LANCASTER — Thursday's concert in St. Mary Church marked another opening, an- other show — in this case, a showstopper — for the annual summer arts fling known as the Lancaster Festival, now in its 21st season.

"From Russia With Love" fea- tured pianist Olga Kern, winner of the Van Cliburn Competition; young violinist Dmitri Pogorelov; and the Lancaster Festival Orchestra conducted by Music Director Gary Sheldon, in an all-Russian program heavy on dazzling orchestration and short on, well, not much.

Orchestral excerpts from op- eras often make colorful addi- tions to symphonic programs; Sheldon picked a winner with the Procession of the Nobles from the virtually forgotten op- era Mlada by Rimsky-Korsakov. With its trumpet fanfares, drumrolls and brilliant orches- tration, the Procession brought everyone to attention with a huge hug of sound wrapping around the audience.

Pogorelov soloed in Valse- Scherzo by Tchaikovsky, which explored the fiddle's low range to a surprising degree. Making his second trip to the festival as the Wilkes Young Artist Fellow (a program aimed at helping promising performers break into careers), Pogorelov handled the piece's busy fingerings with skill, if not always panache. He seems poised on the threshold and, with some astute coaching, could take off and soar. Clearly a local favorite, he was given an extended standing ovation.

The orchestra reigned su- preme in the famous Polovet- sian Dance No. 17 from the Bor- odin opera Prince Igor, again, the music is more famous than the work in which it originated. Beautiful solos from the oboe (Elizabeth Robertson) and Eng- lish horn (Melissa Stevens) ini- tiated the performance in sty- lish fashion. One could simply sit back and enjoy as the rich sound and familiar, evocative melodies surged.

Kern starred on the second half as soloist in, appropriately, the work that made Van Cliburn an international celebrity, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Major.

This concerto is an athletic event for the pianist; the slow, smashing two-fisted chords that begin it are just part of the chal- lenge. It tests every technical virtuosic aspect of a pianist, who also must dig deep into his or her romantic soul. There are passages (the cascading two- handed exchange of chords just before the cadenza in the first movement, for instance) that I have never heard performed flawlessly live.

Kern was impressively per- cussive in the first movement, also stopping to stretch the tem- pos in the slow, lyrical sections. She lost concentration toward the end of the cadenza, unfortu- nately, but eventually got back on track. The experience appeared to mar the beauty of the second movement, or so it seems in retrospect, because her playful personality and her finest playing came in the last movement.

Here, she worked in true part- nership with Sheldon and the orchestra, building in unhurried fashion to the big final statement with slow and em- phatic pronouncements of the main theme, making for a truly exciting finale that brought ev- eryone to their feet.

Not every performance de- serves that standing ovation, a perhaps too-common occur- rence when a finale is suffi- ciently splashy. But the way in which Kern righted herself and ultimately triumphed in Thurs- day's performance earned one in my book.

That's the mark of a true pro- fessional.

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