ORCHESTRA music

This page includes preview scores of all my full orchestra, chamber orchestra, and youth orchestra music. Please inquire for performance rentals of my full and chamber orchestra music here. My youth orchestra music—score and parts (PDFs)—may be purchased below directly and used for multiple performances. I kindly ask that you email me programs of your performances to rustberg@russellsteinberg.com

 FULL ORCHESTRA WORKS

 Cosmic Dust 1
OP. 68

Program Notes

Whether you live in a major city or remote hamlet, at night you probably still look up at the sky in search of stars. We were all child stargazers, and that wonder we first experienced is what I was after in my orchestra piece Cosmic Dust. Nowadays, the Hubble Space Telescope provides images and discoveries that stretch the limits of our imagination. Even when it points at what seems an empty patch of space, it catches the light of over 3,000 galaxies formed at the beginning of the universe! These revelations make the heavens seem even more impossibly beyond human scale and understanding. 

But then I heard Rabbi Harold Schulweis talking about mortality, and he put a whole new perspective on our fascination with astronomy. He said that in thinking of our short life span, we lament that we are but dust (we say “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”). But we must remember, he challenged, dust is not only the stuff of earth, but of stars as well. We ourselves come from stars—we are literally stardust, part of this eternal cosmic pageant. So we look up at night because we are drawn to our own origins. We gaze ultimately at ourselves.

Cosmic Dust is a single movement in four continuous sections:
Magic Sky, Shooting Stars, Interstellar Dust, and Nova.

In Magic Sky, I ask the strings to play harmonics (“star music”). They create high bell-like tones by touching the fingers of their left hand very lightly on the instruments. In Shooting Stars, the strings use another effect called ricochet where they throw the bow against the string, almost like skipping rocks over water. This section also features the timpani in more dramatic music. Interstellar Dust takes its inspiration from those incredibly colorful nebulae revealed by telescopes. You’ll hear strings, woodwinds, and brass, each play different chords crossfading between each other. The calm inner part of this section features a violin solo. The final section—Nova—gathers the material from all the previous “star” music and bursts forth in a joyful final fanfare.   

COSMIC DUST 2

Op. 82

Program Notes

Cosmic Dust 2 is a 14 minute work that explores a little deeper some of the ideas from my first Cosmic Dust—especially the imitative arpeggio accompaniments that create a "blurred gossamer” harmony as well as moments of chamber music within the orchestra. There are even solo opportunities for a string quartet, woodwinds, glockenspiel, brass, plus an extended violin cadenza at the climax of the work. The piece opens and closes with wide-array chords that create a celestial effect.  

Cosmic Dust 2 may be accompanied with a visual slideshow with astronomical images from the Hubble Space Telescope. It was written for the 30th anniversary of the telescope.

Symphony No. 1 "City Strains"
OP. 37

Program Notes

CityStrains  is my musical response to the fast-paced stress and excitement of  city life—our great modern urban adventure, if you will. The clashing of different cultures, fashions, appearances, attitudes, architectures...how does it all hold together?

The piece has three movements (fast-slow-fast) and lasts about 24 minutes. The first movement, "CityPulse", evokes the energy and bustle of the day, the traffic, the crowds, all in constant movement. Juxtaposition marks the essential flow of the music as a sunrise of chordal outbursts suddenly gives way to brass fanfares, which in turn dissolve to a motoric hubbub in the strings. The music continually strains to ascend. At one point there is a  kaleidoscope of popular styles ranging from Mariachi to Rap to Rock, plus several in-between! Stress ultimately gives way to serenity in the coda as the strings intone a chant in a four part round. But then the movement closes with a startling wink of descending energy.

"NightFall," the second movement, is a nocturne of loneliness inspired by the dazzling night sky and city lights atop Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles. The flip side to living around 10 million people is an occasional sense of overwhelming personal isolation. The movement begins with night sounds that feature the woodwinds. Then the music dissolves into a plaintive melody accompanied by two alternating chords and colored by the harp and celesta.

The third movement, "RushHour," is a wild ride through traffic, a veritable tone poem to this bane of our urban existence:

The morning commute  commences with a rousing energetic scramble;  but driving over a hilltop suddenly reveals the dreaded panorama of  gridlock traffic backed up at a signal;  horns, car engines, impatience continue until...Green light! (the stroke of the triangle) and smooth sailing...which lasts but shortly as the familiar stop and go traffic pattern establishes itself; we enter the zone of the "Car Radio Web" (competing car radios blare the pop music kaleidoscope from the first movement )...mounting tempers; a major collision triggers a SIG Alert and other assorted collisions; traffic helicopters and sirens surround the scene; the excitement dies and cars slowly begin to move; a brief coda  ends the symphony in a blur of traffic.

