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GREENSBORO — The virtuoso string trio Time for Three teamed with the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra on Thursday night in a concert that broke the mold.

Although GSO President Lisa Crawford announced that it was “casual night” at the symphony, no one was really prepared for what was to follow. Thursday saw a trio of young string players — Zachary De Pue, Nicolas Kendall and Ranaan Meyer —  who appeared to have a great time interacting with the audience and playing the pants off of everything they performed.

Their opening piece was “Shenandoah,” which explored a dizzying number of timbres and sonorities.

The second half of the piece smoothly segued into “Foxhorn,” which livened up the proceedings, complete with fiddling contests between all three.

The amazing thing about this group’s musicianship is how free and loose the playing was — completely natural, as if improvised. But it was clearly all choreographed ahead of time. And unbelievably tight.

The Beatles’ “Blackbird” provided the scaffolding for another number that was followed by a relentless version of Brahms’ “Hungarian Rhapsody” that included two of the players — on the same violin. 

A bit of vaudeville? No matter. The musicianship was beyond reproach.

The second half of the evening switched gears with Igor Stravinsky’s ballet, “Petrouchka.”  This is a cornucopia of color and clearly shows that Stravinsky learned a great deal from his study with master orchestrator Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

This is a lively score, chock full of Russian and Russian-sounding folk tunes that have abrupt rhythmic, tempo and meter changes.

Under conductor Dmitry Sitkovetsky’s steady direction, everything went off without a hitch. Sometimes the rhythm sounded more deliberate than inspired, but the colors were unmistakable.

The piece really gave a workout to just about every first chair in the orchestra, and special kudos must be given to Nancy Johnston on piano (the work was originally conceived as a piano concerto), Anita Cirba on trumpet and Debra Reuter-Pivetta on flute.

This was one of those concerts that was a must for anyone who loves interaction with performers, who doesn’t like classical music or who believes that such music is dead.

Tim Lindeman is a freelance contributor.