In jazz music — and the music of Duke Ellington in particular — context is everything. Take Ellington’s “The Flaming Sword,” which is, on the surface, a rousing, even explosive, Afro-Cuban-style number with a lot of brassy, orchestral color and clave rhythm. I’ve always thought of “Sword” as more exotic than erotic, but Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra opened their Valentine’s Day concert with “Warm Valley,” featuring Ellington at his most quintessentially sensual — and then followed it with “Sword.”

Mr. Marsalis pointed out that the two pieces were recorded consecutively on the same date in 1940 and were originally issued back to back on the same 78 rpm single. Thus, “Warm Valley” and “The Flaming Sword” were clearly intended to be heard together, with Ellington conveying a characteristically subtle yet perfectly obvious illustration of female and male sexuality, not to mention anatomy.

The two 1940 compositions marked the beginning, and one of the high points, of the JaLCO’s annual Ducal event, this year titled “Romantic Ellington.” In his 50 years as a composer-bandleader, Ellington also wrote fast numbers for dancing, slow numbers for mourning, and, especially later in his life, reverential compositions for worship. But it’s safe to say that the majority of his music was inspired by man-woman interactions. As Mr. Marsalis noted, at least eight of Ellington’s titles use the word “Lady” in a highly flattering way.

Across the hall, at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, the troubadour Freddy Cole (who makes every day feel like Valentine’s Day) opined that it seemed inappropriate to play the blues on February 14. Yet over in the Rose Theater, Mr. Marsalis, taking his standout solo of the night, showed that one of Ellington’s most grandly sensual works is his early blues piece “Creole Love Call.” This 1927 classic was inspired by “Camp Meeting Blues,” a 1923 recording by an earlier Crescent City trumpet monarch, King Oliver. When Ellington’s version was released, Oliver tried unsuccessfully to sue the record label. Yet the Duke borrowed more than this particular blues line from the King: Oliver was jazz’s first master of muted brass, and his protégé, Bubber Miley, became the Ellington band’s first star. Indeed, some of Ellington’s key concepts of intermingling voices and horns were inspired by Oliver.

For the main melody of “Creole Love Call,” Ellington generally employed either a female voice growling wordlessly like a horn or a muted trumpeter imitating a human voice. For his part, Mr. Marsalis moaned and growled the whole way through “Love Call,” except for during a brief break by saxophonist Joe Temperley, who strutted about both sides of the stage, roaring and snarling as if he were trying to contact both of these departed jazz royals in the bandstand in the sky.

The leader’s standout solo early in the first half served as a preemptive strike in trying to outdo three guest-star saxophonists — Scott Hamilton, Wess Anderson, and Houston Person. Messrs. Hamilton and Person are both masters of that school of sexed-up sax that Mr. Marsalis refers to as “boudoir tenor” — a style virtually invented by Ellington’s star tenorist, Ben Webster. Each played two numbers; Mr. Hamilton breathily re-created Coleman Hawkins’s collaboration with Ellington on “Self Portrait (of the Bean)” (aka “Grievin'”), and Mr. Anderson immersed himself in Billy Strayhorn’s finest moment on “Isfahan.” Finally, Mr. Person took charge and vanquished all challengers in the romantic department with an “Ellington Indigoes”-style reading of “Solitude,” then tackled “It Shouldn’t Happen to a Dream” with just the rhythm section.

As it happens, guest appearances are also among the highlights on a new CD of a previously unreleased concert by the Ellington band itself, taped in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1950. It’s a rare document of the orchestra’s first European tour since 1939. One is by Strayhorn, already for a dozen years the Maestro’s writing partner, here stepping out from behind the curtain and making a rare appearance with the full Ellington contingent and taking a full chorus (in addition to the famous piano intro) on his own “Take the A Train.” Strayhorn’s composition “Violet Blue,” as intensely essayed by the alto colossus Johnny Hodges, mostly with just bass accompaniment, is another bright moment. There’s also a marvelous “Creole Love Call,” featuring coloratura Kay Davis.

Still, the standout is a ferocious solo by Don Byas, the brilliant expatriate American tenor, who made his only appearances with the Ellington Orchestra on this tour. Byas is featured on a multi-tempo, “concert”-style arrangement of “How High the Moon,” which Ellington had written for Webster two years earlier. Byas, who was one of jazz’s more violently blue brawlers, plays both the slow, rhapsodic intro and the fast, boppish session with even greater aggression than Webster. It’s almost as if Byas is so belligerent that he’s trying to compete with another great, tough tenor — one who isn’t even present with the band this night in Switzerland.

A sparring session was, in fact, what I expected at Rose Hall on Valentine’s Day. The first act ended with “Old Man Blues” — not a love song by any stretch of the imagination. The logical conclusion for the show was a thunderous up-tempo piece, maybe something with all three guest saxes exchanging fours with the regular members of the JaLCO. Instead, Mr. Marsalis wound up with something completely unanticipated: another concert piece, “The Single Petal of a Rose” (from “The Queen’s Suite,” not to be confused with Chris Jentsch’s “Brooklyn Suite”), originally played by Ellington as a piano solo, but also recorded by such advanced reed virtuosi as Webster and Ken Peplowski.

“The Single Petal of a Rose” (which possibly was inspired by Edward McDowell’s “To a Wild Rose,” and certainly was a fitting choice for Rose Hall) was played by Mr. Temperley on bass clarinet. On his recent album, “A Portrait,” Mr. Temperley played “Petal” completely solo, but it sounded even better at Rose Hall with Dan Nimmer supporting him tastefully with lightly Ellingtonian comping. Adding a piano made the performance come off like a classical recital — a pianist accompanying a soprano in something very much like the jazz equivalent of lieder. Ellington’s melody, which unfolds like petals falling from a flower, is itself beautiful, but as the song’s best interpreters have shown, the notes tell only half the story; the rest is in the nuances, the inflections, the personality of the player. Mr. Temperley left us not only speechless but motionless, almost afraid to applaud when he had finished. No amount of rocking in rhythm could have followed it.

Some composers might stick a whole bouquet of flowers in our faces on Valentine’s Day, but Ellington can say everything that needs to be said with just the single petal of a rose.

wfriedwald@nysun.com