Three top-drawer masterpieces show the ISO at its best under the current music director

 A CEO of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra long ago  told me from his point of vantage that, when it comes to buying concert tickets,  Indianapolis responded more to repertoire than guest artists. Familiar composers did better business than soloists, no matter how well publicized.

That seemed questionable to me, but I soon decided that the local public's preference must have referred mainly to Beethoven as a guaranteed draw. There's hardly anyone else in the pantheon who comes close to filling the hall for classical concerts. 

How keen are Hoosiers on the marvels of the symphonic literature? The turnout for Friday's concert was astonishingly low, given that three acknowledged masterpieces made up the program: Debussy's Prelude to "The Afternoon of a Faun," Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 23 in A major, K.488, and "Ein Heldenleben" (A Hero's Life) by Richard Strauss.

Distinction of repertoire and big-name composers is hardly a magnet, one is forced to conclude. Given that the orchestra's stature under the guidance of Jun Märkl has become consistently high-level, it's some cause for wonder that more Hilbert Circle Theatre seats were not filled last night. One can only hope that the repeat of the program at 5:30 today will attract more music-lovers. But enough preaching to the choir!

The guest artist was certainly not a nonentity, either. Stewart Goodyear was in town as recently as last fall to help ISO pops maestro Jack Everly celebrate the centennial of "Rhapsody in Blue" in an all-Gershwin program. The Canadian pianist  went over well, as he has in a few previous appearances here.

Stewart Goodyear has had two guest appearances here this season.

This time Goodyear was a model of clarity and attentiveness to detail in one of the best Mozart concertos. I admired the unforced wittiness the pianist brought to the first-movement cadenza, for example, The ascent of the Adagio middle movement into the empyrean showed a tasteful blend of brooding and resolve. There was a strain of deliberate exaltation in the soloist's performance, seconded perfectly by the poised accompaniment Märkl fashioned with the orchestra. 

The finale, whose Allegro assai marking permits ramping up to lickety-split buoyancy if the performers can handle it, was superbly dealt with. The rondo theme was bright and brisk both initially and on each return. Its early statement displayed solo bassoon and clarinet in fine fettle, tossing off bravura phrases.

The Debussy piece, just about as well-known as such solo piano evergreens as "Clair de lune" and "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair," represents a trailblazing kind of dreamy languor in orchestral terms. Almost paradoxically, though, there is nothing vague about how Debussy responds to Stephane Mallarme's mythological poem. 

That's the insight Märkl brought to the piece and the orchestra displayed unflinchingly. Episodes suggesting the faun's playful pursuit of some wood nymphs spoke their piece and were gone, and after the mysterious signal of antique cymbals, a fresh magic came over the performance, with hints of regret-free nostalgia suffusing the approach to the final bar.

After intermission, the stage was filled with the full orchestra and some extras for Strauss' daringly autobiographical portrait of heroism. "Ein Heldenleben" has the German master's pictorial imagination at full strength, and the performance met its glorious, attenuated challenges. 

The description of the hero himself has to verge on overstatement to be effective, and so it was Friday evening. The counterstatement to this bravado is sometimes pegged as a description of music critics, but more generally of the hero's adversaries. I felt slightly abashed, which is why I might have awakened this morning with the first phrases of that episode teasing my brain. The winds and their staccato fun and games were aptly saucy. 

ISO concertmaster Kevin Lin

In the portrait of the hero's companion that follows, the solo violin emerges as a splashy, affectionate portrait of the composer's wife. Concertmaster Kevin Lin, gave a predictably lively account of Strauss' expansive depiction of female flair. It's a feather in the music director's cap that Lin has gotten so much exposure in this season's programming.

As the solo subsides tenderly, the swelling orchestra sketches lavishly an intimate  bedroom scene. In Friday night's performance, the imagination could well run riot: the bedroom scene was... well, what it was. 

The ensuing battle with the foes had the madness and barely controlled fury it must have. This is the kind of orchestral writing that one of  Märkl's predecessors, Raymond Leppard, said that the Circle Theatre was simply unsuited to. With all due respect for what Leppard accomplished with the ISO, these potentially overloaded late Romantic scores can come off magnificently, as this one did Friday night. Moreover, the contrasts of texture were by no means glossed over, leading to Strauss' crowning declaration of the hero's essential devotion  to peace, with the full wind choir definitive in chorale-like self-satisfaction.