Synergistic, effective, challenging and tuneful, this week’s BSO all-American-composer program augers well for a thoughtful, adventurous musical season. Thursday’s concert brought the audience to its feet more than once, as important contemporary works by Sarah Kirkland Snider and Carlos Simon shone!

Sarah Kirkland Snider (b. 1973) introduced Forward into the Light (2020) with warm, articulate words. The BSO’s delivery of her intelligently wrought contribution to the NY Phil’s Project 19, a quarter-hour musical depiction of the challenge, solidarity, sacrifice and passion of the Suffrage Movement, wafted with kindly tentative, bold, and ultimately riveting moments. The composer writes that she focused on the internal emotion that a suffragette experienced, “the idea of synergistic interpersonal partnerships…at the heart of the American women’s suffrage movement” initiated through a trio of motivic concepts—the violins with a duo of ascending sixth intervals, the harp with an “undulating quintuplet figure,” and the violas leading a lyrical line. Forward shimmers with feeling throughout, effectively conveying the profound ideas brought to fruition by the bravery and strength of the women who prevailed. Quotes from composer (and suffragette) Ethel Smyth’s 1910 March of the Women provide tangible links to the continuing struggles of women. Snider’s piece succeeded in conveying the inner emotions, strength and collaboration exemplified by the quotes.

Aaron Copland (1900-1990), a first-generation American, captured the pioneering and exploratory spirit of the nation. His lively yet haunting Clarinet Concerto (1948) hails from the same period as Appalachian Spring. Principal Clarinetist William Hudgins and the orchestra provided an inspiring version of the concerto, which the BSO last performed with Hudgins 27 years ago in Tanglewood. Commissioned by the great Benny Goodman, it has been called the first truly American clarinet concerto. After a soft opening with strings and harp, the clarinet’s wistful melody joins, incantatory and enchanting in a song-form movement; it remains musing, and reflective until segueing into a two- minute-plus cadenza which, slowly soulful at first, morphs into “ever-faster jazzy, slippery exhibitionism,” which Copland wrote, allows the soloist “considerable opportunity to demonstrate his prowess.” The second movement, marked “Rather Fast,” starts with clock-like impulse, featuring the soloist almost as the cuckoo in a giant clock and glides into a pulsating exchange between soloist and orchestra, and ultimately, into a quietly merry climax followed by an energetic coda. Andris Nelsons and the orchestra (strings, harp and piano) partnered with the soloist with pride and enthusiasm.

Barber’s Adagio for Strings originated as the second movement of his 1936 String Quartet Opus 11, which he subsequently orchestrated. The composer recognized that he’d created something lasting, writing that upon completing the movement, “it is a knockout.” First conducted on November 5, 1938, by Toscanini, it has become integral to commemorative events worldwide. Nelsons and the orchestra acquitted themselves and Barber well for an appreciative audience.

Carlos Simon’s (b.1986) vibrant and pulsating Wake Up! Concerto for Orchestra (jointly commissioned by the San Diego and National Symphony Orchestras) closed the concert. Named in January of this year as the first Composer Chair of the BSO, Simon, also a music educator and community organizer uniquely blends gospel and jazz with Western classical and worldwide music. He jubilantly scored Wake Up! for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, percussion (xylophone, vibraphone, crotales, metal pipes, cymbals, suspended cymbal, sizzle cymbal, tam-tam, large triangle, wind chimes, bell tree, sleigh bells, wood blocks, tom-toms, snare drum, brake drum or anvil, bass drum), harp, piano, and strings. The early moments are punctuated by a two-note phrase that conjures the words “wake up!” Simon wrote of his inspiration from the Nepali Rajendra Bhandari’s poem “Awake, Asleep,” which profoundly warns of the danger of obliviousness in a social world, but he also posits that collective wakefulness can provide “…a bountiful harvest of thoughts.” The performance struck a chord in the audience, which stamped and applauded at length.

This bold and exciting concert reprises tonight.

Julie Ingelfinger studied piano at the Hartt School of Music, Aspen Music Festival and School and at Harvard. She enjoys her day jobs as professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, pediatric nephrologist at Mass General Hospital for Children and deputy editor at the New England Journal of Medicine.