Conductor Gary Sheldon was faced with a couple of serious challenges as he closed The Festival at Sandpoint on Sunday with the Spokane Symphony Orchestra.

First: How could he attract a crowd to a classical concert after a week and a half of performances ranging from reggae and country to avant-garde jazz and baroque music?

Second: How could he produce acceptable performances of difficult symphonic music with only two rehearsals?

Sheldon met both challenges outstandingly. He selected two familiar, large-scale works from Russian orchestral literature, flavoring the mix of Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto No. 2 and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 with a brisk, tart aperitif of Shostakovich's "Festive Overture."

He also selected a dynamic young piano soloist, the Ukrainian-born Marina Lomazov. Then he brought his considerable conducting skills and a high level of efficiency to the two rehearsals he was allotted.

The result was a large, enthusiastic audience listening to performances that were full of vitality and, sometimes, beautifully moving. I have heard more performances of both the Rachmaninoff and the Tchaikovsky works than I'd care to recount, but the fact that they are popular and that the Sandpoint audience loved them is a sign of what great masterpieces they are.

Lomazov had the muscular strength and fleet fingers required to cruise easily through Rachmaninoff's thorniest passages and match the power of his rich orchestral sonority. She was at her best projecting the soulful, songlike qualities that make the Second Concerto a hotbed of great tunes.

But in her quest to present Rachmaninoff's serious, even melancholy side, Lomazov slighted the playful, witty touches that should bring a smile to the first and last movements. And the majestic march at the climax of the first movement seemed cumbersome in Friday's performance.

The concerto also featured some fine orchestral solos. Margaret Wilds' noble horn and Chip Phillips' lyric clarinet both added to the songfulness of the performance, as did the cellos in the soaring phrases near the concerto's end.

Sheldon's approach to Tchaikovsky brought home the "fateful" relentlessness that underlies this powerful Fourth Symphony. But he also found its lighter moments, particularly the breezy humor of the scherzo with its shower of pizzicato strings and the acrobatic piccolo part performed with such elan by Gale Coffee. Her woodwind colleagues, oboist Keith Thomas and bassoonist Luke Bakken, were noteworthy in the poignant theme that frames the slow movement.

After the fury Sheldon brought to the finale of the symphony, what else could there be but actual fireworks? These pyrotechnics provided the proper festive touch to cap an evening of dynamic music-making.

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