To deliver a musical message of comfort, recognition, and universal fellowship to populations rattled by the forces of apocalypse in our time: this, in a nutshell, is the purpose of the annual “Roads of Friendship” concert Riccardo Muti undertakes with musicians of the Ravenna Festival. Presented first at home and a night or two later in a place where the need is great for such a message (think war-torn Sarajevo, or New York post-9/11), the programs are chosen with exquisite care for local resonance. This year, the maestro’s mind is on war and mass displacement in the Mediterranean, in whose waters desperate African and Middle Eastern refugees past reckoning have perished in search of salvation in Europe. The cellist-composer Giovanni Sollima of Palermo, whose style has been aptly described as “archaic yet ultramodern,” is heard from in a new realization of the Stabat Mater, a 13th-century hymn to the Virgin set this time for countertenor, choir, orchestra, and the obsolete, contact-free electronic instrument known as the theremin (or “ætherphone”). Even more pertinent is the electroacoustic Samia Suite by Alessandro Baldessari, with orchestration by Claudio Cavallin. The work honors Samia Yusuf Omar, who at 17 ran the 200 meters for Somalia at the Beijing Olympics, dreamed of competing again in London in 2012, endured displacement at home, found her way to Libya, but perished in rough waters as she attempted to cross to Italy. “The concert,” Muti told us recently, “is for her.” After a stadium performance in Ravenna, the “run-out” reprise takes place in the new open-air Natural Theater of the Quarry on the tiny islet of Lampedusa. Situated a mere 85 miles off the African shore, it’s a tempting gateway to Europe but a treacherous one. The quarry doubles as a memorial to the tragic shipwreck of October 3, 2013, which claimed 368 lives. —Matthew Gurewitsch