By Aaron Keebaugh

There wasn’t much autumnal despondency in this Horizon Ensemble program; it was dedicated to the upside of the season, an invitation to enjoy all its warmth, friendship, and festivity.

Horizon Ensemble assembled. Photo: courtesy of the artist

For Ezra Pound, autumn was a gloomy time, symbolizing irreversible decay. His The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter looks askant at images of yellowing leaves. “They hurt me,” Pound’s speaker says of the darkening days. “I grow older.”

Composer Joachim Raff, however, saw autumn as a time for celebration. His Symphony No. 10, rarely heard in live performances, fêtes the promise of the return of light and, with that, better days. Played with verve by conductor Julian Gau and the Horizon Ensemble last weekend, this symphony was a reminder that this time of year can be filled with fun and good cheer.

Beloved in his day as a symphonist (Raff composed 11 of them), the composer fell into the shadows cast by Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms. Raff’s music was inspired by the futuristic aims of Liszt’s Weimar circle. Serving as the latter’s assistant from 1850 to 1856, Raff absorbed ideas about crafting programmatic music devoted to the ideal. Despite that, he hewed to more traditional frameworks for his own compositions. And because of duality, his symphonies tend to fall somewhere between the extremes of arch-romantic excess and classical form and balance.

But Raff’s Symphony No. 10, subtitled “To Autumntime,” doesn’t fall into some nebulous middle ground. Rather, the symphony strikes its distinctive balance on its own terms. While there is an undercurrent of dark lyricism in its opening movement, the music easily tips upward, toward the light. The Scherzo dances slyly; the third movement glows with hymnic serenity. Tension and exuberance abound in the finale, culminating with a non-Poundian, zesty view of autumn.

Gau was alert to the score’s live-wire intensity, encouraging fine details to emerge naturally with every musical turn. The orchestra responded fervently, though, at times, its attacks came off as a little scrappy. This was proof, as usual, that Horizon Ensemble is an orchestra that takes risks. And the rewards can be delightful, such as the burnishing string lines and colorful French horn figures in the finale that rose boldly to the surface.

Rounding out this unfamiliar fare was a new score by Hayley Qin and chamber music by Igor Stravinsky and Jennifer Higdon.

Qin’s Three Moods in New England, heard in its world premiere, suggests the beauties of three New England towns. These depictions of hamlets in Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts take their inspiration from the communities’ natural surroundings. The density of this music is inviting in a number of ways.  The wind ensemble, thick with midrange voices, weaves a plush bed of sonorities that one can almost lie in.

While dissonances establish a bristly ambience in the piece’s opening, colors eventually blend like pastels. Muted trumpet conveys a hint of warmth, though at a distance. Gau and the musicians rendered the work with an air of Proustian freedom, as if channeling tender memories.

In contrast, Stravinsky’s “Dumbarton Oaks” concerto was delightfully skittish — to the point of exuberance. Composed for a wedding anniversary between American diplomats Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Barnes Bliss, this score is as playful as it is urgent. Gau leaned into the former with a mix of gung-ho buoyancy and grit. But that force left the drama of its deeper rising lines relatively unexplored.

Happily, Higdon’s Autumn Music struck that missing balance. This is music that titters gleefully, but Gau’s sensitive direction also caught a sense of lyricism. Trills fluidly erupted from the opening horn calls; phrases flowed between instrumental voices with kaleidoscopic ease. Pound’s autumnal despondency was nowhere to be found. Instead, this was a program dedicated to the upside of the season, an invitation to enjoy all its warmth, friendship, and festivity.

Aaron Keebaugh has been a classical music critic in Boston since 2012. His work has been featured in the Musical Times, Corymbus, Boston Classical Review, Early Music America, and BBC Radio 3. A musicologist, he teaches at North Shore Community College in both Danvers and Lynn.