Season 11 (2014-2015)

PROGRAM
Mozart Symphony No.35 in D major, K385 (Haffner), Allegro con spirito, Andante, Menuetto – Trio, Finale (Presto)

Avner Dorman Saxophone Concerto

Dvořák Wind Serenade in D minor, B.77 (Op.44)

Haydn Symphony No. 45 in F sharp minor (Farewell)

CONDUCTOR

Avner Dorman

SOLOISTS
Timothy McAllister, saxophone

VENUES
St. Noel Church, Lakewood Congregational Church, Slovenian National Home, Church of Gesu, Shrine of St. Stanislaus

PROGRAM NOTES

…it must certainly be very effective!

MOZART’S HAFFNER SYMPHONY

In 1781 Mozart left the irksome environment of Salzburg for Vienna, where he planned to make his name as a piano virtuoso and composer and find a prestigious post for himself. At first all went well and he was as busy as he could wish. He wrote an opera (The Abduction from the Seraglio, which enjoyed a successful premiere in 1782), the publisher Artaria made an agreement to publish his music, he performed in concerts and he fell in love!

In the middle of 1782, Mozart’s father asked him to write some festive music for the ennoblement of a family friend, Siegmund Haffner the Younger. For this Mozart composed a six-movement serenade (not the Haffner Serenade, K250, that was an earlier piece written for a wedding in the Haffner family) and sent it home to Salzburg.

Then, as happens when you’re busy, Mozart decided to recycle some old work. He was preparing for a set of subscription concerts in Vienna and wrote to his father asking for the return of the “Haffner music”. On receiving it, he responded with characteristic immodesty: “I was quite surprised by the new Haffner symphony, for I had forgotten every note of it; it must certainly be very effective.”

By 1783 Mozart had converted his festive serenade into a concert symphony. He did this by removing the opening march and one of the dancing minuets and adding flutes and clarinets to the remaining outer movements.

The beginning of the Haffner Symphony makes a grand effect with bold drum rolls and spectacular leaps from low notes to high. But almost immediately the violins present a more lyrical idea, laying the groundwork for music filled with dramatic contrasts. No wonder Mozart asked for it to be played with fire and spirit (con spiritoso). The second movement offers a complete shift of mood: it’s more relaxed and delicate, basking in the “serenade” atmosphere of its original context.

This is followed by a minuet that you could dance to if you wished, organized as it is in regular phrases. Perhaps at the Haffner celebrations the guests did step onto the dance floor at this point. The music heard at the beginning and end of the movement is stately, almost pompous, while the contrasting Trio section in the middle is cozier in feeling.

The finale is marked Presto (as fast as possible) and Mozart races to the conclusion with music that’s high-spirited, good-humored and brilliantly exciting. Very effective indeed!

Jazz versus the traditionalists

DORMAN’S SAXOPHONE CONCERTO

This concerto was inspired in part by the music of saxophonist John Coltrane and it incorporates jazz vocabulary through the use of short motifs. These ideas turn up very early on in the concerto and each one carries a particular set of musical characteristics. Much of the music of the concerto then derives from the manipulation of these motivic elements.

Since the 18th century, the solo concerto genre has traditionally reflected a spirit playing together – “in concert” – but also a spirit of competition: the instrumental soloist contrasting with the orchestral group. That’s the quality that can make a concerto so dramatic and exciting. In Dorman’s Saxophone Concerto the contrasts and the drama are stylistic. The saxophone soloist attempts to lead the group in aggressive, jazz-inspired music but the orchestra resists, steering the music away from the modern and towards more traditional styles. Ultimately, the orchestra refuses to follow the soloist’s lead, and the saxophonist retires, frustrated. In more ways that one, his “repeat-till-fade” gesture makes the perfect conclusion to the first half of the concert, just as Haydn’s Farewell Symphony concludes the second

Avner Dorman’s Saxophone Concerto was commissioned by the Israel Camerata and premiered in 2010 by the Alabama Symphony Orchestra and saxophonist Joshua Redman with conductor Justin Brown. The solo part is written for the high soprano saxophone and the small orchestra comprises flute, oboe, clarinet, two bassoons, two horns, a drum kit and strings.

A musical diversion…

DVOŘÁK’S WIND SERENADE

Most musicians refer to this music as a “wind serenade” but if you look at the stage you’ll see that the winds – oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns – have invited two friends from the string section to join them: a cello and a double bass. Dvořák wasn’t the first to write a “wind” serenade like this; Mozart’s famous Gran Partita also included a double bass to help support the bass line.

