Jean Sibelius was a composer of great originality and dramatic intensity. But he was also, as it turns out, a crowd-pleasing dandy if you look at his music in a certain light.

That light shone onto the stage of Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday, April 27, when the San Francisco Symphony offered a splendid Sibelian double bill that brought out all the Finnish composer's most suavely ingratiating qualities. In contrast to the more rough-hewn approach many performers take, this was a glorious display of silky allure.

On the podium was Dalia Stasevska, the Ukrainian-born Finnish conductor who leads the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and the International Sibelius Festival (both in Finland) and serves as principal guest conductor of London's BBC Symphony Orchestra. In her first San Francisco appearance, Stasevska left a formidable impression as a performer of eloquence and insight.

Her partner for part of the evening was a more familiar player, American violinist Joshua Bell, whose artistry has been a key element of the musical landscape for far longer (he made his Symphony debut in 1991). Together, they and the orchestra shaped Sibelius' Violin Concerto into an irresistibly eloquent entertainment.

In Bell's hands, the concerto's poignant opening melody seemed to waft into the air like so much gossamer. It's an effect that many violinists aim for and not many achieve, but Bell let the music float into the hall with perfectly disembodied grace.

Better still — at least for this listener — he maintained that air of easeful tenderness throughout the rest of the movement, and to some extent through the entire concerto. Even the most turbulent passages of the score, including the first movement's extroverted passagework and galumphing charge of the finale, emerged with serenely unruffled charm.

This is, again, a matter of taste. Bell, for all his undeniable virtuosity, can sometimes be a divisive figure, particularly for observers who find the smoothness of his playing glib and superficial.

I understand the complaint without sharing it; for me, the sheer hedonism of hearing him play covers a lot of ground. And his Sibelius brought a beautiful sheen to music that benefits from it. The slow, perfectly calibrated diminuendo to silence with which he ended the slow movement was a master class in dynamic control.

Bell's encore was a gorgeous, simple excerpt from Shostakovich's Five Pieces for Two Violins, done in partnership with Assistant Concertmaster Wyatt Underhill. And Bell was the star of the evening, until after intermission when Stasevska took the lead in a superb performance of Sibelius' Second Symphony.

当我们发现她和贝尔fact been in agreement on the composer's aesthetic all along, because she and the orchestra adopted a similar attitude to this piece. Without sacrificing anything in the way of expressive force, Stasevska sheathed the entire performance in a cushiony layer of sound.

The tone was set right from the opening harmonies of the first movement, which sounded both crisp and warm, as if illuminated with an inner light. Stasevska negotiated transitions from section to section with a delicate handoff, stitching parts of the symphony together without downplaying the dramatic force of Sibelius' conception.

That effect came through most thrillingly in the unbroken passage to the final movement, which landed in a blazing shower of triumphant light. The orchestra's brass players excelled through the entire performance.

They were also the stars in the short curtain-raiser, a thin but appealing powerhouse by the Scottish composer Anna Meredith. "Nautilus," an electronic piece from 2011 arranged for orchestra by Jack Ross, runs through a few related ideas — rising melodic scales, thunderous brass chords — all against a relentless chugging rhythmic background. It breaks down all resistance in a short time.

Reach Joshua Kosman:jkosman@sfchronicle.com; Twitter:@JoshuaKosman