By MIKE DUNHAM

The high point of Saturday night’s Anchorage Symphony Orchestra concert came thanks to conductor Randall Craig Fleischer’s idea to include the words to Bartok’s “Miraculous Mandarin” Suite.

Granted, “Mandarin” has no words; it’s a ballet. But it has stage directions. Fleischer had these projected above the Atwood Concert Hall stage as the music played, which supplied appreciated context.

The brutal score, thought much-discussed and regularly presented, has never wrangled a place on music’s “most beloved” list, in part because the parts depicting violence sound much like the parts depicting seduction. The description of what we’d be seeing if the work was performed with dancers added a much-needed dimension to the aural experience.

The orchestra played at its best here and in selections from another 20th Century ballet, Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet.” There were clumsy timing problems in the Overture to “Cosi fan Tutte” by Mozart, which opened the program. The players did better in the Intermezzos from Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” and Leoncavallo’s “I Pagliacci” and, especially, the theme from the film “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” by Carl Davis. The latter showcased admirable viola solos.

The rousing “Polovtsian Dances” from Borodin’s opera “Prince Igor” closed the night — a workout for winds, which get a lot of exposed solo arabesques, and the brass, which repeatedly erupts like Redoubt. They executed impressively and at the final note the applause was immediate, loud and long.

There’ll be another chance to hear Borodin’s addictive tunes later this spring when the University of Alaska Anchorage music department presents the Broadway musical based on them, “Kismet.”

Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332.