Lights On! A Hanukkah Celebration
OP. 43

Program Notes

Lights On! is a festive Jewish offering for Christmas Holiday concerts. Listeners embark on a musical journey through a traditional prayer melody and eight diverse Hanukkah tunes, each representing one of the eight days of Hanukkah. Some tunes are well known, such as "O Hanukkah O Hanukkah," while others might be discoveries, such as the Sephardic "Ochos Kandelikas." Highlights include frequent counterpoint with various combinations of the the tunes. There is a moment of klezmer music with a clarinet solo as well as a melodramatic violin cadenza. The structure of the piece is a little bit like a spinning dreydel that goes out of control, with a climax where all eight tunes play simultaneously. I add the tempo marking "Prestissimo Mashuguna," which I so hope is original. Lights On! was commissioned by Jed Gaylin and the Bay Atlantic Symphony in New Jersey.

Tears of Kosovo and Missing Violin Tango for solo violin and Orchestra 
(From Stories From My Favorite Planet)
OP. 48B

Program Notes

This transcription of two movements from my Daniel Pearl tribute, Stories From My Favorite Planet, is for narrator, solo violin, and orchestra features two segments from the larger work. The two movements make a nice concert pairing of dark and humorous. The music alone is 8 minutes. The reading of the articles with the music is a total of 15 minutes.

The first piece is a powerful Wall Street Journal story set in Kosovo where Danny tries to discover if any Serb and Albanian friendships still remain amidst the war. The music that follows, “Tears in Kosovo,” is an expressive soliloquy with resonance of Eastern European folk harmonies.

Danny’s article on the rediscovery of a UCLA-owned Stradivarius violin became one of the Wall Street Journal’s most popular stories. The violin had fallen off the roof of a musician’s car 25 years earlier. When rediscovered by a luthier,  the new owner was loathe to return it because she says it’s the only violin that lets her play in tune! Musically, I couldn’t resist setting this movement as a tango, the “Missing Violin Tango.” In between the tango are ridiculous passages of scales “in honor” of the student who didn’t want to give up the Stradivarius!

Stories From My Favorite Planet” was commissioned by the Daniel Pearl Foundation for the second annual worldwide Daniel Pearl Music Day.

HEART OF THE WORLD
FOR SOLO VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA 
OP. 58a

Program Notes

Heart of the World is dedicated to the memory of Raymond Benjamin, husband of Metuka Benjamin, a renowned educator both in Los Angeles with the Stephen S. Wise Temple Schools and in Israel. Ray was a great lover of music and strong supporter of Israel. I remember him as remarkably humble and highly educated. The title of the piece comes from a Hebrew poem by Avraham Ben Yitzhak called “Blessed are they that sow but do not reap”:

Blessed are they who know
their hearts will cry out from the wilderness
and that quiet will blossom from their lips.
Blessed are these
for they will be gathered to the heart of the world...

Heart of the World is about 10 minutes long. The image of a thrown stone creating ripples in a pond became a central idea for me, with its associations of reverberation and disintegration. And in fact, the piece both begins and ends with chords struck in various repetitive patterns to evoke ripples. A simple sad waltz played by the violin becomes the central melody for the piece. The piano develops this melody and turns it upside down in a more impassioned middle section. The violin interrupts several times with soloistic lines reminiscent of Vivaldi. At the climax, the violin soars over a melodramatic version of the waltz until the music ultimately disintegrates back into the ripples with which it began.

DIMINISHED RESISTANCE
OP. 92

Program Notes

Diminished Resistance is a dramatic overture inspired by the struggle to preserve democracy. The title is a pun: both an alarm for fatigue battling a constant stream of disinformation, and a description of the diminished seventh chords that contend against each other throughout the piece. In nearly every measure, Diminished Resistance pits diminished seventh chords against each other. They approach, they recede; they confront, they flee; they fret, they exult; they lament, they battle. It is not an easy thing. At the climax, chaos ensues and the orchestra improvises briefly in disarray. For a brief moment, brass and glistening strings portend a possible ‘sunrise of democracy.’ But then the final coda again enjoins the fray of battle. As we painfully know, the jury is still out…

CIRRUS NIMBUS
OP. 95

Program Notes

Clouds inspired this 9 minute piece. While driving my mom to innumerable doctor appointments, I spent a lot of time looking up at the sky. I felt hope at the radiant and wispy cirrus clouds high above, and felt my moodiness matched in the foreboding drama in the deep textures of the low dark nimbus clouds portending rain and storm.

Cirrus Nimbus has four continuous sections that move between the light and the dark. I divide the strings into many sections to convey shimmering textures and a sense of the dimensionality of the clouds. The heart of the piece is an expressive and intense string lament that ultimately rises to a final section of exultation and joyous fanfares.

Cirrus Nimbus was written in memory of my mother, Sandi Steinberg.

