A bunch of musicians of the SF Symphony fancy themselves as composers. Violinist Sarn Oliver, bassoonist Stephen Paulson, trumpeter Mark Inouye, even MTT have penned original classical, jazz or ballet music. But assistant concertmaster Mark Volkert has had his music actually performed by his orchestra. Not once as a favor for a long time employee, the way seniors start the final home game in NCAA basketball. But multiple times, and for massive pieces, including a symphony in 1986, a SFS commission (Solus) in 1995, or Wednesday night's Pandora, a twenty-minute piece for string orchestra.

Volkert has been a violinist with the orchestra for forty years - happy workaversary! - so he knows the strings in and out, and Pandora pretty much gives a tour of what they can do: in terms of bowing techniques, or in how to pair the instruments together. It sounds a bit didactic, like a young man's guide to the string orchestra. And Volkert is volunteering in the program notes to teach us how to compose. "I'll show you how to do it," says he, so there is an educator part in him. But he does weave the different set pieces - here a bass duet, here a cello quartet, here a brief-yet-brutal violin cadenza, here a principal set against the backdrop of his section-, into a cogent piece with its own language. Volkert is not a maverick, but he has a style of his own. For some reason, the insistence of the evils coming out of the box reminded us of Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice, even though the harmonies have little in common; hope is represented (or not?) by a fugue of cellos in an almost peaceful interlude in the middle of a harsher, edgier harmonic language full of multiple string textures and colors. We liked it, so maybe we should try to locate a recording of Volkert's Fanfare for Fremont..