The Philadelphia Orchestra performs Clara Wieck-Schumann’s piano concerto for the first time

Not every work of art we encounter needs to be great. There are other, better reasons for giving certain pieces a public airing. Like spending some time in the provocative company of a work of art that plays whack-a-mole with our expectations.

You couldn’t escape the feeling that Clara Wieck-Schumann was toying with expectations and convention in her Piano Concerto in A Minor, which received its first-ever Philadelphia Orchestra performance Thursday night. That it was written by a 13- or 14-year-old and revised and performed by her before she turned 16, in a concert conducted by Mendelssohn, is probably all the seal of approval anyone needs.

Here in Verizon Hall, the work of the star pianist and future Mrs. Robert Schumann came with another recommendation: the advocacy of pianist Beatrice Rana, who took the work’s unusual form and inventive harmonic twists and turns and filled them in with emotional details of enormous punch.

The piece isn’t wall-to-wall wonderful, but Rana took those that were wonderful and made them especially so — like the beautifully expressive liberties with tempos she took in the first movement; and the pianist’s hushed, delicate handling of material in the long piano-alone stretch. Why conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin decided that he should conduct the pas de deux by Rana and cellist Hai-Ye Ni was unclear. It’s an episode of arresting intimacy likely unmatched in the repertoire, and the two instrumentalists needed no hand-holding to bring it off beautifully.

The program — repeated Friday night in Carnegie Hall and this weekend in Verizon — was bookended by Ravel. Bolero finished the concert in a reading by Nézet-Séguin that was just quick enough to sound a little mechanical. The point of programming a warhorse like this is to show off your orchestra — both the individual players as well as some of the imaginative hybrid instrumental combinations Ravel comes up with (like the piccolo-topped statement of the melody that emulates the overtones of a pipe organ). The multi-instrument blends were fine enough, but some players in the solo statements sounded not quite comfortable.

Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin also spotlighted talent, specifically that of oboist Philippe Tondre. The instrument’s voice is laced throughout the work, and the focus wasn’t Tondre’s essential sound, but the variety of them. It was liquid and transparent in the opening, more broad later on, and a marvel high and supple in the third movement. It was curious to hear the ensemble still coming into focus in the opening of the “Rigaudon,” though the final statement of the main material showed how it’s done.

The Philadelphians can claim authority in Florence Price’s Symphony No. 3, a recording of which won the group a Grammy — its first-ever in the “best orchestral performance” category (a surprising first, given the orchestra’s long and storied recording history). It’s easy to hear why it won. The mix of Black musical sources and this ensemble’s ability to pour on its warm, human sound is a knock-out combination. Price uses a musical language in the piece that makes her stories in sound strike deep. From an arrival point of epic proportions in the first movement, to the supreme contentment of the second, euphoric release of the third and tumult of the fourth, Price pulls us into her world. It’s cinematic and it’s great music.

Additional performances: Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. in Verizon Hall, Broad and Spruce Sts. Tickets are $10-$168. philorch.org, 215-893-1999.