how to select multiple values in solr via the query string?

I would slightly modify second option to be:

id:(ONE OR TWO OR THREE) 

Solr automatically uses OR as an operator, so the shortest version would be:

id:(123 413 2232 2323)

Please check out the SolrQuerySyntax page on the Solr wiki for some examples of the query syntax for Solr.

Given your example you could query for this in a couple of ways:

1. id:[1 TO 4]
2. (id:1 OR id:2 OR id:3 OR id:4)