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All music director Guillermo Figueroa and his New Mexico Symphony Orchestra family had to do was come up with a season's worth of performances fitting for the celebration of the orchestra's 75th birthday.

No pressure, right? .

"Of course there was pressure," Figueroa said during a phone interview this week. "It was great pressure trying to find the right way and the proper way of doing it, making sure credit was given where it was due and also making sure we had an interesting season for the subscribers."

He huddled with orchestra musicians and the NMSO staff to come up with the best programs for the 75th anniversary season.

"Every decision made in the symphony has a lot of artistic implication but also marketing implications," Figueroa said.

They left nothing to chance with the season-opening classics concert that will be performed tonight through Sunday. They pulled out the biggest gun in the classical music arsenal — Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Opening the season with a Beethoven piece has become something of an NMSO ritual. Figueroa said the orchestra has done it the last five years.

"Beethoven is the quintessential composer," Figueroa said. "He sets the tone for the rest of our season because he is a good workout for the orchestra. With Beethoven, there is no holding back. Everyone has to play at absolute peak level or it doesn't work."

And Beethoven's ninth and fifth symphonies are his greatest works.

"They are the greatest and most important pieces of music, listenable and powerful pieces for the audience," Figueroa said. "But what's curious about the ninth and the fifth is that I think most people don't really know them well."

That's because there is so much to know.

The ninth, for example, is the first symphony to combine a large choral part with purely orchestral movements. Roger Melone will lead the NMSO Chorus in the performance of the choral portion — based on the German poem "Ode to Joy" — in the hourlong symphony.

"The famous 'Ode to Joy' happens at the very end of a very long piece," Figueroa said. "My feeling is that the ninth would be the ninth even if Beethoven had stopped at the adagio. But `Ode to Joy' brings it to a whole new level."

There's a little bit of everything in the ninth — beauty, mystery, exaltation, despair. Even humor.

"Oh, there's a lot of humor," Figueroa said. "There's this silly Turkish march. What the heck is that?

"The ninth alludes to things in the air at the time — the militaristic atmosphere of Vienna, where Beethoven lived; religious feelings; and the overall concept of humanity rising to freedom. It was very much in accord with all the revolutions going on at the time."

Figueroa said one could study the ninth forever and not get to the bottom of it.

"But you don't have to understand all of its intricacies to appreciate it," he said.

All in all, it's the best musical accompaniment for a significant anniversary.

The NMSO traces its origins to the Albuquerque Civic Symphony, which made its debut Nov. 13, 1932, at the University of New Mexico's Carlisle Gym, under the direction of Grace Thompson Edmister.

Edmister, head of UNM's Music Department at the time, served as the fledgling orchestra's conductor until 1941.

The anniversary of the orchestra's first performance will be celebrated at the NMSO's Nov. 16-18 Classics IV concert, which will serve up the music of Mendelssohn, Saint-Saens and Walton along with birthday cake.

Edmister, who died in 1984 at age 93, will be honored at the Jan. 18-20 Classics VI concert in which Figueroa will surrender the conductor's baton to Anne Manson while he takes up the violin to perform the music of Uruguayan composer Miguel del Aguila.

But that's a little bit down the line.

Rounding out this weekend's season-launching program, however, is Bela Bartók's Viola Concerto and "Celebratory Fanfare: Red or Green?" by Rio Rancho composer Daniel Crafts.

The Bartók concerto features the talents of guest violist Paul Neubauer.

"This is Bartók's last piece," Figueroa said. "His starting point is that the nature of the viola is soulful singing as contrasted to the more heroic violin and the more robust cello."

There is an air of melancholy in the Bartók concerto.

"But the end is flashy, fast and fun and allows the viola to really express itself," Figueroa said.

Crafts' five-minute piece was written for the NMSO's 75th anniversary. Figueroa was still studying it this week.

"I'm sure he puts his preference (for red or green chile) in the music," Figueroa said of Crafts. "Personally, I vote for green. But that's just me."