A night at the symphony not only provides a lasting memory of refined musical prowess, it also keeps patrons from resorting to the boring routine of watching the TV boil. Mix up the routine with today’s deal to the Round Rock Symphony Orchestra. Choose between the following options:

• For $10, you get one general-admission ticket to “From Russia and Europe with Love” on Friday, May 18, at 7:30 p.m. at First United Methodist Church (up to a $20 value). A pre-concert lecture starts at 7 p.m.
• For $85, you get a concert-subscription package (up to a $170 value), which includes the following:
• One general-admission ticket to “From Russia and Europe with Love”
• A season pass for general-admission to all 2012–13 season concerts (a $150 value). Symphony concerts are tentatively scheduled for September 29, December 9, March 23, and May 18; chamber concerts are tentatively scheduled for October 21, January 20, and April 21.<p>

The Round Rock Symphony Orchestra reshapes 19th and early 20th century masterpieces in the penultimate concert of the 2011–12 season. As a hush falls over the audience, conductor, music director, and Army bandmaster Silas Nathaniel Huff guides the ensemble’s woodwinds into Richard Strauss’s Serenade for Winds, composed at age 16 and sparking Strauss’s reputation as something of a prodigy and total show-off. Strings sweep in full-force with the dense, magisterial opening chords of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, continuing on to a second movement whose enormous waltz occasionally picks up a busier, more delicate countermelody as a dance partner. The piece’s romantic energy has served to score several ballets and films.

Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony gives a tantalizing taste of the complete masterwork that might have been in two movements of busily whispering strings overlaid with a swooning pas de deux between oboe and clarinet. Darker passages in which the orchestra shudders and exclaims in concert occasionally erupt, geyserlike, from the hushed landscape, which is restored to a gentle glow in the end. The night concludes with the crowd-pleasing thrills of Mikhail Glinka’s Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila, which telescopes a rollicking tale of young love triumphing over jealousy, sorcery, and monster abduction. A preshow talk will highlight the evening’s music and composers as well as providing a glimpse of the rare bird taught to sing inside every violin.