Amidst the constant piano concerto cycles and the steady stream of hotshot violinists who headline Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra concerts, there’s a concert that stands out like a flamingo among doves.

This weekend, Craig Knox, the PSO’s principal tuba player, will give the world premiere performance of Philadelphia-based composer Jennifer Higdon’s Tuba Concerto. Robert Spano, music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, will conduct the performances at Heinz Hall, Downtown.

“The first movement is very fast and exciting; I think listeners may be a little surprised to hear the tuba moving with such agility,” Mr. Knox, a Mt. Lebanon resident, said. “When I was a student there was one concerto, the Vaughn-Williams, and we were lucky to have that,” he said. “There’re a handful of others now, but it’s a rarity for sure.”

The tuba was the last instrument to be added to the standard instrumentation of the orchestra in the early 1800s, and its traditional role in an orchestra is as the bass role in the brass choir and to balance the higher-pitched, more brilliant sounds of the trumpet, trombones and French horns. 

It’s not an instrument typically associated with words like “virtuosity” or “agility.”

“It took a long time for the players to catch up and reach the level of virtuosity that you have in other instruments,” he said. 

Mr. Knox, originally from Connecticut, attended the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he met composition student Jennifer Higdon, now a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer whose works are performed by major orchestras around the world.

“This concerto is a very complex calculus,” Ms. Higdon said. “It’s important for the orchestra to be thin, to clear the octave where the tuba is playing. I didn’t want other brass instruments playing at the same time as the tuba, and there have to be enough breaks to breathe and rest the embouchure. Basically, playing the tuba is like driving a big car.”

Because high pitches carry more easily and sound louder than low pitches, balancing the orchestra’s sound with the tuba sound was the trickiest part of writing the piece, Ms. Higdon said. 

“The first movement trades lines between soloist and the orchestra,” Mr. Knox said. “The second movement is the heart of the piece, a long, lyrical, beautiful movement. The third movement is an adamant scherzo. It’s very rhythmical and pulsing.”

The concerto lasts approximately 18 minutes. The PSO’s will be the world premiere performance, but the concerto will be performed again in April by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, which co-commissioned Ms. Higdon alongside the PSO and the Curtis Institute.

“She’s set us up to be successful with balance,” said Mr. Spano, the conductor, who once taught Ms. Higdon at Bowling Green University in Ohio. “The things that leap out to me in Jennifer’s writing are extraordinary color, she’s masterful, her orchestration is so vivid, and she creates incredible textures.”

Mr. Spano has conducted the world premieres of several of Ms. Higdon’s works, and he recommends listening to “Blue Cathedral,” “City Scape” and “On a Wire” as an introduction to her music, which he describes as tuneful and approachable.

“As we get more and more great tubists, we’re more likely to see great literature,” Mr. Spano said.

This year, there are several other new concerto commissions that feature the tuba or other low brass instruments, including another work by Ms. Higdon (Concerto for Low Brass) and a concerto for bass tuba by Chicago-based composer Jim Stephenson.

Rounding out the weekend’s program are Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique” and Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.”

Jeremy Reynolds: jreynolds@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1634; twitter: @Reynolds_PG. Mr. Reynolds' work at the Post-Gazette is supported in part by a grant from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Getty Foundation and the Rubin Institute.

First Published: March 14, 2018, 10:15 a.m.