and it closed the concert with a standing ovation.

In the first half, Prieto, an expressive conductor, presented compelling interpretations of both the Wagner and Schumann, and elicited, with the exceptions of occasional ragged entrances, strong playing by the orchestra.

Wagner's "Good Friday Spell" is not an easy first piece: slow and meditative, it is gorgeous, but not rousing as concert openers tend to be. Prieto built Wagner's brass choir "walls of sound," held to the work's broad pacing, and, by not allowing the music to rush, captured Wagner's slow but inexorable build toward climaxes.

Schumann's Symphony No. 1, nicknamed by Schumann himself as the "Spring" symphony, is held together less by themes than by harmonic structures and is peopled with the same kind of vivid musical characters as in his piano cycles.

Prieto and the orchestra brought these characters to life: James Moffit and Norman Foster covered the clarinet solos admirably, as Claire Starz did on flute. Starz's solo was one of Prieto's favorites: "It's one of the most beautiful solos — it's like the wind of spring blowing through."

It was an excellent concert, except for that scourge of modern concerts: a cell phone ringing incessantly through one of the quietest and most delicate of moments, disturbing everyone in the hall.

Ladies and gentlemen, please turn off your cell phones, and should one go off in the middle of the concert, please don't make things worse by muttering in reaction.