Members of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra get to play great music every season, but it isn’t often that the musicians get a shot at performing something that isn’t part of the popular canon of classical scores or an attempt to broaden their fan base with fun but lightweight programming.

Sunday found them in Lippes Concert Hall, taking part in the June In Buffalo Festival and embracing a musical program that was a far cry from what they usually play at their normal digs, Kleinhans Music Hall. The result was an “end of the event” kind of set list, featuring orchestral works by Donald Erb, Bernard Rands, Lukas Foss and David Felder that ran the sonic gamut from the readily accessible (Foss) to the less so (everybody else).

This is not to deny that there were moments of beauty in the scores, but rather to point out that musical frontiers were being adjusted and, just as it was in the case of Stravinsky and other 20th century ground-breakers, there is a learning curve involved with an appreciation of what is being done.

Robert Franz, the BPO’s resident conductor, did a marvelous job of leading his troops through thickets of notes to find the heart of each work.

The concert opener, Erb’s “Solstice,” blasted out of the gate with a barrage of percussion and brass firing on all cylinders. There was some use of electronics, but it was a subtle coloration of sound that manifested itself best in the softer troughs of the cycling volume, alternating with the thunderous crashing of cymbals, brass and strings in close formation.

“For Toru” was originally dedicated by Foss to the memory of his friend, the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, and reflects the latter’s love of the flute by evoking the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) and setting the instrument in an elegant orchestral backdrop. Christine Bailey Davis, the principal flutist for the BPO, handled her role as soloist with considerable sensitivity.

Felder’s “Three Pieces for Orchestra” became “Two Pieces for Orchestra” when the composer nixed a performance of the first score in the progression, determining the music to be not quite ready for prime time. The remaining pair of scores, “For Two Shades of the Seventh Light” and a cornerstone in Felder’s catalog, “Linebacker Music,” were fair indicators of the composer’s apparent love of orchestral volume and clashing musical textures.

The concert’s finale was Rand’s “London Serenade,” an elegiac score dedicated to Edwin London that fused strings, brass and percussion into what the composer called “a strangely simple serenade.”

Notes: The festival always seems to act like a forum where composers and performers can present questions and solutions, advancing the technical aspects of performing and composing without any real attempt to reach a wider audience. That’s too bad because, amid all the creative formalism and technical expertise, there is often something interesting to hear.

Despite not having seen everything in this year’s June In Buffalo Festival, quite a bit of it has made its way to my ears and impressed me. Martin Bresnick, Mathew Rosenblum and Jukka Tiensuu were all composers new to my ears and, for the most part, it was worth hearing what they were up to.

While the BPO closed the festival for this year, the other musical groups performing during the week included the New York New Music Ensemble, the Meridian Arts Ensemble, the Verge Ensemble and the Slee Sinfonietta, in addition to solo concerts by phenomenal musical technicians, accordionist Mikko Luoma and bassist Stefano Scodanibbio.

Concert Review

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra

Sunday as part of June in Buffalo in Lippes Concert Hall at Slee Hall on the University at Buffalo North Campus, Amherst.