CHAMBER ORCHESTRA WORKS

ARABESQUE FOR Chamber ORCHESTRA
Op. 29b

Program Notes

Two famous piano works with the same title, one by Robert Schumann and the other by Claude Debussy, inspire the arching phrases and ornaments of my Arabesque. Like both of those, mine is gently introspective. Imagine a lullaby under a canopy of stars. Its rocking motion begins in a modal language that gradually becomes more and more chromatic as it spirals ever upwards. This transcription for small orchestra makes manifest more of the colors implicit in the original piano piece.

CANOPY OF PEACE
OP. 77

Program Notes

CANOPY OF PEACE is a five movement work scored for mezzo-soprano, solo violin, harp, and strings, based on texts by Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis. The piece was commissioned by Noreen Green and the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony. Noreen asked me to transcribe three of my songs from my Schulweis cycle Sacred Transitions. I framed those songs with my Aria for a Calmer World and another Schulweis text setting I titled Because You Suffer.

I. Aria for a Calmer World (solo violin, orchestra)

II. Whose Am I (mezzo soprano, orchestra)

III. Touch My Heart (mezzo soprano, orchestra)

IV. Mirror Eyes (mezzo soprano, orchestra)

V. The Meaning of my Existence (mezzo soprano, solo violin, orchestra)

Testimony poured out continually with great emotion in December 2014 during memorial services at Valley Beth Shalom for Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis—an undeniable compassion for people to look beyond their differences and come together in community, the courage to stand up against social injustice, and a strength of character that insisted on dignity for all people, whether it be between divisions of Jewish sects, for equal rights, or speaking out against atrocities like genocide. His impeccability rang in sharp contrast to our current world of clay-footed leaders.

Conductor Noreen Green had asked me earlier to consider composing a suite for voice and strings based on my recent collaboration with Rabbi Schulweis, the song cycle "Sacred Transitions." And there Noreen and I sat as Rabbi Eddie Feinstein began the memorial service with this prayer for peace:

"This we know:
Fear can yield to faith, hope can reignite,
Rage can cease, hatred can be melted...
Merciful One, spread the canopy of your peace over us,
Over all who dwell on earth."

I heard these words and knew that "Canopy of Peace" was the perfect title for this project. The suite has 5 movements. The first movement, "Aria for a Calmer World," is a gentle invocation featuring solo violin. The second, third, and fourth movements are songs from my cycle "Sacred Transitions." "Whose am I?" suggests that our frustrated inner search for identity—Who am I?— is best answered in our search outward for community— Whose am I?—using the refrain "In belonging lies the secret." Similarly, "Touch My Heart" is a mother's song to a child asking how we touch love, suggesting instead that love is not a where (an object) but a when. "Mirror Eyes" is a love song to a spouse ("In your eyes I find myself")  that also speaks to the larger ideas of differences and toleration: "I choose eyes/ Not focused on blemishes alone/ Eyes that do not blink away my crooked nose/ And twisted mouth/ But wink encouragement and hope and love."

The final movement, "The Meaning of My Existence," is a setting of the concluding words of an extraordinary speech Rabbi Schulweis delivered at a Jewish World Watch benefit. Like the previous songs, he used word reversal to dramatically explain our individual responsibility in the world for peace. "The philosopher defined existence... 'I think therefore I am'. The existentialist wrote: I feel therefore I am...But our tradition declared, 'Because you suffer, therefore I am.' "

The music in Canopy of Peace is tonal and warm, not overtly written in any particular Jewish style, but rather it suggests the intimate world of German artsong. While the texts are meant for an entire community, they feel more like a dear friend sitting directly across from you and opening his heart. We are all personally responsible to create this "canopy of peace." In that spirit, this work is dedicated to Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis.

YOUTH ORCHESTRA works

Carnegie Overture
OP. 72

Program Notes

With the tempo marking Exuberant, with sparkling energy, a four note motive—A-C-G-D—blasts off on a four and a half minute journey through dance rhythms, shifting meters, darkness and drama, a percussion cadenza, and flat out joy. Carnegie Overture was specially composed as an energetic opening for the Los Angeles Youth Orchestra’s Carnegie Hall debut. It is scored for double winds, percussion, and a double string orchestra. 

EveStar
OP. 73

Instrumentation: picc, 2fl, 2ob, 2cl, 2bsn, 2hn, 2tpt, 2tbn (optional), timp, perc, strings

Duration: 8 minutes and 30 seconds

World Premiere: February 25, 2013 at Carnegie Hall by Los Angeles Youth Orchestra conducted by Russell Steinberg

Program Notes

A disembodied viola melody ends this quiet fantasy for orchestra. That’s the main thing to know about EveStar—that it concludes with violas.  The piece was written to honor Los Angeles Youth Orchestra Program Director and Viola Coach Eve Cohen who passed away last November, 2012. Eve was simultaneously our gravitational center and guiding star. As her friend Elizabeth Goodman remarked, “Eve was someone who accepted you completely for who you are—and then tried to get you to play viola!”

