PORTLAND — It is not very often that one hears any symphonic concert without a low spot. The Portland Symphony Orchestra, under guest conductor Dmitry Sitkovetsky, accomplished that feat Sunday afternoon at Merrill Auditorium, before a larger-than-usual audience.

Sitkovetsky also appeared as a virtuoso violinist, conducting John Corigliano’s suite from “The Red Violin” with his bow.

Although perfectly rendered by both soloist and orchestra, the Corigliano suite was the least effective piece on the program. It lacked something, perhaps the images that originally accompanied it.

It seemed thought out carefully enough, with the simulation of an orchestral tune-up doubling for the ghostly presence inside the violin, and the solo variations conjuring up various musical times and places, but it never coalesced.

The variations themselves sounded terrifically difficult. I don’t play the violin, but on the piano there are devices that sound quite spectacular but are really quite easy to play (a double trill with both hands, for example). I wonder if Corigliano availed himself of such tricks for the violin or whether they were really as hard as they sounded.

At any rate, Sitkovetsky did them full justice, providing the most interesting sections of the suite. His fine encore of the Bach Chaconne from the Partita in D-Minor actually added to what had gone before, since the suite is based on a chaconne.

The conductor’s experience as a soloist and chamber music player was evident from the first note of the Overture to Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville.” The tempo was just right and the precision of entrances was outstanding. Sitkovetsky also is able to bring out individual voices without losing, indeed adding to, the overall effect of the music.

The attention to detail was amazing. One instance of many was the tiny appoggiatura on the final chord, which I’ve never heard anywhere else. The performance transformed the old warhorse into a lively colt.

All of the above applied even more to the Mendelssohn Symphony No. 4 in A Major, Opus 90 (“Italian”). Sitkovetsky tied the whole program together with the Rossini-like extended crescendo in the fourth movement, which he took at a daringly fast tempo. The orchestra responded outstandingly to the challenge.

I also enjoyed the third movement, Andante con moto. I had always speculated about the origin of its horn calls. Now I know that Mendelssohn was hill-topping a fox hunt arranged by expatriate Brits outside Rome.

Resolved in 2012: to disregard standing ovations at Merrill Auditorium. A mediocre performance the other night received one, yet the Italian Symphony, which deserved it if anything ever did, went unrewarded except for prolonged applause and a few “bravos.”

Christopher Hyde’s Classical Beat column appears in the Maine Sunday Telegram. He can be reached at: classbeat@netscape.net