After two months in alternate venues, the Honolulu Symphony's homecoming concert in Blaisdell Concert Hall was anything but a return to music as usual.

However familiar the pieces - Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4, Smetana's "Moldau," and Brahms's Symphony No. 4 — the concert consisted of unusual, sometimes startling, interpretations.

Guest soloist Benedetto Lupo performed a most unconventional Beethoven, more Classic reserve than Romantic effusion.

Instead of the drive, passion, and large-scale developmental syntax so characteristic of Beethoven, his playing focused on exquisite tone: fleeting fairy-light runs, delicate digressions, and singing melodies set off by murmuring pillows of arpeggiated chords.

The beauty of his playing, which was modulated and smoothly blended throughout, had a refinement and delicacy more akin to Debussy than Beethoven. A pianist's pianist, he had a beautifully quiet technique and seemed most in his element in solo passages and cadenzas.

Throughout, Lupo played largely in the moment and almost independently of the orchestra, which served as foil rather than partner.

Conductor Andreas Delfs seemed equally dedicated to new interpretations.

Smetana's "Moldau," a musical tour of Bohemia's river and its environs, became first and foremost a symphonic poem, its underlying flow taking precedence over picturesque details.

Delfs' version invited the audience to think about those details: Were the hunting horns suddenly too close? Was the wedding dance too stately for peasants? Could the final "view" of the river have been more expansive? However, it offered moments of brilliance within a cohesive whole: the two springs bubbling forth into a river; the broad flow of the river's theme; moonlight sparkling on the water.

Delfs saved his biggest surprises for Brahms's Symphony No. 4, stripping away decades of expectations like old varnish to reveal a richer, more complex work than the one we have come to know.

Not all of it worked. The largish orchestra lent some murkiness, and there were a few rough passages, especially in the first movement. But there was also so much that was exciting, and there were so many striking passages, that it would be well worth hearing again.

Delfs eschewed the usual homogenous approach and instead separated lines into a musical kaleidoscope so that the audience could hear not only individual parts, but also their relationships and how they flowed together.

The opening of the first movement, with its undulating cross-rhythms, was simply stunning, as was the second movement, with its lyricism, sweeping close, and firm underlying structure. The fourth movement lost some of its majesty to a faster tempo but simultaneously gained energy for a climactic finale.

The effect was bold, vibrant. It was hard to believe that Brahms was ever as spiritually young as Delfs' reading made him sound.

When the last note faded, the audience gradually began applauding ever more loudly through several curtain calls, as though deciding upon reflection that they really did like it after all, finally rising to a standing ovation.

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