If you go

What: The Boulder Philharmonic opens its season with pianist Inon Barnatan

When: 7 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 8 (Note new date, time)

Where: Macky Auditorium, University of Colorado campus

Tickets: $13-$70

Info: 303-449-1343 (ext. 2) or boulderphil.org

Etc.: Pre-concert talk with Kevin Shuck and Jeffrey Nytch at 6 p.m., Macky Room 102. For details about other related events, including the Phil's collaboration with the City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks, visit the orchestra's website

When the Boulder Philharmonic discussed commissioning a new composition to open its 2014-15 season, music director Michael Butterman didn't know the form the work would eventually take.

The Phil decided to structure its season around the 125th anniversary of the Geological Society of America, so Butterman "knew it was going to be a pictorial work dealing with the geology of the West."

What Butterman and the Phil received was a full, four-movement symphony structured in a nearly traditional sense -- the orchestra's largest commission in Butterman's tenure.

Composer and University of Colorado faculty member Jeffrey Nytch holds degrees in music and geology, making him the ideal choice for the commission. He said he and Butterman had discussed the size of the piece and agreed on the parameters.

"We talked about a 25-minute piece, and it ended up being a little over 30 minutes," Nytch said. "I always knew I was going to call it a symphony, but I didn't know the structure yet.

"I looked at the geologic episodes that I wanted to capture, and then all of those events naturally fell into that traditional symphonic form. That's the way it evolved."

Symphony No. 1 ("Formations") will be heard Sunday, Sept. 8, at Macky Auditorium. The date was moved from Saturday because of a conflict with a University of Colorado football game. The concert begins earlier than usual, at 7 p.m.

Nytch briefly described the four movements:

"The first movement, called 'Orogenies,' lays the foundation, depicting the Precambrian geology that started forming the continental crust. It also lays the musical foundation, introducing the main themes and placing three climaxes to depict three major mountain-building events. It ends with a long, quiet coda that reflects the long hiatus in geologic activity in this area after these events.

"The second movement is called 'Rush!' It is about the gold and silver rushes in the area -- a short movement with a lot of activity, including a fiddle tune and percussionists actually rubbing stones onto pans to depict the sound of miners panning for gold. It's like the scherzo in a traditional symphony.

"The third movement, called 'Requiems,' is about the fossil fuels that are such a history of our economic activity."

Nytch said he was not making a political statement with the movement and that the focus was on the once-living things that fuel our modern lifestyle.

"The simplicity and poignancy of that idea was worth making into the symphony's slow movement," Nytch said.

The last movement, "Majesties," depicts the formation of the modern Rocky Mountains, using brass chorales and explosive, rushing music.

Nytch is self-publishing the score, including a detailed composer's analysis, and is actively working to get other orchestras in Colorado and the West to perform it after the Phil premiere.

Pianist Inon Barnatan is playing for the first time with the Boulder Philharmonic.
Pianist Inon Barnatan is playing for the first time with the Boulder Philharmonic. (Courtesy photo)

In a sort of musical "surf and turf," Butterman opens the concert with the Four Sea Interludes from Benjamin Britten's great opera "Peter Grimes." Butterman said they are incredibly effective pieces outside the opera's context. Indeed, they have long had a concert life of their own.

"They are a challenge and not a typical concert opener," Butterman said. "But it's a nice pairing with Jeff's 'Formations.' We will have four seascapes and four landscapes."

After intermission, the concert will leave the nature theme and take on the typical function of a premiere. One of the largest warhorses of the concerto literature, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, will be played by Inon Barnatan, an Israeli-born pianist currently living in New York.

Barnatan will make his first appearance with the Phil, but he has played in Colorado, having just finished his summer festival season in Aspen. The winner of a 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Barnatan is known for his focus on solo recitals and chamber music, as well as concerto performances with orchestras.

"It's hard to have a good concerto performance without the experience of chamber music, of actively listening and working with other people," Barnatan said. "It's important to me to keep doing that even now that I've started playing with major orchestras across the country."

Barnatan said the Tchaikovsky concerto truly allows a pianist to be a pianist while still giving much focus to the orchestra.

"The virtuosic, bravura elements have a largeness about them that is immensely satisfying to play," Barnatan said.

He and Butterman said the concerto is a work whose outward popularity belies the number of actual performances.

"The BPO has not performed it in well over a decade," Butterman said. "It's a classic opening night work."

Barnatan added that it was not one of the first concertos he learned precisely because of its ubiquity.

"When I learned it, I realized why so many people want to hear it," he said. "It has a sense of grace, as well as power, and that is lacking in some performances."

Barnatan said placing the concerto at the end of the concert helps emphasize its symphonic nature rather than placing all the focus on the soloist.