Some highly original and often beautiful sounds were heard Thursday evening in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, when the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, under its musical director, Antonio de Almeida, ventured forth in a program of music by Crimean-born composer Alemdar Karamanov.


Thursday's concert not only marked the end of a week-long festival of contemporary music called "The Music of Friends," which featured the works of composers from half a dozen of the former Soviet republics, but it also served as a celebration in honor of Karamanov's 60th birthday.


Once hailed by Dmitry Shostakovich as "one of the most original and unique composers of our time" and by his contemporary Alfred Schnittke as "a genius," Karamanov has for nearly 30 years lived a self-imposed exile in his native Crimea, his music long suppressed by the Soviet musical establishment and, in more recent times, simply ignored.


A graduate of the Moscow Conservatory, Karamanov began his career as a member of the avant-garde, heavily influenced by such composers as Arnold Schoenberg and Pierre Boulez. Then, one day in 1965, as he walked down Moscow's Gorky Street, the sound of a trumpet playing brought about what he calls "a religious vision." Abandoning his radical style, he turned to writing music of a decidedly Romantic character, inspired in large part by passages from the New Testament.


The program Thursday evening drew on music from both periods of Karamanov's career. It began with his Spring (Easter) Overture of 1984, much of which sounded like a good film score from the 1940s or '50s. Then came the 1968 Third Piano Concerto, entitled "Ave Maria," a work of enormous complexity which often seemed to inhabit the world of Debussy and Ravel. Pianist Vladimir Viardo coped superbly with the daunting solo part and its long passages written either without accompaniment or with minimal intervention from the orchestra.


The evening concluded with the Moscow premiere of Karamanov's Third Symphony, composed over an eight-year period ending in 1964. Although dating from before his religious vision, the work still displayed a considerable leaning toward the Romantic, especially in the writing for strings. But throughout the symphony were enough jarring dissonances from woodwinds and brass and enough raucous outbursts from the percussion to mark this as a musical work very much of the present era.


A forest of microphones decorated the Conservatory's Great Hall on Thursday evening, in witness of the fact that both the concerto and symphony were being taken down on tape for compact-disc release next year under the Moscow Symphony's long-term contract with Hong-Kong-based Marco Polo Records.


Antonio de Almeida and the orchestra played the entire Karamanov program with precision and feeling. A year and a half under de Almeida's skilled and experienced direction has given the Moscow Symphony a quite distinctive character, its principal feature being a leaner, more classical sound than that of any of Moscow's other orchestras.


The Moscow Symphony will next be heard in public at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall on Friday, in a program of music associated with Spain.


Besides Thursday's concert, the year of Karamanov's 60th birthday has also been marked by a highly successful debut of his works in London, and further Karamanov programs are being planned for next year in England, France and his father's native land of Turkey. Quite recently, Karamanov met a request to write a national anthem for the self-proclaimed "independent" Crimea. And not long ago, scientists in the Crimea named a newly discovered star in his honor. "A rare honor," the composer says. "I only hope it will prove to be symbolic."


Whether current interest in Karamanov will leave a lasting mark in the musical world seems impossible to predict at this juncture. But certainly on the evidence of Thursday's concert, his is music of a very high quality and deserves to be heard. The Moscow Symphony's forthcoming recording should, in any case, open it to the judgment of a much wider audience.