LANCASTER -- A rousing opener is a tradition at the Lancaster Festival. Music director Gary Sheldon saw to it that the tradition continued Thursday night with a concert that also marked his 15th season as conductor (and founder) of the Lancaster Festival Orchestra.

After several short pieces, performed outside St. Mary Church by several of the orchestra's brass players, they and the audience went inside for the rest of the program.

The concert began with the familiar trumpet voluntary by Henry Purcell, elaborately arranged by Gary Sheldon for modern brass sections and organ.

Because the church's organ is at the opposite end of the nave, Paul Thornock's playing resonated effectively with the sounds of the tuba, trombones, French horns and trumpets.

Mezzo-soprano Susan M. Schwartz and the Lancaster Festival Chorale projected the spiritual qualities of Song of Renewal by Leslie Savoy Burrs. Unaccompanied, the chorale turned in a truly harmonious performance of the Alleluia by Randall Thompson, a gentle piece well-suited to the long reverberations of the church.

The return to the festival of the Chicago Brass Quintet was celebrated with the sprightly Quintet of Alexander Aliabiev, played with mostly unerring pitch and virtuosic renderings of the technically demanding passages.

To close the first half of the program, Sheldon marshaled the brass, woodwinds and percussionists to perform -- standing -- the concluding movement of a 20th-century showpiece, Paul Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis from Carl Maria von Weber's opera Turandot.

That was soon overshadowed by an even larger massing of forces: the full orchestra, the chorale, the organ, the Lancaster-Fairfield Youth Choir, bass-baritone Bryan Glenn Davis and, at the opposite end of the nave, the Chicago Brass Quintet for a polished and dramatic performance of the Prologue in Heaven from Arrigo Boito's opera Mephistopheles.

Leading the drama was Davis, who used body language and facial expressions as well as his voice to convey the diabolical nature of the role.

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