All the strings in EveStar are muted. From “the heavens,” violins introduce an expressive chorale that melts into a nostalgic melody, perhaps reminiscent of an old opera aria or maybe a Tchaikovsky ballet. This section in turn shifts to a lighter, faster music marked “like hazy sunbeams in a meadow.” These three types of music—the expressive chorale, the sentimental melody, and the meadow music— alternate episodically. Each hold on to the world, but ultimately let go. EveStar ends in a hushed disintegration of violins vibrating even higher than before, and the violas playing the last notes.

The Net of Indra
OP. 62

 Program Notes

On Youth Orchestra Day, the premiere of Russell Steinberg's "The Net of Indra" was performed by nearly 400 musicians in the Los Angeles Youth Orchestra, Pasadena Young Musicians Symphony, Olympia Youth Orchestra, and Verdugo Youth Orchestra at Pasadena City College. The Net of Indra is an Indian creation myth with the inspired idea that truth is revealed in the summation of all of our reflections. The net of Indra is a net of mirrors, each reflecting the other and in so doing creating the universe. This piece is written for any number of orchestra players who may be situated throughout the concert hall. Each of their parts is a mirror that reflects the other. At the premiere, audience members commented how their experience of the piece was unique depending on which musicians were playing nearby!

Sabbath Fantasy No. 1
OP. 40a

Program Notes

A festive 9 minute orchestral tone poem that links together classic Shabbat tunes. Scored for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 Bb clarinets, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, timpani, 3 percussion (perc 1: xylophone, suspended cymbal, tambourine; perc 2 castanets, bells, woodblock, clave; perc 3: traingle, wind chime, finger cymbals, suspended cymbal, snare drum/cymbal), Strings

SABBATH FANTASY 2

OP. 40B

Program Notes

"The Sabbath is a metaphor for paradise and a testimony to God's presence... The task...becomes how to convert time into eternity, how to fill our time with spirit: "Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world h as our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else."

- Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath

Sabbath hymns are a key part of the magic that converts "time into eternity," as Heschel so beautifully wrote. Sabbath II goes a li􀀸le deeper than its predecessor. It too weaves Shabbat melodies that draw on Sephardic and Ashkenazi traditions to create what one of my students called a "melt-ly," where the tunes seem to melt together into a single cohesive piece. But in this fantasy, the solo cello assumes a central position, threading the well-known tune Eliyahu (Elijah) meditatively in and around all the other melodies.

The five soloists in Sabbath Fantasy II are for cello, violin, viola, clarinet, and trumpet. The five soloists should either stand in front of the orchestra, or be seated in front of the string sections near the conductor.

Sabbath Fantasy I and II were premiered on May 7, 2000 by the Stephen Wise Youth Orchestra conducted by the composer. Sabbath Fantasy II is dedicated to Dr. and Mrs. Raymond Borun, key donors of the Stephen Wise Youth Orchestra and Original Founders of the renamed Los Angelas Youth Orchestra. The intermediate level orchestra itself was later renamed the Ruth Borun Concert Orchestra, in memory of Mrs. Raymond Borun. Sabbath Fantasy I and II were conceived as bookends for a single concert. However, they may be programmed separately as well.

Sabbath Fantasy II Melodies

1. Eliyahu Hanavi

2. Yom Ze L'yisrael

3. Ya Ribon

4. Y'did Nefesh

5. L'cha Dodi

6. Shabat Shalom

7. Yigdal 

405: 8 am for Youth Orchestra 
OP. 28

Program Notes

405:8AM for Youth Orchestra captures in just 2 minutes the serenity and glory we experience on our daily commute drives, reflecting the gift the city has given all us Los Angeles commuters with its many-year extended San Diego Freeway 405 project. The piece is readily performable by any youth group with 2 years experience on their instruments. Some fun techniques: strings get to play behind the bridge, brass play using just their mouthpieces, etc.

This performance by the Los Angeles Youth Orchestra includes several original sonic contributions from students!

FANFARE FOR ORCHESTRA
OP. 50

RUBY OVERTURE
Op. 39b

Program Notes

This short festive overture for youth orchestra was originally written for a school chamber ensemble and performed at a dedication ceremony of the Ruby building at Milken Community High School. I later orchestrated Ruby Overture for the Los Angeles Youth Orchestra and programmed it as an effective encore piece during the orchestra's Vienna-Prague Tour in 2015. Ken and Wendy Ruby are also committed donors to the orchestra. This overture now is as much a dedication to their ardent support for the arts as much as the building that instigated our future collaboration.

Alternative Energy for Orchestra
Op. 59B