In a nod to the International Percussion Festival just concluded, the Santa Barbara Symphony welcomed Scottish percussionist Colin Currie to its concert at the Arlington Theatre this weekend, with thunderous results.

Currie is a diminutive figure who moves dynamically. He played two symphonic pieces on a variety of percussion instruments that stretched the full width of the Arlington stage, and the audience gave him a well-earned standing ovation at the end of the concert.

The percussion pieces, which filled the program’s second half, included David Maric’s “Trilogy for Live Percussion and CD” and Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto. “Trilogy” focussed on the marimbas, backed by a recorded accompaniment. However. the Higdon concerto used every tool in the box, bass drum, high hat, cymbals, tom-toms, ceramic drums and assorted tympani among them.

Currie evidently works closely with Maric, who is a contemporary composer, as is Higdon. “Trilogy” was lively and well-received by the audience. The only word for Higdon’s three-movement concerto was “huge.” Currie nimbly scampered among all the various instruments, with their electric cords and accessories, building to a roaring conclusion that sounded like controlled chaos. Members of the audience jumped to their feet, clapping and calling out bravos.

The orchestra backed Currie in the concerto, not that any additional sound was required. It occupied front and center for the concert’s first half, with Nir Kabaretti conducting the players in a fine Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Op. 60 by Ludwig van Beethoven.

From what is known of Beethoven’s life at the time he wrote the Fourth (1806), he was in a relatively calm and fruitful period. He had noble patrons, and he apparently had at least two rapprochements with well-born women during that year.

He was visiting in Hungary, away from the tumult of Vienna, and received a commission to write the Fourth from a moneyed aristocrat. Still smarting from the initial performances of “Fidelio,” which were not well-received, the composer put aside his work on what would become Symphony No. 5 and, instead, completed the Fourth.

French composer Hector Berlioz later lauded the symphony’s second movement thus: “Its form is so pure and the expression of its melody so angelic and of such irresistible tenderness that the prodigious art by which this perfection is attained disappears completely.”

The Santa Barbara players fulfilled this demanding description joyfully.