There’s more that Mozart would have recognized. As a serenade, it belongs to an 18th-century tradition of cheerful music written for casual settings, often outdoors, and intended as background for socializing. Composing in 1878, Dvořák intended his serenade for concert performance and he would have expected us to listen to it, not chat, but the music still reveals a genial spirit, a charming simplicity, and an appealing variety of moods over the course of its five movements. And it’s full of the “sunshine” that Dvořák heard in the music of his beloved Mozart. It’s a Classical serenade at heart.

Like an 18th-century serenade, Dvořák’s Wind Serenade begins with a confident and energetic march (Moderato quasi Marcia) – the musicians you see might already be on the stage, but with music like this you can easily imagine them marching into a courtyard to play for party guests.

Dvořák calls his second movement a minuet but really it’s a Czech sousedská or “neighbours’ dance.” At first it lilts along, both grounded and graceful in character. In the middle Dvořák ups the tempo for another kind of dance, a furiant. The third movement evokes a night-time mood with the oboe and clarinet singing to each other, passing their tender, yearning melodies to and fro above gentle offbeat rhythms from the other instruments. Perhaps Dvořák is nodding to the beautiful Adagio in Mozart’s Gran Partita? The finale restores the festive mood before a return of the march music from the first movement signals that the musicians are departing for the night!

Thank God it’s Friday…

HAYDN’S FAREWELL SYMPHONY

Some scene setting… Every summer your boss takes all his employees out of town for several months. You all live and work together in a remote community. You’re not allowed to bring your spouse. Your boss loves it – he’s a hunter and there are ducks to shoot out on the swamp. The employees? Not so much.

This is the situation in which Haydn and his fellow musicians found themselves every year when Prince Nicolaus Esterházy left his urban home of Eisenstadt (just outside Vienna) and took his household to his rural summer palace of Eszterháza near the Hungarian border. Eszterháza rivaled Versailles in its elegant magnificence; it included opera theatres (two!), music rooms, a marionette theatre and an enormous library. Haydn claimed that its isolation “forced him to be original.” But it wasn’t home.

And so in 1772, when Prince Nicolaus advised his musicians that they would be required to spend a further two months at Eszterháza, Haydn decided to send him a message – one that the sophisticated, music-loving prince would surely understand.

Haydn grabs his prince’s attention from the outset, beginning in the startling key of F sharp minor. It’s believed this is the only symphony to have been composed in this key during the 18th century – that’s how extraordinary it would have been. Even for us with our 21st-century ears, it will sound startling at the end of a program dominated by music in bright D major and mild D minor.

There’s a sense of theatre in this symphony and Haydn makes a very literal theatrical gesture in his finale. It begins Presto (as fast as possible) before segueing into a wistful Adagio (slow) section. Then, gradually, musicians stop playing, snuff out their candles (or the modern equivalent) and leave the stage. First the oboes, bassoon and horns. Haydn writes above their parts “nichts mehr” (no more). Then the double basses, followed by the cellos, all the violins barring the two principals, and finally the violas depart, leaving just the concertmaster and principal second violin playing on stage in a muted duet.

Prince Nicolaus got the point, saying: “Well, if they all leave I suppose we had better leave too.” The household packed up the next day. But perhaps he was equally impressed and moved by the sheer boldness of the symphony as a whole. This is a profoundly emotional symphony, as daring in its musical gestures as it was in its pointed message about leaving Esterháza.

Yvonne Frindle © 2014 (Adapted in part from a program note by Avner Dorman)

PROGRAM
Sarrier Sinfonia in D

Mozart Bassoon Concerto

Ramírez Misa Criolla

CONDUCTOR

Peter Bennett

SOLOISTS
Laura Koepke, bassoon

Joshua Blue, tenor

Michael Floriano, baritone

Raquel Floriano, siku

Francisco Lopez, charanga and bombo

La Sagrada Familia Choir and Friend

VENUES
La Sagrada Familia Church, Communion of Saints Parish (St. Ann Church), Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus, Lakewood Congregational Church, St. Noel Church

PROGRAM NOTES

A Mexican symphony

SARRIER’S SINFONIA

Christopher Columbus…1492… This was just a beginning. Through the following centuries, the European sea-faring powers claimed and colonized territories in the Americas. Principal among them was Spain, then at the peak of her power. The Spanish colonial territories were exploited for their natural wealth, alliances were formed, battles fought and civilizations conquered – the history is often a dark and violent one. But with the soldiers, the entrepreneurs and the missionaries came culture too, and the European forms of music, dance, theatre and literature enjoyed a distinctive life in the New World, far from their original sources.

