Tonight’s program takes us back nearly 200 years, starting with a late masterpiece by George Walker, whose centennial arrives this month; to Karol Szymanowski’s last major composition; to Franz Schubert’s “Great” Symphony No. 9 in C Major, brimming with boundless ambition by a composer facing his own mortality. Given the mastery, complexity, and sophistication of this trio of works, it’s no coincidence that they were written toward the end of three distinctly extraordinary careers, when these composers were at the height of their artistic powers. Each one aspired to create meaningful and lasting music and had the facility to realize these lofty goals.

In his Sinfonia No. 4, “Strands,” Walker set out to compose a work that was “complex, intense, and compact.” In just over 10 minutes he accomplishes this, weaving together threads from 20th-century composition to African American spirituals in a densely layered tone poem of uncommon power.

Though his First Violin Concerto is the better known of the two he wrote, Szymanowski harnesses a greater economy of forces in a more austere but no less potent Second Violin Concerto.

The final work of the evening, Schubert’s “Great” Symphony No. 9, is a profound and encompassing statement by an artist with little time to spare. In it, Schubert at once places himself as an heir to Beethoven and forges a path toward an even more expansive and expressive symphonic future.