Spring for Music at Carnegie Hall Spring for Music, with Justin Brown leading the Alabama Symphony, on Thursday at Carnegie Hall. In essence, the Spring for Music festival at Carnegie Hall is a "contest in programming," as Elliott Forrest from WQXR radio put it on Wednesday night in a brief onstage interview with Jacques Lacombe, the music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. This venture, now in its second year, has other goals: for example, making Carnegie Hall debuts possible for regional orchestras like the Alabama Symphony, which played on Thursday night. But encouraging ensembles to think creatively about programming is the defining mission, well met by these two orchestras in the third and fourth programs of this year's series, which began on Monday. Wednesday's concert was the 22nd time that the 89-year-old New Jersey Symphony has crossed the Hudson to play at Carnegie Hall. But it was the Carnegie debut of Mr. Lacombe, the Canadian who has been the orchestra's dynamic music director since 2010. The program offered Busoni's visionary 1904 Piano Concerto in C, a gargantuan work of more than 70 minutes with a mystical finale that includes a male chorus singing a German text in praise of Allah. For this performance the virtuoso pianist Marc-André Hamelin vanquished the staggering difficulties of the solo part with cool assurance and consummate musicianship. But before the Busoni, Mr. Lacombe performed works by Varèse and Kurt Weill, two composers who could not be more different but who studied in Germany with Busoni. Varèse composed "Nocturnal" in 1961 but never finished it. The score was completed after Varèse's death in 1965 by his protégé Chou Wen-chung. This nine-minute work for soprano, male chorus and orchestra sets a text of repeated lines from Anaïs Nin's "House of Incest," with Varèse's made-up syllables ("wa ya you you") folded in. The music is fitful, anguished and percussive, though with delicate, spare stretches. The soprano Hila Plitmann brought plush sound and wrenching emotion to her performance, joined by the men of the excellent Westminster Symphonic Choir (directed by Joe Miller). This was the Carnegie premiere of Weill's Symphony No. 1 ("Berliner"), which he composed at 21. Written in one continuous, episodic movement of about 22 minutes, the symphony goes through shifts of mood and character: a jazzy chorale, late-Romantic stirrings, a teaser of a fugue and more. Though somewhat amorphous, the music is engaging, and the piece hangs together, perhaps because of the pulsing performance Mr. Lacombe drew from the orchestra. It was an honor to be in the hall for the astonishing performance of the Busoni concerto by Mr. Hamelin, the orchestra and the chorus. In this audacious work Busoni synthesizes late Romanticism, Italianate melody and dance (including a crazed tarantella), Wagnerian harmony, exploratory late Liszt, anticipations of modernism. What came through in this stunning performance was the sheer exuberance of Busoni's daring. At the end, the victorious pianist had stamina enough for an encore: Busoni's Elegy No. 4, which blends the melody of "Greensleeves" into a wash of colors and textures. The British conductor Justin Brown, who is busy on the international scene, is finishing his sixth and final season as music director of the Alabama Symphony, based in Birmingham. He has won over audiences by combining repertory works with new and recent scores. This program was a showcase for what the orchestra has been up to. There were New York premieres of two commissioned works. In "Astrolatry" the Israeli-born Avner Dorman evokes ancient people worshiping the stars: not exactly an original idea, and originality is not the hallmark of the piece's accessible musical language. Still, it is lucid and suspenseful, with shimmering, pungent chords and fidgety rhythmic writing. Paul Lansky, a pioneering composer of computer music, was persuaded by Mr. Brown to write his first symphonic score for the Alabama Symphony: "Shapeshifters," a 27-minute concerto for two pianos and orchestra. The idea running through the piece is that unexpected things can suddenly shift the shape of any experience, like an interrupting phone call. This piece has comparable musical moments that rattle the overall poise and undulant flow. But not enough. There is intricately effective writing, with jagged interplay, for the two pianos, here the impressive duo Quattro Mani (Susan Grace and Alice Rybak). But over all the piece seems placid and agreeable, except for the third (of four) movements, "Confused and Dazed." After intermission Mr. Brown and his players gave a lean, fleet and infectious account of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. Mr. Brown will stay on in a laureate position while the orchestra searches for a music director. That directorship now looks like a good opportunity. Spring for Music ends Saturday night with a concert by the Nashville Symphony at Carnegie Hall, live on WQXR and WQXR.org; (212) 247-7800, carnegiehall.org.