The Minnesota Chorale brings out its fireworks for a performance of Johannes Brahms’ “Schicksalslied” with the Minnesota Orchestra, as well as the Minnesota premiere of “Rise Up, O Sun!” by Eleanor Alberga, co-commissioned by the orchestra.

The two choral pieces make up a program that also features the solid artistry of concertmaster Erin Keefe playing a Max Bruch concerto. It concludes with music director Thomas Søndergård unpacking the pent-up longing of Robert Schumann’s “Spring Symphony.”

The orchestra had paired Brahms and Alberga last summer, when it performed a short piece by Alberga called “Tower,” and Brahms’ magnificent Double Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra. Both of those works reflected on the complexity of friendship. This time the orchestra and the Minnesota Chorale play choral works by Brahms and Alberga that set poetry to music.

Alberga chooses a selection from William Blake’s “Vala, or The Four Zoas.” It’s a weird, unfinished collection rich in imagery and heightened emotion, and full of Blake’s constructed mythology and thoughts on the nature of free love and sexuality. Blake’s text is filled with lines like “Here me sing my rapturous song” and “Oh how delicious are the grapes flourishing in the sun.” It’s vivacious stuff, and Alberga’s composition captures the poetry’s lushness with angular, unexpected jumps.

You can read the lines projected on Orchestra Hall’s back wall, but you don’t really need them. The Minnesota Chorale’s singing is precise and crisp. It’s a rhythmic piece that goes to unexpected places with rippling indulgence. Alberga’s instrumentation adds additional delights, with assertive piccolos and a diverse mix of percussive instrumentation.

The chorus shines performing Brahms’ “Schicksalslied” for Chorus and Orchestra, Opus 54, though the vocal part doesn’t come in right away. The work begins with an ethereal prelude performed by the orchestra before the altos join in with the choral melody.

The composer draws on poetry that German poet Friedrich Hölderlin intersperses within his novel “Hyperion.” The words lament the suffering mortals experience in comparison to the easy living of the gods.

The Minnesota Chorale, led by artistic director Kathy Saltzman Romey and accompanist and artistic advisor Barbara Brooks, has been the principal chorus for the Minnesota Orchestra for 20 years, and it first performed with the orchestra over 50 years ago. The two groups sound marvelous together, especially in the Brahms piece with all its dramatic flourishes and seismic dynamic changes.

Between the two choral pieces, Erin Keefe joins the orchestra for Concerto No. 1 in G minor for Violin and Orchestra, Opus 26, by Max Bruch. Timpanist Erich Rieppel begins the piece with a low hum of a drumroll, soon joined by the winds, with the violin solo floating on top.

Keefe’s playing is especially mesmerizing in the second Adagio movement, as she elegantly articulates the complicated patterns with legato bowing. It’s music that acts as a love letter. Later, in the rigorous finale, Keefe shows off her virtuosity with exacting, aggressive playing. There are moments where it’s as if she’s using her bow as a shovel digging for gold.

At the end of the program, the orchestra plays Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 in B-flat major, Opus 38, “Spring.” It’s the first time the orchestra’s new director has conducted Schumann with the group. Written as a kind of longing for spring, its timing fits with emergence of warmer weather currently at work in the Twin Cities. It begins upbeat and hopeful, and later hovers over a feeling of breathless anticipation and even impatience. Later, it jaunts and gains momentum toward its forceful conclusion.

Minnesota Orchestra

What:  Søndergård, Keefe and Brahms

When: 8 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. Saturday

Where: Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis

Tickets: $30-$111; minnesotaorchestra.org

Capsule: The Minnesota Chorale performs with the Minnesota Orchestra in a program that also highlights the vigorous playing of concertmaster Erin Keefe and Schumann’s “Spring Symphony.”

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