Scott Cantrell

With a brand-new percussion concerto, a flashy sendup of fandangos and Elgar's Enigma Variations, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra can't be accused of boring programming this week.

Co-commissioned by the DSO and several other orchestras, American composer John Corigliano's Conjurer got its Dallas premiere Thursday at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.

Thirty-five minutes long, in three movements more or less traditionally fast-slow-fast, it's an imaginative approach to a medium too often overloaded with noise, and gimmicky and visual hyperactivity. Each movement features a separate group of instruments, first heard in introductory cadenzas. The orchestra is reduced to strings only.

"Wood" begins with rhythmic clicks and clatters, then gradually introduces pitches on marimba and xylophone. "Metal" has booms of tam-tams and crashes of cymbals, but also sustained pitches from bowed vibraphone bars. "Skin" makes much of a variable-pitch "talking drum," but advances to fireworks for timpani.

The strings dither busily and make scratchy sounds by playing near the bridge and striking with the wood of bows. But in the middle movement, cellos sing a lyric song through sweet hazes of upper strings. A bottom-up surging theme in the finale recalls a motto theme in Mr. Corigliano's music for the movie The Red Violin.

Dame Evelyn Glennie, for whom the piece was written, gave a virtuoso performance, but her loudest playing obliterated the strings. The strings seemed capably coordinated by guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero.

In this company, Roberto Sierra's Fandangos overdid the razzle-dazzle. In the Elgar Mr. Guerrero largely – and wisely – avoided both stiff upper lip and latter-day sentimentality. He let the brass rip, as Elgar himself did in his 1926 recording, but in the "Romanza," clarinetist Gregory Raden gave new meaning to the word pianissimo. It wasn't the subtlest performance, but it was eager and affectionate.

PLAN YOUR LIFE Repeats at 7:30 tonight (minus Sierra), 8 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora. $17 to $108. 214-692-0203, www.dallassymphony.com.

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