We know little about Antonio Sarrier – he lived and worked in Mexico and he flourished during the middle of the 18th century, at the apogee of Spanish colonization in Latin America. He was a composer and a trumpeter. This much we know. For everything else we need to listen to the music that has survived the centuries.

If you heard Sarrier’s symphony in a blind listening you might guess early Haydn, youthful Mozart, perhaps Johann Christian Bach (the ‘London Bach’). As far as symphonies go it’s a short piece, barely 9 minutes long, and in three movements rather than the four movements of a mature Classical symphony. In fact – as the name of its first movement reveals – it belongs to the tradition of the opera overture, from which the earliest symphonies (or sinfonias) emerged.

In the course of its three movements, a sinfonia would serve several functions. Its first task was to get your attention in a rowdy opera theatre – notice the strong, energetic beginning with its clear-cut musical ideas. Then it would charm the spirit with slower, expressive music perhaps, as in this sinfonia, highlighting the contrasting colors of the strings and the wind instruments. An energetic finale would then stimulate a sense of anticipation for what was to follow. In his own finale, Sarrier does something that would probably have been considered a little old-fashioned and academic, even in the colonies: he adopts the form of a fugue, with different instrumental voices imitating each other as they enter the fray in close succession. But it’s not all academic – listen to the brilliant use he makes of high horns!

Liberating the bassoon…

MOZART’S BASSOON CONCERTO

Mozart completed his Bassoon Concerto in 1774, when he was 18 years old. This was one of his earliest concertos, and his first for a woodwind instrument.

Although Mozart had received a commission from an amateur bassoonist, Baron Thaddäus von Dürnitz of Munich, modern scholars are doubtful that this concerto was written for the Baron. The solo writing certainly makes no concessions to amateurism. One of its leading modern interpreters, Milan Turkovic, observes that it must have seemed a bold composition, and it exploits all the notes available on the instrument at that time – a five-keyed bassoon requiring complicated fingering. Mozart’s concerto remains satisfying to modern players with more user-friendly instruments, and is still the most often played bassoon concerto.

The bassoon has acquired a reputation for jocularity, and there is indeed something humorous in its wide leaps between registers, and the plaintiveness of tone in its higher reaches. Mozart does not miss the possibilities this offers, but he is also fully awake to the expressiveness of the bassoon, liberated for once from having to reinforce the bass line in the orchestra, and he makes it sing eloquently.

Writing for solo bassoon and orchestra presents some challenges: because the bassoon’s natural register lies in the middle range the orchestral accompaniment must confine itself to the bass and treble parts, leaving the middle as clear as possible. Here Mozart employs only strings, oboes and horns, and he reserves the use of the full orchestra for those moments when the bassoon is silent. You’ll hear, too, how the orchestral horns play very high in their range, keeping them out of the bassoon territory.

The first movement is the most ambitious: the orchestra providing a powerful framework for the bassoon’s leaps and runs. The second movement makes the most of the soloist’s ability to create a singing style – almost operatic. The finale is a dance-like rondo minuet. The bassoon provides the episodes between the main statements of the rondo theme, and only once, towards the end, does it play the theme itself.

Truly popular…

MISA CRIOLLA

In Ariel Ramírez’s Misa Criolla (literally ‘Creole Mass’) the language and the traditional sounds and rhythms come together in an original composition that is at the same time infused with a genuine popular spirit – music of the people. Perhaps it’s no surprise that – since it was recorded and then premiered in the 1960s –it has been an unqualified success, selling millions of copies and filling concert halls, not just in Argentina but worldwide. Misa Criolla is truly popular.

The origins of the music determined its shape and character. After the Second Vatican Council in 1963 vernacular mass settings were permitted for the first time.

Roman Catholic congregations worldwide were now free to celebrate the mass in their native languages. And Ramírez’s almost immediate response to this ruling gave rise to one of the very first Catholic Masses to be set in a language other than Latin.

