The best-laid plans of mice and men….

Programmers at Minnesota Orchestra hatched a worthy plan for the 2016-17 season: bring back two former music directors plus a revered conductor who had served memorably as artistic director of Sommerfest.

Neville Marriner, who was to have conducted here in January, died last September at his home in London. His successor, Edo de Waart, appeared here in April as planned. But then came the announcement just a few days ago that David Zinman had canceled his concerts here this weekend "due to health reasons."

We can only hope that Zinman, 80, can be rescheduled soon. He last conducted here in 1999. The wit and imagination he brought to Sommerfest between 1993 and 1996 are remembered fondly, especially at a time when the festival is a pale shadow of what it once was. And one can only fantasize what this orchestra might have accomplished had Zinman been chosen to succeed De Waart, as many hoped. Instead, those in command chose the lame Eiji Oue, a decision that startled the orchestra world.

Fortunately, management found a last-minute replacement for Zinman, the 51-year-old Mexican conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto. The program remained as planned: works by Wagner, Bloch and Richard Strauss. Given the circumstances — a conductor new to this orchestra tackling complicated repertoire on short notice — lowered expectations seemed to be in order at Orchestra Hall Friday night.

But no excuses were necessary. Prieto turned out to be an impressive talent — a persuasive interpreter and a skilled technician who values both clarity and emotion and who seemed easily to have won over the audience as well as the musicians, who applauded him warmly as he took a second bow at the end.

Shrewd pacing is one of this conductor's strengths, as was apparent right away with the evening's curtain-raiser, the Overture to Wagner's "Tannhauser," which unfolded with unforced grandeur and a vivid sense of inevitability, the brass players delivering bright, rounded tones.

Principal cellist Anthony Ross was the soloist just before intermission in Bloch's "Schelomo," subtitled Hebraic Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra.

This is extroverted, expressionistic music that calls for rich and colorful playing from both orchestra and soloist, and that was the approach taken Friday night. Ross played with suave intensity, as if he were singing the part, but added at appropriate points a measure of subtle yet eloquent lyrical expansion that heightened the ecstatic quality of the music.

Prieto's reading of Strauss's "Thus Spake Zarathustra," the evening's finale, proceeded with a firm pulse and a strong sense of continuity, and the orchestra responded with warm, polished, cohesive playing.

Seldom does a guest conductor make such an impressive debut as Prieto did Friday night. The audience's ovation at the end was immediate and fervid. He, like Zinman, should be re-engaged soon.

Michael Anthony is a Twin Cities classical music critic.