This season, the Princeton Symphony Orchestra and its Music Director, Rossen Milanov, have dedicated programming to the creativity of women, and this past Sunday afternoon’s performance at Richardson Auditorium featured one of the more creative artists on the music scene today. Composer Caroline Shaw, who doubled as violinist soloist in her own Lo for Violin and Orchestra, crossed many genres of music as both composer and performer. These multiple genres of music thoroughly permeated her three-movement work, which was effectively played by the Princeton Symphony. With movements delineated by tempo markings rather than titles, Lo seemed to be semi-autobiographical, showing bits and pieces of many composers whom Ms. Shaw has credited with influencing her own creativity. 

Ms. Shaw began the solo violin line with a rising melody against swirling orchestral activity. She seemed in her own world, playing lines which were virtuosic at times against chorale-like passages from small combinations of winds and brass. An especially elegant passage featured Ms. Shaw playing a plucked solo line to clarinet accompaniment. Subtle xylophone playing by Phyllis Bitow accompanied Ms. Shaw in a dreamy violin melody toward the close of the work. In 2013, Ms. Shaw became one of the youngest recipients of the Pulitzer Prize for Music, and she has clearly put her extensive training to use pushing the boundaries of classical music.

As a somewhat programmatic work, Ms. Shaw’s piece was closely related to the one-movement tone poem of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, also included in Sunday’s concert. The 19th-century tone poems told stories, and Sibelius’s Pohjola’s Daughter drew from Finnish mythology. Throughout the work, Mr. Milanov emphasized the characters within the story, portrayed by instrumental solos. Contrabassoonist Karl Vilcins, bass clarinetist Sherry Hartman-Apgar, cellist Arash Amini and English horn player Nathan Mills all gracefully played haunting passages infused with dark colors matching the stark winter atmosphere of the story. These instruments were often paired up or joined by oboist Nicholas Masterson and clarinetist Pascal Archer as Mr. Milanov kept the strings even and the orchestral palette well controlled. One could easily hear the characters trudging through the snow, and the piece closed effectively with the strings fading as if someone were walking away into the darkness.

Mr. Milanov turned to a classic to close Sunday’s performance — Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 in C Minor. The four-movement work is rooted in the classical early 19th-century symphonic form, and has been compared to the symphonies of Beethoven in its key and use of melodic material. Mr. Milanov drew intensity from the Princeton Symphony from the start of the first movement’s slow introduction, with clean solos from Mr. Masterson, flutist Patrick Williams, and hornists Laura Weiner and Douglas Lundeen. Mr. Milanov easily brought out the instrumental shadings of the work while finding elegance in the full orchestration.

The second movement “Andante” was marked by a smooth flow to the strings, with all players well focused on the nuances of the music. Mr. Masterson’s oboe solos fit well into the texture, and clarinetist Mr. Archer played complementary solos with feeling. The symphony maintained a graceful Viennese lilt in the third movement, as Mr. Milanov found a joyous feel to the music. Conducting from memory, Mr. Milanov clearly knew the work well, closing the fourth movement with a smooth transition to the closing “Allegro.”

The Princeton Symphony Orchestra presented this concert in conjunction with artwork of middle school students presented in the Richardson lobby, part of an initiative to combine music, literature, and art. With the Sibelius work drawing from Finnish literature, this display not only brought attention to talented students in art but also created an effective visual connection to Sunday afternoon’s performance.