The texts of Misa Criolla are in Castilian, although the five movements and their titles follow the traditional structure of the Latin liturgy: Kyrie (Lord have mercy), Gloria (Glory to the Lord), Credo (I believe), Sanctus (Holy, holy) and Agnus Dei (Lamb of God). This is a mass that could be performed as part of a church service, and was approved by the Liturgical Commission of Latin America for this purpose.

But the music works equally well in the ‘secular’ context of a concert performance, because of its folk-inspired, urban popular feel, the vibrant colors of its instruments and the distinctive rhythms Ramírez has employed.

The solemn Kyrie adopts an Andean rhythm, baguala-vidala. The longer Gloria literally taps its toes with the Argentinean carnavalito yaraví dance rhythm. The Credo is almost hypnotic in effect, using the chacarera trunca rhythm from the north of Argentina. The Sanctus draws on the Bolivian variant of the ‘carnaval’ rhythm: cochabambino. The final prayer for peace (Agnus Dei) is in the deeply felt and lyrical ‘style of the pampas’.

To these rhythms Ramírez adds a suite of traditional instruments not normally found in an orchestra! Of particular note is the siku (Bolivian panpipes), the charanga (five-stringed guitar) and the bombo (traditional drum), all three of which you’ll hear in this concert.

Yvonne Frindle © 2014

(Mozart note abridged from a program note by David Garrett © 2003)

PROGRAM

Grieg Peer Gynt: Suite No.1

Nielsen Violin Concerto

Pärt Symphony No.4, Los Angeles

CONDUCTOR

Joaquin Valdepeñas

SOLOIST
Adele Anthony, violin

VENUES

Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus, Christ Episcopal Church, Lakewood Congregational Church, Mentor High School Performing Arts Center

PROGRAM NOTES

Edvard Grieg: Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46

Mention the words Norway and classical music and one name invariably pops to mind: Edvard Grieg. No other Norwegian has come close to achieving the eminence of the composer known outside his homeland essentially for three works (or collections): the Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16; the Holberg Suite, Op. 40; and portions of the incidental music to Henrik Ibsen’s play, Peer Gynt. Grieg wrote nearly 90 minutes of music for the play’s 1876 premiere and later extracted eight sections for the Suite No. 1, Op. 46, and Suite No. 2, Op. 55.

Ibsen’s vast, five-act work initially was controversial, prompting writers, including Hans Christian Andersen, to protest that the verse text wasn’t poetry.

But it quickly became Norway’s most celebrated play, generating productions worldwide that continue to shed light on the sprawling narrative of the hapless Peer’s misadventures from Norway to North Africa. Ibsen tells his story as social satire in scenes juxtaposing realism and surrealism.

Grieg wasn’t particularly interested in the ramifications of Ibsen’s text. He wrote 26 movements, including songs and choral works, that conjure atmospheres and define characters. The complete score would only be published in 1908, a year after Grieg’s death. Eight of the movements were destined for immortality—those in the two suites. Grieg devised them in 1888 and 1891, respectively, arranging the movements out of the order they appear in the play to give each a logical arc.

His captivating blend of tender lyricism and folkloric grandeur can be heard throughout the suites, especially No. 1, which opens CityMusic’s program.

A pastoral scene is set in “Morning Mood,” the prelude to Act 4, with lilting flute and oboe solos leading to full orchestral radiance and tranquility.

Peer has been gone some time when, toward the close of Act 3, he returns home to find his mother nearing her end. “The Death of Åse” is brief, a mere 45 bars for strings, but the feelings are intense, moving from sadness and anguish to resignation.

Peer’s travels in Act 3 take him to Morocco, where he encounters a tribe of Bedouins and becomes entranced by the chieftain’s daughter, who turns the tables on him by stealing his valuables and disappearing. Her act of seduction, “Anitra’s Dance,” is a mazurka for strings and triangle. Grieg achieves sinuous colors by muting the divided violins and alternating bowed and pizzicato passages.

We’re back to Act 2 for the suite’s rousing finale, “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” Peer is intoxicated after meeting three lusty dairymaids and dreams

of a woman in green who turns out to be the troll mountain king’s daughter. She takes him to visit dear old dad and company, who are depicted in the famously menacing march by cellos, basses, and bassoons before the entire orchestra gets in on the delirious act

Carl Nielsen: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 33

What Edvard Grieg is to Norway and Jean Sibelius to Finland, Carl Nielsen is to Denmark. All of these composers are indelibly associated with their respective country’s musical identity. This year, the music world is celebrating the 150th anniversaries of the births of Sibelius and Nielsen.

