When the dashing, 35-year-old Canadian violinist James Ehnes played the Beethoven Violin Concerto on the closing concert of last seaon’s Mainly Mozart Festival, I was running out of superlatives to laud his performance. So when he returned to Mainly Mozart 2011 on Saturday (June 18) to solo in the Felix Mendelssohn “Violin Concerto in E Minor,” a work I treasure even more than the Beethoven Violin Concerto, my expectations were abnormally high.

Sadly, the proverbial lightning did not strike in the same place twice. An uneven acoount at best, Ehnes never remained in focus long enough to draw his listeners into the heightened emotional state that is the Mendelssohn concerto’s calling card. I found his pulse evasive, perhaps a result of too much portamento, which gave the impression that he was surfing on top of the line rather than propelling it from the center.

Ehnes cultivates a silvery, slender tone from his instrument, which engenders supple phrasing and allows him to sprint though the most intricate technical challenges. So I did not find his technique lacking, but rather his sense of urgency, that desire to persuade even the most jaded listener that there is something of vital import in the music at hand. In 2010 he recorded this concerto (and released it this year) with conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Philharmonia Orchestra, so perhaps he has played it too much over the past seasons in preparation for the Onyx recording.

On Thursday’s (June 16) Mainly Mozart concert at the Balboa Theatre, guest soloist Angel Romero, the celebrated classical guitarist, gave a master class in how to make a familiar work vibrant. In the days when there were multiple classical music FM stations broadcasting, you could usually hear Joaquín Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez” for guitar and orchestra sometime almost every day. It is arguably the most popular guitar concerto, and it has suffered from overexposure.

Overexposure only until Romero started playing, however, and then it sounded like a fresh piece, each phrase vital and communicative. Romero’s entire body was focused on the Rodrigo piece (he gave this work its West Coast premiere at age 16 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic), and both maestro David Atherton and the Festival Orchestra responded to his ardor with a colorful and beautifully detailed account of the score. Recordings tend to flatten out that concerto’s motivic interplay among the sections and various orchestral soloists, but Atherton highlighted these subtleties out with genuine affection for the style.

When the audience’s persistence brought Romero out for an encore, he chose the “Fantasia” by his late father, Celedonio Romero, his teacher and founder of the Romero Guitar Quartet, of which Angel was a member for many years. Romero invited his listeners into his musical realm; Ehnes performed in front of his audience.

The remainder of Saturday’s program was neatly divided between Mozart and Mendelssohn. The best part of Mozart’s “Serenade in C Minor for Winds,” K. 388, was the abundant opportunity to hear principal oboe Ariana Ghez. A standout among the Festival Orchestra principals, Ghez’s sumptuous timbre and finely wrought lines delighted the ear throughout the festival.

The Festival Orchestra’s account of Mendelssohn’s “Nocturne” from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” bordered on perfunctory, and the difficulties of the solo horn at the work’s opening did nothing to evoke the tranquil mood associated with this type of piece. Mozart’s Symphony No. 36 (“Linz”) closed the concert and this year’s festival on a note of pomp and circumstance. The “Linz” may not be one of Mozart’s more profound symphonies, but it is a mature one replete with its own satisfactions.

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