If one extrapolated the Boston Pops season to a full year, it might well be just about time for Mardi Gras, the theme of this week’s concerts from the Pops and conductor Keith Lockhart.
Mardi Gras normally marks the last day before the onset of Lent; where Christians dread the privations of that penitential season, adaptations can be found. The concert sampled such international variants, a demonstration that last-chance partying knows no borders.
The home base, not surprisingly, was New Orleans. Lockhart and the evening’s featured guests, the Dukes of Dixieland, led a pre-concert homage-to-Bourbon-Street parade, pulling up to Symphony Hall in a newly christened duck boat. Following a frisky reading of Dvorak’s “Carnival Overture,’’ the concert shifted into gear with the “Mardi Gras’’ finale of Ferde Grofé’s “Mississippi Suite.’’
The young pianist Charlie Albright, already the successful veteran of several competitions, dished out handfuls of impressive, brawny sparkle for New Orleans-born Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s “Grande Tarantelle,’’ the 19th-century pianist-composer indulging an Italian accent. There was a full set devoted to the Latin American tradition of Carnival, arrangements in the glossy Pops style; Luiz Bonfá’s sultry “Manhã de Carneval’’ and Quincy Jones’s playful “Soul Bossa Nova’’ were especially fine performances.
It made for a rather refined carouse, more pearls than beads.
The Dukes of Dixieland played a set full of New Orleans favorites: “When the Saints Go Marching In,’’ “South Rampart Street Parade,’’ and Allen Toussaint’s chinoiserie-garnished “Java,’’ made famous by Al Hirt.
The orchestral arrangements dressed the stylized nostalgia in its Sunday best, as it were, but there were improvisation-fueled moments — led by pianist Scott Obenschain, Meade “Lux’’ Lewis’s “Honky Tonk Train Blues’’ was especially raucous — that reached for more frantic joy, as though the clock could be turned back with sheer rhythmic energy.
Matthew Guerrieri can be reached at matthewguerrieri@gmail.com. 