The current CityMusic program has a fascinating connection between Grieg and Nielsen. In the summer of 1911, Grieg’s widow, Nina, invited Nielsen to the family home in Troldhaugen, where Grieg had composed in a hut on the lake. Nielsen took advantage of the serene atmosphere to start work on a violin concerto, which proved challenging. “It has to be good music and yet always show regard for the development of the solo instrument, putting it in the best possible light,” he wrote. “The piece must have substance and be popular and showy without being superficial. These conflicting elements must and shall meet and form a higher unity.”

The “higher unity” is among the more unconventional elements of the concerto, and it may partly explain why this remarkable work isn’t played nearly as much as its Finnish cousin, the Sibelius Violin Concerto. Nielsen eschewed the traditional three-movement concerto format to create a piece that still raises questions about the score’s structure. It is cast in two movements, each starting with a slow section that gives way to faster activity. Some observers see the first movement’s Praeludium—in keeping with the name—as a prelude to the main body of the movement, which would suggest an overall three-movement design.

Whatever one decides about the score’s architecture, there can be no argument about its individuality and beauty. Nielsen’s distinctive sound world, so evident in his symphonies, pervades the Violin Concerto, both in its colorful harmonic language and penchant for chromatic writing that occasionally blurs tonal centers. The first movement’s Praeludium presents the solo violin as declamatory narrator who shapes fiery and tender lines. There appears to be a momentary homage to Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations before violin and orchestra dig into the vigorous Allegro cavalleresco (literally, cheerful and chivalrous).

The violin develops the material in an extended cadenza.

The second movement opens with winds introducing a haunting theme the violin soon gives more chromatic treatment. Then comes a muscular Rondo that tests the soloist’s virtuosity, but largely in lilting context—“showy without being superficial,” as the composer put it. The orchestra, which mostly has served as graceful and sturdy partner, gets a few moments in the glistening Nielsen sun. Yet the violin remains the center of attention, especially after a few exclamation points from the timpani leads the soloist into an acrobatic cadenza. The Rondo’s bucolic theme returns as violin, in its highest register, and orchestra arrive at the decisive D major chord that brings this cherishable concerto to a close.

Arvo Pärt: Symphony No. 4 (“Los Angeles”)

“Guardian Angels,” the title of this CityMusic Cleveland program, has roots in Arvo Pärt’s Symphony No. 4. The Estonian composer, whose mystical music is the most popular of any composer in the classical realm today, was writing a choral piece based on an ancient Russian Orthodox canon in 2007 when he was approached to create a symphony for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and its music director at the time, Esa-Pekka Salonen. Pärt found the offer enticing for two principal reasons: the canon he was using at the time included a prayer to a guardian angel; and the symphony would have its premiere in Los Angeles, the City of Angels.

The composer hadn’t written a symphony since 1971. In the years following, Pärt converted to the Russian Orthodox faith, studied early music, and developed a style, tintinnabulation, based on chant and the ringing of bells. As he once said, “I work with very few elements — with one voice, with two voices. I build with the most primitive materials — with the triad, with one specific tonality. The three notes of a triad are like bells. And that is why I called it tintinnabulation.” The style permeates the Symphony No. 4, which is scored for string orchestra, harp, timpani, and percussion (including those essential bells).

Pärt began his career writing in neo-classical and serial styles—the latter to the chagrin of the Soviet regime—until he came close to abandoning music altogether. But he lifted himself out of darkness as he explored old music and began cultivating a simpler way of summoning ethereal atmospheres and setting sacred texts. Like many of his works, the Symphony No. 4 became a form of protesting oppressive regimes in general and Vladimir Putin in particular. Pärt dedicated the symphony to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian oil executive who was imprisoned, many say unjustly, for nine years. “With my composition, I would like to reach out my hand, extending it to the prisoner, and in his person to all those imprisoned without rights in Russia,” Pärt declared. (Putin pardoned Khodorkovsky at the end of 2013.)

