New York Philharmonic's "Philharmonic 360," at the Armory Alan Gilbert will lead the New York Philharmonic in the rarely performed "Gruppen." In a way, the New York Philharmonic's "Philharmonic 360" program at the Park Avenue Armory is a classical music critic's summer escapist fantasy: The orchestra, freed from the formal atmosphere and mediocre acoustics of Avery Fisher Hall, moves across town to the cavernous armory to present a program far quirkier and more adventurous than anything it does during the regular season. Sure, the orchestra plays a couple of new-music programs in its Contact! series at other halls (Symphony Space and the Metropolitan Museum), and it presented Ligeti's spectacular opera "Le Grande Macabre" at Fisher Hall at the end of its 2010 season (that is, two full years ago). You've got to wonder why the orchestra is usually so timid on its own turf, particularly given Lincoln Center's efforts to update programming at a time when orchestras across the country are embracing the fact that we are 12 years into the 21st century. Oh, sorry, I forgot - summer escapist fantasy. There are several attractions here. The armory, for one, is a better sounding and more visually striking concert site than you might imagine, which explains the Philharmonic's on-and-off flirtation with the space as a potential summer home, or as a place to play when (and if) Avery Fisher Hall gets its long-awaited reconstruction. The main draw, of course, is the music. Pierre Boulez's "Rituel in Memoriam Bruno Maderna" (1975) divides the orchestra into eight groups, each with different combinations of instruments, spread through the hall. Each group is kept together by a percussionist, with a conductor overseeing the big picture. If you're looking for hidden subtexts, Mr. Boulez was the Philharmonic's music director at the time he wrote the piece, and you have to wonder how the orchestra might have evolved had its audience (and board) been less impatient with his new-music programming. Ah, right, the escapist thing - sorry. In Stockhausen's "Gruppen" (1957), the orchestra is split into three similarly constituted ensembles, each led by its own conductor. Alan Gilbert, the Philharmonic's music director, will be joined here by two composer-conductors, Magnus Lindberg and Matthias Pintscher. The music is abstract and alluring and remains one of Stockhausen's most durable scores. When the composer conducted the premiere, in Cologne in 1958, the other two conductors were - small world - Bruno Maderna and Mr. Boulez. Ives's short, mysterious "Unanswered Question" has become a concert favorite, but conductors too rarely bother separating the orchestra into the component groups Ives had in mind: a string orchestra, which offers a steady, meditative, mildly dissonant backdrop; a wind ensemble that interrupts that meditation assertively; and an offstage trumpet, which intones the portentous (if unspecified) question of the title. Mr. Gilbert has also programmed an oldie, a perfect palate cleanser between the Boulez and Stockhausen works: the finale of Act I of "Don Giovanni." The scene, as you recall, takes place in a ballroom at the Don's house, where the Don is at work seducing Zerlina while his servant, Leporello, distracts Zerlina's fiancé, Masetto. But the salient point, for the thematic purposes of this program (next Friday and June 30), is that the scene includes three chamber orchestras - Mozart in surround sound.