For the second time this season, a soloist for the Rhode Island Philharmonic has had to step in at the last minute for an artist who bowed out. Last night it was pianist Helen Huang, covering for Orli Shaham.

Huang was here a couple of years ago playing Mozart. Now she was back at Veterans Memorial Auditorium with the first Beethoven concerto, a piece she played with the New York Philharmonic when she was just 12 years old. She is now the ripe old age of 25 and sounding much more mature.

One wonders why Haung doesn’t have a bigger career, in fact. For she was very impressive last night, a pianist with an impeccable technique and a great sense of style. There was great lyricism to her playing, but a wonderful crispness too, like when she zipped through those broken chords at the start of the first movement.

And she tore through the stormy cadenza, using lots of pedal in the chord passages and making the whole thing sound very fresh and improvisatory.

The slow movement was very slow, but it never drooped. And her tone was bell-like, full and round. For a big contrast she dove into the playful finale with lots of brio, scooting through passages without breaking a sweat.

Music director Larry Rachleff was out of town for the concert and his friend Thomas Wilkins form the Omaha Symphony was conducting in his stead. Although he was not nearly as exciting as Rachleff.

He opened the evening with a perfunctory reading of the Trumpet Overture of Mendelssohn, giving only the most minimal of direction to the orchestra, which sounded fine but didn’t make much of the piece.

After intermission he gave a sleepy performance of Delius’ lush Walk to the Paradise Garden, the intermezzo from his opera The Village Romeo and Juliet. Two lovers are led by the “Dark Fiddler” to the river’s edge, where they embark on a leaky barge and drift down stream to eternity, according to the program notes.

In some ways the Delius saw some of Wilkins’ best work. There was a nice sense of color to the piece, thanks in large part to some crack orchestra members.

Then Wilkins capped off the evening with Haydn’s Military Symphony, so named for its curious marching band sounds when the players man a bass, drum cymbals and a rattling triangle.

This was a performance with a sparkling finale and a menuetto with a nice bounce to it. But overall it was an unremarkable performance, missing some of the delight that’s found in the score.