In our day, oratorios are rare birds—and most lose their plumage all too quickly, especially if their themes are politically earnest. This effort by polymorphously prodigious composer and pianist Uri Caine could prove a rare exception; memorializing the Philadelphia civil-rights activist martyred in 1871, its gospel-and-jazz-inflected music transcends a sententious text. Caine’s jazz trio joins the BSO, the eponymous Catto Chorus, singer Barbara Walker, and conductor André Raphel in a program that includes works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and William Grant Still. —E.E.