The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s SLSO Guitar Festival may have closed in Chicago with Saturday night’s performance at Powell Symphony Hall, but music director David Robertson and his players took some highlights from the week’s performance on the road to Chicago on Sunday.

Chicago Tribune music critic John von Rhein wrote, “You know you’re attending a David Robertson concert when the only ’standard’ work on the bill is Edgard Varese’s 1925-27 ‘Arcana.’ Such was the bracing program of 21st and late 20th Century music…” performed by Robertson & Co.

Chicago didn’t get to hear these forces’ fantastic performance of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.” They got the first movement of Glenn Branca’s Symphony No. 14, the Frank Zappa-Varese pairing, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “A Prayer Out of Stillness” and Steven Mackey’s “Beautiful Passing,” with soloist Leila Josefowicz.” Von Rhein loved all of it, except the Branca.