Lansing Symphony Orchestra Masterworks 4

On the day the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Los Angeles-based composer Sarah Gibson saw “The Mountain,” by French sculptor Aristide Maillol, at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. The mighty sculpture of a troubled, strong, determined woman made Gibson think of a poem by Rupi Kaur: “I stand/on the sacrifices/of a million women before me/ thinking/what can I do/to make this mountain taller/so the women after me/can see farther.”

She was inspired to write “to make this mountain taller,” a luminous and lyrical work that tops an ambitious Lansing Symphony Orchestra concert Saturday evening (March 23). Ludwig van Beethoven’s brilliant Violin Concerto, bursting with high energy and sweet serenity, is the evening’s centerpiece, with Bulgarian-American violinist Bella Hristova, a dynamic performer and stalwart of New York’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, as guest soloist. Two more works on Saturday’s slate trace the stormy, boisterous mojo of Beethoven as it rippled through two Richards: Wagner (music from “Tristan und Isolde”) and Strauss (“Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks”).