Prolonged and affectionate applause greeted Seattle Symphony conductor laureate Gerard Schwarz when he came out onto the Benaroya Hall stage Thursday night, there to direct the first of two concerts devoted to the music of Shostakovich. (The second Shostakovich concert at Benaroya Hall is tonight at 8 p.m.)

Schwarz has always done well by this composer, and this concert was no exception. It began with October, a 20-minute tone poem on a subject Shostakovich visited more than once in his career, the 1917 Revolution. It’s one of the composer’s last works for big orchestra, and portrays the events and the emotions as though the listener was there. No one creates ominous portent, the rising agitation of the crowds and the chaos of street battle better than Shostakovich, and Schwarz allowed the music to speak for itself in an excellent performance.

This was followed by the Piano Concerto No. 1 from 1933, when the composer was at the height of approval from the Russian government. It’s an odd work for a first concerto. Written for piano and chamber orchestra with a solo trumpet part, it’s played with barely a breath between movements. The piano role is non-stop from the start, difficult, uncompromising, always in the forefront. It’s spiky, often dissonant, and many pianists could probably use a few more hands to play it. Shostakovich’s typical irony was present throughout.

Ignat Solzhenitzyn didn’t need the extra hands. He had no trouble encompassing all the notes, but it’s not a work which leaves much room for nuance or phrasing, and it required quite a bombastic approach from the soloist.

Shostakovich insisted, the notes say, that the trumpeter sit with the pianist. Unfortunately this dictum wasn’t followed at Benaroya, with principal trumpet David Gordon sitting two chairs back from the conductor (behind the piano), so while we could hear him playing, the sound was not on a par with that of the piano.

One of the composer’s most popular works, the big Symphony No. 5, completed the program in a rousing performance. The winds and brass played magnificently in their prominent role, with fine solos particularly from principal flute Demarre McGill and principal oboe Ben Hausmann, as well as timpanist Michael Crusoe.

Schwarz seems to have mellowed in the two seasons since he stepped down. There was much less, indeed none, of the frenzied efforts to pull yet more sound out of the orchestrsa, which in response sounded less strained and more musical in loud sections. There was more dynamic change, with fortes more a peak than a plateau, and some beautiful softer sections with nuanced phrasing.