In music and in life, timing is everything. And the timing of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra’s new Naxos recording could hardly be better. The CD, of three works by American composer Paul Fetler, became available for download on the Naxos web site this week, an upbeat prelude to the orchestra’s season opener at the Michigan Theater on Sept. 12. The album itself arrives in CD form in mid-December.

“I think we will be having a lot of Christmas stockings being filled,” said a very happy A2SO Executive Director Mary Steffek Blaske in a phone call this week.

The works on the CD, recorded live at concerts under the baton of Music Director Arie Lipsky in 2007 and 2008, with the composer, now 89, present, include Fetler’s “Three Poems of Walt Whitman,” with Ann Arbor poet and attorney Thomas Blaske as narrator; Fetler’s one-movement “Capriccio;” and the Violin Concerto No. 2, with A2SO Concertmaster Aaron Berofsky as soloist.

This recording, the first devoted completely to Fetler’s works, is also a first commercial recording venture for the A2SO. The orchestra made the recording with the help of a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Among the people behind the scenes, said Executive Director Blaske, were David Lau of Brookwood Studio, who regularly records the orchestra’s concerts; University of Michigan conducting student Ariol Sans; and Thomas Gerdom, a conductor who now works in recording management.

“It was a wonderful next step forward for the orchestra,” Executive Director Blaske said. “They have been playing so beautifully under Arie. We’d love to do more, but we’ll have to see. It’s very expensive.”

Fetler, born in 1920, has described his compositional approach as one of “progressive lyricism.”

“I am not out to prove systems or theories. I am out to reach people,” he has often said. “My goal is the merger of listener and music.” His compositions include over 150 works in diverse genres. Many of these have been performed by leading orchestras, soloists, choral ensembles and chamber groups across the United States and Europe. He has been the recipient of important awards from the Society for the Publication of American Music, the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is currently Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota.

Fans of the A2SO can have a listen to the new CD at the Naxos web site. Sampling the tracks is free. Listening to the whole recording, or to entire tracks, entails a charge for downloading — or waiting until December to buy a “hard” copy.

Whatever the decision, listeners who attended the actual concerts are likely to respond as Steffek Blaske did when she re-encountered the music online last week.

“I’d forgotten how good it was, she said. “I’m in love. It is just transcendent to me. The music playing brings back all the intensity and the emotions of hearing it for the first time.”

Susan Isaacs Nisbett is a free-lance writer who covers classical music and dance for AnnArbor.com.