Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor is always a crowd-pleaser, but in Barry Douglas' hands Friday morning at Music Hall, it was electrifying.

        Mr. Douglas provided only half of the fireworks of this all-Russian Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra program led by former music director Jesus Lopez-Cobos. After intermission came Reinhold Gliere's massive Symphony No. 3, Ilya Muromets, an obscurity that is lately enjoying rediscovery by several American orchestras.

        Mr. Douglas, a native of Ireland and a frequent visitor to the CSO, cuts a dashing figure at the piano, both rugged and elegant.

        From the first crashing, keyboard-spanning chords, this was a powerhouse performance: exciting, bravura and always pushing ahead. Even his more introspective moments in the first movement were infused with intensity.

        He found plenty of beauty in the lyrical theme of the slow movement, and his scherzo-like passages sparkled. He tossed off octave runs and keyboard-spanning arpeggios like nothing; the first-movement cadenza was a dazzling feat of pianistic figures, one fistful after another.

        Mr. Lopez-Cobos, who never looked at the soloist, might have inspired more richness to support him. Several times the orchestra fell behind. Mostly, it was merely there.

        Perhaps rehearsals had concentrated on Gliere's Symphony No. 3 in B Minor, only played once before by the CSO, in 1946.

        Its War and Peace proportions might have seemed daunting. But those in the audience of about 1,400 who left early missed some of its most impressive moments. Even with some cuts in the last movement, it clocked in at more than 80 minutes.

        The four-movement work is a hybrid of a gigantic Mahler symphony and a Strauss tone poem. Musically, its roots are in 19th-century Russia, with much that seemed inspired by 20th-century Russians such as Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky and Prokofiev. (Gliere was a teacher of Prokofiev.)

        Its darkly Russian opening set the stage for a picturesque canvas, the adventures of Ilya Muromets, a Russian folk hero.

        The first movement was the most episodic — with horn calls, brass-filled climaxes, somber brass chorales, galloping horses and crashing drumrolls — and Mr. Lopez-Cobos was pressed to make it all hang together.

        But the ensuing movements were fascinating and well-played, and Mr. Lopez-Cobos proved an able colorist.

        The brass, given a workout, rose to the occasion admirably, and nine horns created a glowing presence.

        One of the most glorious moments was the romantic theme in cellos and violas that soared with Straussian sensuousness in the second movement. The finale plunged into a driving fugue before it was brought to an apocalyptic climax.

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