As a prelude to the performance of two transcendental masterworks — Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto and Mahler’s fourth symphony — the ASO presented a brief but revelatory musical moment in the form of Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Rissolty Rossolty of 1939.

Crawford Seeger (1901–1953) was a ground-breaking American modernist composer who shifted her focus to folk music in the latter part of her career. Her Rissolty Rossolty is an arrangement of the traditional folk song Risseldy Rossoldy, and her version arranges the original tune with modernist touches and the incorporation of elements of two other folk tunes to create a complex polyphony of competing melodic lines. The piece builds into something approaching a brass fanfare before abruptly quietening and enigmatically ending on an incomplete phrase, in the manner of folk musicians leaving the listener waiting for more.

Enchanting it was, but then conductor Finnegan Downie Dear took the microphone to explain how the work was composed and asked sections of the orchestra to play brief passages to illustrate the various folk music components of Crawford Seeger’s intricately structured work. The orchestra then gave another complete rendition of it, and the influence of Charles Ives on Crawford Seeger’s work became clear.

The ASO’s inclusion...