The Rhode Island Philharmonic played the heck out of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe last night, but it was percussionist Evelyn Glennie who stole the show at Veterans Memorial Auditorium. The Scottish-born Glennie manned batteries of drums, cymbals and bells at the front and rear of the stage for Joseph Schwantner’s 1994 percussion concerto. (An orchestra spokesman said it took two days to set up the instruments.)

She would send out blasts on the bass drum, then switch mallets for the cymbals, then dash over to the marimba all in a matter of minutes. At one point she played a vibraphone with a violin bow, creating a eerie murmur.

And in the evocative slow movement, she lowered a gong into a water-filled kettle drum and beat on it softly.

Glennie appeared on a dramatically lit raised platform at the rear of the stage for the start of the piece, opening with explosive volleys from the bass drum. Soon the music settled into a minimalist noodle with ever-shifting rhythms on the marimba.

Glennie, who is a big deal in the percussion world, indeed the music world in general (she has something like two dozen recordings to her credit), has only limited hearing and relies on vibrations to feel the music. She began losing her hearing when she was 8, about the time she took up the piano. By the time she was 12 she was profoundly deaf, meaning she can hear words but can’t make them out without reading lips.

Last night, she performed the Schwantner barefooted so she could sense the music through the floor. And she was a presence, attacking instruments, stroking them and cajoling them, getting the most incredible sounds from them.

At the close of the driving finale, played mostly with four mallets on the marimba, Glennie broke into a long solo on the drums, a virtuosic cadenza the likes of which has not been heard since the days of Ginger Baker.

Glennie returned after intermission for a brief appearance on the bagpipes for the final moments of Peter Maxwell Davies Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise, a folksy, fairly repetitive work that seemed to end up on the program as an excuse to bring back Glennie, who by the way wowed the fairly conservative Philharmonic followers.

Conductor Larry Rachleff led off the program with Elgar’s Cockaigne Overture, really a tone poem depicting the sights and sounds of London. This was the first time the orchestra has played the piece, and it was a joy to hear.

But it was the Ravel, the second suite from his ballet score Daphnis et Chloe, that really showed off the orchestra. Rachleff did a nice job shaping the opening, building the sound from those shimmering flutes. The final dance movement was ecstatic.

cgray@projo.com