By KARA L. NOBLE

SPRINGFIELD -- Bob Dylan and his Band compacted 50 years of his music--and much of the history of rock n' roll--into a nearly nonstop blast of music, then sprayed it over the sold-out crowd of more than 2,600 people at Symphony Hall on Sunday night.

A white bust of Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom, war, and art, perched beside Dylan's piano amid the amplifiers and microphones on stage. It was a visual wink at Homer. In his Nobel-prize acceptance speech, Dylan credited that ancient Greek poet/songwriter as one of his artistic influences.

Dylan launched the concert at 8 p.m. with a fiery rendition of "Things Have Changed," the Academy-Award-winning song he wrote and performed for the 2000 film Wonder Boys.

The band hurled each tune from the stage in an intense wave of music, then receded to a continuous wash of sound in the blackouts between songs.

Old and new merged in equal measures throughout the evening. Techno met country in a version of "It Ain't Me Babe" that bore little resemblance to the rendition Johnny Cash recorded on his 1965 album, Orange Blossom Special.

"Simple Twist of Fate" from the 1974 album Blood on the Tracks, rocketed forward into a virtuosic harmonica solo by Dylan, then gradually slowed and disintegrated into a loose jumble of tuning and improvisation that eventually ramped back into thumping chords and rhythms for a drum-driven rendition of "Cry a While."

Dylan and the band seemed to suck energy from the crowd, but otherwise ignored it as they focused on one another and on the music. Early in the concert, engineers had difficulty balancing Dylan's gravelly talk-sing voice with the roaring instruments. The first few tunes suffered from a sludgy mix, but about halfway through the show, engineers found a way to lift the voice back to the surface.

"Honest with Me" wrapped Jerry Lee Lewis piano in Dylan menace, and "Pay in Blood" bounced like the Beach Boys as it shredded like Metallica. In "Scarlet Town," Dylan grabbed a pole microphone and struck Elvis-like poses at center stage while drummer George Receli combined sticks and hands to invoke East-Indian tabla rhythms that drove through the sinewy sonority of Tony Garrity's bowed bass and the eerie cries of Donnie Herron's steel guitar.

The "Bad to the Bone" quotes in "Early Roman Kings" were unmistakable, and "Soon After Midnight" gave off so much of the hormonal cuddliness of a '50s slow dance that many women in the audience involuntarily snuggled their heads on to the shoulders of their male companions.

Dylan's show delivered an artful blend of meticulous planning and freewheeling innovation. His Springfield show, the first since 1998 and presented by DSP Shows, delivered the familiar tunes the audience wanted, but challenged listeners to figure out what each one was by cloaking each tune in new, often unexpected sounds. He demanded that the audience bring to him equal measures of listening and thinking--and they did.