Zephyrs, zephyrs and more zephyrs

LSO serves up a spring picnic, with a cream horn for dessert

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“How did they do that?”  You don’t often get to experience Harry Houdini-level bafflement at a symphony performance, but the world premiere of a cleverly crafted three-part work by Lansing Symphony Orchestra composer-in-residence Jared Miller left many listeners in pleasurable puzzlement at the LSO’s Masterworks concert Friday evening (Jan. 10).

A weird whooshing sound wafted from the stage in the music’s final moments — the most striking in a string of off-kilter (but on-point) effects deployed by Miller to stretch the classical-sized orchestra into fresh and stimulating realms of sound. The wind seemed to come from everywhere, but it was over too fast to scan the stage for the guilty zephyrs, and alas, you can’t freeze a frame or press “reverse” at a live concert.

In three quick movements, “Teaser-Feature-Pleaser” belied its lightweight title and built an absorbing and logical world of sound, starting with a hushed air of tension, adding exquisitely etched, small-scale details and daring to suspend time with quiet, ambient pulsations and precisely timed pauses. Miller reached deep into his bag of tricks to combine conventionally appealing solo and section work with special effects that enhanced the experience but never broke the spell, including uncanny echoes, glassy harmonics and long, lubricious slides up and down the scale.

In the last part of the piece, the music semi-coalesced into tantalizing chunks, including a snippet from Chopin and a horn melody from Edward Elgar’s “Enigma Variations,” a nice nod to the horn concerto coming up later in the program. Was this Miller’s idea of composer heaven? Those mysterious, whooshing zephyrs at the end whisked away any chance for further speculation.

An exquisite but little-known suite by Ottorino Respighi, “Three Botticelli Pictures,” proved to be the perfect follow-up to Miller’s delicately etched triptych. It started off breathlessly, as if the musicians were dying to whisper something soft and sweet in your ear. Yay, more zephyrs! Spring is coming! You could almost smell the violets when the orchestra brought the first of the three paintings, “Spring,” to life with a flurry of feathery fluttering from the strings and glittery, silvery splashes of iridescent color from the winds and harp. The feeling of a forest in the midst of a tender April awakening was a comfort and a half in icy mid-January. All the sections of the orchestra took turns cradling a charming, ancient-sounding dance tune with a rustic, mushroomy scent.

The next part of the suite brought the delicate beauty of a Botticelli nativity scene to life, easing gently into a lovely hymn, familiar to many as the Christmas tune “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Respighi’s songful treatment gave the wind players a chance to murmur, whisper and sing their hearts out — one by one and all together — with medieval fervor and maternal warmth.

This was not an orchestral eruption meant to pound you into the ground, as you would get from Beethoven or Tchaikovsky. The hush in the hall was uncanny. No cell phones dared to ring; no throats dared to cough. The earthy tones of principal bassoonist Michael Kroth curled through the tender scene like a tree root.

With so much beauty everywhere, it was only fitting that the third picture of the suite, “The Birth of Venus,” completely surrendered to rapture. The string players seemed to float 20 feet in the air as they unfurled an aurora borealis of sound, undulating curtains of light that slipped away quietly, leaving you rapt with ecstasy and wanting more — just what you’d expect from Venus.

Friday’s concert had the intimate feeling of a chamber performance, complete with convivial conversation and happy faces at intermission, but the superlative Miller and Respighi performances were a tough act to follow. Usually, when maestro Timothy Muffitt and the orchestra delve into the delicate delights of the classical era, they pack muscle and sinew under the velvet. Friday’s oddly flaccid reading of Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 43, “Mercury,” was all velvet and no sinew. Haydn’s ritual gestures didn’t seem to interest the musicians as much as the new and unfamiliar music they played in the first half.

But any lingering somnolence was dissipated by the clarion call of the LSO’s principal horn player, Corbin Wagner, as he leaped without ceremony into the opening fanfare of the night’s closer, Richard Strauss’ Horn Concerto No. 2. Assuming a workmanlike, almost insouciant stance, Wagner made it look easy, but if you closed your eyes, you could better appreciate the mercurial swiftness and spot-on tonality of his golden sound.

At the end of the concerto, the two horn players in the back row stood up and blew as if bugling for their wayward fellow elk at the front of the stage to rejoin the herd, bringing the night to a stupendous, stampeding conclusion.

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