If you're going to trot out an old warhorse, why not unleash a couple of colts, too? The wisdom of such balanced programming was reaffirmed in the latest presentation by the Concert Artists of Baltimore, which paired Grieg's well-trodden Piano Concerto with two remarkable pieces that rarely get an airing.

The results of this all-Scandinavian evening proved consistently engaging Saturday at the Gordon Center for Performing Arts in Owings Mills.

In the Little Suite for strings by Denmark's Carl Nielsen, his first published score, there's no mistaking a composer determined to go his own way. Melodic and harmonic surprises continually crop up to provide extra coloring to what is otherwise a large dollop of late-Romantic charm.

The pulsating first movement and almost ominous start of the finale cast intriguing shadows over the music's lyrical warmth; high notes from the violins give the middle movement's waltz a slightly sinister tinge.

Conductor Edward Polochick led a vibrant, detailed performance that needed only a little more polish here and there from the ensemble. His attentiveness also paid off in the Symphony No. 3 by Jean Sibelius.

This concise score is full of tightly woven ideas and insistent emotions. While the Finnish composer's first two symphonies rise up like fjords from beneath turbulent lakes, the Third takes a new tone.

"The menacing forest gods are for the time being mollified, black ice and gaunt granite crags temporarily foresworn," as Sibelius scholar Burnett James puts it. Here, "the sun shines more or less limpidly from behind breaks in the shifting fog banks."

Polochick proved particularly effective at letting that sunlight in during the opening movement, with a bracing tempo and emphasis on the folksy roots in much of the thematic material. He did not hold the haunting second entirely together; technical inconsistencies in the playing cropped up as well. But the composer's darkly beautiful ideas still registered.

Although a larger string section would have fleshed out the finale, the music's cold-shower invigoration was powerfully realized as Polochick guided the orchestra tautly; the horns opened up here with particular richness.

In the Grieg concerto, soloist Mark Clinton and Polochick largely eschewed sentiment in favor of crisp, bold attacks and strong tension. Clinton's phrasing could have been subtler, more elastic here and there, but the drive and security of his pianism paid off handsomely.

Polochick drew intensely expressive playing from the orchestra; a long, slow fade at the end of the second movement and the gleaming horn solo earlier were among the highlights.