The three movements of the mournfully eloquent Symphony No. 4 unfold in the composer’s characteristic slow and ruminative style—the soundscapes always shifting in some understated yet deeply expressive way. Otherworldly string textures and subtle percussion and harp effects create an aura of suspense and sadness, amid breathtaking silences, in the first movement, Con Sublimata (With Sublimity). The atmosphere is more intense in the second movement, Affannoso (Labored), which alternates urgent episodes, complete with rumbling basses and eerie pizzicatos, with quietly anguished passages. The finale, Deciso (Decided), extends the solemnity through a bracing march and canons that inch ever upward until most of the instruments fade away, leaving harp, bell, and timpani to signal the parting of Pärt’s guardian angel.

Donald Rosenberg © 2015

PROGRAM
I Will Always Love You Written by Dolly Parton (From Jolene, 1974)

Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You Written by Bob Crewe, Bob Gaudio – Sung by Frankie Valli (1967)

When I Fall In Love Music by Victor Young, Lyrics by Edward Heyman (1952)

Your Song Music by Elton John, Lyrics by Bernie Taupin (1970)

River Deep – Mountain High Ike and Tina Turner (1966) Written by Phil Spector, Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich

I Wish Stevie Wonder (Songs in the Key of Life, 1976)

Believe in You and Me Music by Sandy Lizer & David Wolfert (1983)

Home Charlie Smalls, (1975) (From The Wiz)

The Prayer Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion (1998) Written by David Foster, Carole Bayer Sager, Alberto Testa, & Tony Renis (From These are Special Times, Sogno)

Over The Rainbow Music by Harold Arlen, Lyrics by E.Y. Harburg (1939) (From The Wizard of Oz)

CONDUCTOR

Avner Dorman

SOLOISTS
Heather Headley, Grammy and Tony Award Singer

VENUES
Masonic Auditorium, Super Conference on Homeless Children

PROGRAM NOTES

Avner Dorman: Spices, Perfumes, Toxins!

To savor a world of musical flavors and states of mind, make a beeline to Avner Dorman’s Spices, Perfumes, Toxins!, the percussion concerto that opens CityMusic Cleveland’s program. Just look at all of the instruments — nearly 50 — lined up at the front of the stage for the two soloists to play.

They include marimbas, vibraphone, tambourine, and drums hailing from many cultures. And then listen. The influence of Middle Eastern music can be heard, as can touches of jazz, raga, and rock. The rhythmic aspect of the score is so visceral that you might find your body grooving to the music.

Dorman, music director of CityMusic and an internationally admired composer, wrote Spices, Perfumes, Toxins! in stages. He created the first movement in 2000 for the percussionists Adi Morag and Tomer Yariv, classmates at the Music Academy of Tel Aviv, who called their duo PercaDu. Morag and Yariv persuaded their friend to write the piece, which turned out to be a blend of Middle Eastern and Indian colors for marimbas and drums. PercaDu performed Spices for several years before playing it on a late-night classical-music television show in Tel Aviv. The conductor Zubin Mehta happened to be watching, and he immediately invited Morag and Yariv to audition for him. Mehta was so taken with their playing — and so captivated by Spices, the piece they played at the audition — that he invited them to appear with him and the Israel Philharmonic. For their appearance, Dorman received a commission to turn the work into a full-length concerto. Perfumes and Toxins! joined an expanded Spices to become one of Dorman’s most-played compositions, with more than 80 performances worldwide to date.

Dorman has said the work’s title refers to “three substances that are extremely appealing yet filled with danger,” but he notes that listeners need not discern specific substances being described at any given point. Rather than suggesting a narrative, the title of each movement served as an impetus to generate musical material. Spices abstractly evokes — through a spectrum of percussion colors and rhythms — the idea of something added to food to give it flavor, but that also can become “dangerous” if too much is mixed in. The duality also pervades the slow movement, Perfumes, with its hints of seduction, and the whirlwind Toxins!, a finale of percussion and orchestra flights that summon images of ecstasy and risk. Throughout the work, the percussionists share material and answer one another. There are moments during certain mesmerizing marimba passages when the ear is tricked into hearing more musical lines than the eye may think the soloists are playing.

The concerto had its world premiere in Tel Aviv in 2006, after which numerous orchestras, including the New York and Los Angeles philharmonics, programmed the work. In 2012, Dorman created a reduced version for chamber orchestra using fewer winds, but with the same percussion artillery at the front of the stage, to enable smaller ensembles to perform it. For CityMusic’s concerts, the composer will conduct this version — still highly spiced, perfumed, and intoxicating.

© 2015 Donald Rosenberg