Russian composer’s concerto to feature Mozart in fresh way

Classical-music lovers are likely to be familiar with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Concerto for Flute, Harp and Orchestra” and “Andante for Flute and Orchestra.”

After listening to Lera Auerbach’s “Concerto for Violin, Piano and Orchestra,” however, fans will never hear the Mozart works in the same way again.

The concerto combines both pieces by Mozart with original material by Auerbach, an accomplished composer and pianist.

“My wish was to completely blend these two works,” she said. “Mozart material is recognized throughout, but it’s not the Mozart that they know.”

The ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, through its ongoing Composer/Performer Project, commissioned the piece and will premiere it this weekend in the Southern Theatre. (The concert also will include “Roses From the South” by Johann Strauss II and “Symphony No. 10” by Franz Schubert.)

Auerbach will perform the piano solo. Although the 43-year-old native of Chelyabinsk, Russia, is accustomed to playing music she has composed, participating in a premiere is “extra stressful,” she said.

“I love performing my music but usually not necessarily the world premieres,” Auerbach said. “It becomes really like a triple challenge for me because not only am I functioning as a performer but I have to, in a way, really focus on everything else and everyone else as a composer, in case I want to revise something.”

Concertmaster Katherine McLin, who will be featured on solo violin, sees benefits in Auerbach’s presence.

“I feel this any time I play a premiere: There’s such a responsibility to really understand the work, understand the composer’s intent and be effective in communicating that,” McLin said. “When you’re working with the composer, you are going to know that piece better than any other person after you who works on it.”

ProMusica’s Composer/ Performer Project, established in 2014, presents composers who double as soloists. Previous participants are Auerbach, pianist Huw Watkins and cellist Joshua Roman.

“Unfortunately for me as conductor, it gives them obviously a little bit more power,” Music Director David Danzmayr said with a laugh. “They can say, ‘I want to do this,’ and I can hardly argue back if they say, ‘Well, I’m the composer, so I know how it should be done.’ ”

ProMusica Executive Director Janet Chen said the contemporary composerperformer recalls an earlier era in classical music.

“We forget that a lot of the great works that we hear today, like a Mozart piano concerto, a Beethoven piano concerto — back in the day, the composers actually premiered the works that they wrote,” Chen said.

Auberbach, in preparing her “Concerto for Violin, Piano and Orchestra,” initially intended to produce a transcription of Mozart’s “Concerto for Flute, Harp and Orchestra”; The flute and harp parts would become violin and piano parts.

“I kept on thinking about ... ‘Andante for Flute and Orchestra,’ which is a composition that I believe is very much connected to that concerto,” Auerbach said. “He wrote them pretty much one after another.”

The composer decided to merge the pieces, but the final result is as much Auerbach’s as it is Mozart’s.

“Her thumbprint really is all over it,” McLin said. “Sometimes it transforms the music, and sometimes it just enhances it.”