Even if a concert lacks cohesion, it can still be a success. The thing is, Ravel and Beethoven just don’t go together, the more so because the former found the latter’s music “exasperating” — apparently drawing a line against the German composer’s emotional excess.

So to have these two composers side-by-side in the ASO’s Mesmerise concert was rather like watching two foes fighting it out on the tennis court. Nevertheless, taken individually, all the music was glorious, starting with the driving drama of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and ending with the piling ecstasy of Ravel’s Boléro.

Of course, Boléro is a case of musical excess non plus ultra. Its two-bar ostinato rhythm in the snare drum builds into what is unarguably the biggest, most sustained crescendo in all orchestral music. It is a spectacular piece to witness in the concert hall, and really, it can only be properly appreciated live due to the theatricality of seeing the musicians share its hypnotic melody one by one, and finally section upon section.

And what a humdinger of a performance this was. Tempo is everything in this piece, Ravel insisting on this being unrushed (he detested Toscanini’s sped-up version in New York), and in a sense, Boléro plays itself once the settings are right.

Under the Brazilian conductor Eduardo Strausser, the tempo felt close to, or bang on, crotchet equals 74 beats per minute, this being a well-judged compromise between the metronome marks in various editions of Ravel’s printed score. Entire credit for that, and holding the rhythm flawlessly till the end, goes to percussionist Steven Peterka.

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With enough exotic flavour in the saxophone and trombone solos to give the piece its Spanish-flavoured allure, this “experiment” of a piece, as Ravel called it, achieved everything one would have wanted: hair-raising bombast and exhilaration.

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Hailing from São Paulo but living in Berlin, Strausser is highly interesting. Possessing much expertise and impeccable judgement, he is very much a hands-on conductor who has a particular ability to indicate ahead of time where the beat should fall. There is a visceral energy in his ‘pre-beat’ gestures that always seems to bring the orchestra nicely together.

The ASO felt completely sure about itself in this concert. Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, Op. 62, set the way. Those growling cords at the beginning propelled it forwards like an elastic band drawn tight and releasing a projectile with full kinetic energy. This was no idle concert opener: it was every bit Beethoven’s intent to show how heroism can be consumed by vanity, this time in the exploits of the failed the Roman general Caius Marcius Coriolanus,

Alert and playing brilliantly, the orchestra could do no wrong after this. One thing it is presenting this year are all the Beethoven piano concertos. With Steven Hough fresh in the ears after playing No. 3 in May (in Brahms: the Symphonies), now it was the turn of Melbourne pianist Stefan Cassomenos. Actually the first chronologically of the five completed concertos, No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 19, is a youthful work and something of testing ground that Beethoven used to assert his authority on Vienna.

For Cassomenos, it was an appropriate one to play. A musical polymath who, beside composing, frequently plays contemporary music alongside standard repertoire, it was a bit like hearing Keith Jarrett playing Bach: invigoratingly self-invented, different, and akin to hearing the music for the first time.

Familiar highways and byways suddenly sounded thought-up on the spot, and where Beethoven calls for cheek – which happens everywhere in this concerto’s scintillating finale – his playing was super exciting.

Direct and forward on the beat, Cassomenos plays with a more equal weighting of notes than is customarily heard, both through a melodic line and between the hands. It does not answer to quite the usual patterns of light and shade, but for spirit and originality he has so much that other pianists lack.

From here, the program’s assortment of music seemed disjointed. One had to reclock one’s brain for each next piece.

Nina Shekhar’s Lumina comes, as it were, from another universe. An expansive new work composed in ach form, it escapes the usual strictures of time. Beginning in eerie half-light with bowed glockenspiel and wispy sliding notes from solo violin, it steadily rises towards a massively layered texture of full orchestra only to disappear back into the half-light. This Indian American composer has created nothing less than a celestial event.

Finally, it was music of Spanish-inspired Gallic sensibility courtesy of Ravel. Pavane for a Dead Princess is his early masterpiece, a work of simple but irresistible charm that steps into a fictional storybook world of ancient Spain. Glowingly performed, the orchestra was beautifully tuned in this.

With its sheer force and spectacle, Boléro blew everything away in a truly spectacular performance. Tight, precision playing from the ASO under Strausser made this one to simultaneously admire and enjoy.

Strausser is a major find, and one hopes he will be invited back.

The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra performed Mesmerise, part of its Symphony Series, on Friday June 20 at  Adelaide Town Hall