‘Sleeping Beauty'

Presented by: Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

When: 8 p.m. Feb. 10 and 2:30 p.m. Feb. 12

Admission: $20-$94

Where: Heinz Hall, Pittsburgh

Details: 412-392-4900 or pittsburghsymphony.org/beauty

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Updated 19 minutes ago

“Sleeping Beauty” is the headliner of weekend concerts by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, but percussionist Colin Currie will be the star.

In a percussion concerto, he will play about 40 instruments, ranging from marimba and gongs to a variety of cymbals, drums and woodblocks.

James MacMillan's “Veni, Veni Emmanuel,” a work rooted in a 15th century religious song, will be at the center of concerts Feb. 10 and 12 at Heinz Hall, Pittsburgh.

“It is THE classic percussion concerto and earns its stripes and adulation with its energetic challenges to all performing,” Currie says from Scotland.

The concerto from 1994 is distinctly different from the rest of the program: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's “Sleeping Beauty,” a well-known ballet suite, and Sergei Prokofiev's brisk “Classical” symphony, the Russian's 20th century homage to Franz Josef Haydn.

Manfred Honeck, music director of the orchestra, says he thinks Pittsburgh listeners will welcome this newer work because the audience is “curious” and eager to hear what “new composers have to say.”

Composer MacMillan “has put together a percussion concerto that also has a spiritual nature,” Honeck says. “It is a work that will challenge the audience, and I think people must remember that in the Romantic period nearly every concert had a new composition that would challenge them.”

A Scot like Currie, MacMillan, 57, is the orchestra's composer of the year and will deliver talks about the work before both concerts.

Because he is composer of the year, some of his works also will be featured later in the season. His Symphony No. 4 was to have been played in October but was delayed because of the musicians' strike until a subscriber appreciation concert in January.

“Veni, Veni Emmanuel” has been performed more than 500 times. It is one of MacMillan's most in-demand works because of the way it combines the work of the percussionist with thematic demands to the orchestra, Honeck says.

He performed the MacMillan work with Currie in Copenhagen and says he was impressed by the “precision” of the percussionist — and the composition.

Currie says he has performed the work 150 times in the past 20 years and finds it “profoundly emotional” in its orchestral work as well as a challenge for the soloist.

The work requires some energy to go along with musical talent as the soloist is constantly on the move. At the end, he retires to the back of the stage to propel the orchestra on tubular bells to the finale.

Honeck looks at this work as being representative in many ways of MacMillan's work. While it is based on an old plainchant hymn, it is quite modern and even sometimes abstract in its form, he says.

It is not unusual for the composer to combine spiritual themes or elements in his work, he says, mentioning works such as his “Seven Last Words from the Cross” and “Magnificat.”

Currie believes this “Veni, Veni Emmanuel” is part of the “percussion explosion” that has led to many solo works being written for those instruments by contemporary composers.

“I think there are as many percussion works as there are for wind and brass instruments,” he says.

Bob Karlovits is a Tribune-Review contributing writer.

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