Just because you've never heard a percussion concerto does not automatically mean they are mythical beasts like unicorns. To Dame Evelyn Glennie, the internationally acclaimed Scottish percussionist, percussion concertos are as commonplace as homemade shortbread served with a cup of strong tea.

In her far-flung career, Glennie has performed over 120 percussion concertos, and nearly half of those were written for her. Friday (April 8) at Copley Symphony Hall she soloed in John Corigliano’s recent (2008) “Conjurer: Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra,” a gallivanting, 45-minute parade of acrobatic effects for (nearly) every percussion instrument you’ve ever seen strewn across the back tier of an orchestra.

Adapting the typical three-movement concerto format, Corigliano devoted each movement to a specific category of percussion instrument: the opening movement featured those whose sounds come from wood; the middle favored metal, and the finale was devoted to drums (or skins, referring to the traditional material of a drumhead). In the 1920s, the French émigré composer Edgar Varèse set the benchmark for experimental combinations of percussion and more tradtional instruments in his “Hyperprism” and “Intégrales.” Corigliano took up the challenge to integrate a cornucopia of percussion instruments into the concerto’s more traditional antiphonal interplay between soloist and orchestra.

Under the baton of guest conductor Thomas Wilkins, Glennie and the orchestra gave a winning account of this concerto. On first hearing, I found its second and third movements particularly successful. Tubular bells (known as chimes in the vernacular) opened the middle movement with slow, austere intonations, followed by hushed murmers from the strings that called to mind the somber quality of Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.” Glennie then coaxed a continually transforming, mysterious chord progression from the vibraphone that the strings surrounded with a halo of tremolos, making the movement a rewarding emotive journey.

The finale grew as a gradual crescendo of minute patterns from a “talking drum,” (it looks like a small djembe) to bombastic exclamations on the timpani, an energetic rout that balanced adeptly the power of drums with the vigor of the full string orchestra. Glernnie’s athletic skill handling the banks of drums with velocity and precision was nothing short of breathtaking.

Perhaps the lengthy cadenza at the beginning of the first movement, a progression of themes that moved from claves to xylophone and marimba, ranged too widely and variously. By the time the orchestra finally came in, I had lost track of the dominant ideas, and the violins did little to refresh my memory. Within the movement I detected echoes of Béla Bartók’s trademark “night music,” but this is not to say it was derivative in any serious sense.

Corigliano is highly regarded for his film music—he was awarded an Oscar for his score to the 1999 The Red Violin—and his well-crafted symphonic works. His “Second Symphony” won him the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2001. This concerto lived up to his reputation as a refined, conservative composer and accomplished orchestrator. We will see if this unusual concerto can survive additional performances without Glennie’s star power.

Wilkins balanced the new Corigliano work with Beethoven’s infrequently played “Second Symphony,” an early Beethoven piece whose Haydnesque qualities Wilkins underscored at every turn, from the reduced number of strings, to his subdued, articulate phrasing. His supple Larghetto movement exhibited the carefree air of a Mozart wind serenade, and he appeared to revel in the clever syncopations of the Scherzo. Kudos to all of the winds for their stellar contributions throughout the Second Symphony, although the violins’ ensemble was uncomfortably frayed in the final Allegro molto.

Since much of the orchestra was unused in the two major works, the whole crew came on stage to close the evening with Franz Liszt’s “Les préludes,” a warhorse that never reveals—to this listener at least—any depth no matter how frequently it is played. Conductor and crew provided all the requisite bravado the score demands.

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