Classical picks for the week: Phila. All City Orchestra; the Russian National orchestra visits

The Promise of Music

. Philadelphia's long-standing All City Orchestra program has an improvisatory feeling at the moment, as leaders try out new programs and try on new partners. The high school ensemble, a distillation of city talent formed through auditions, now has the Philadelphia Orchestra as its "lead artistic partner," and for the group's Friday concert, Philadelphia Orchestra music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will stop by to lead part of the program. The concert includes works for three ensembles alone - All City Orchestra, band, and choir. Then Nézet-Séguin leads all three together in the finale: the premiere of

Promise of a City

by Curtis Institute of Music graduate John B Hedges. The piece draws on

Songs for the People

by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, the African American author, orator and abolitionist:

Our world, so worn and weary,

Needs music, pure and strong,

To hush the jangle and discords

Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.

Music to soothe all its sorrow,

Till war and crime shall cease;

And the hearts of men grown tender

Girdle the world with peace.

The Tuesday concert in Verizon Hall, Broad and Spruce Streets, starts at 7:30. Tickets are free, but reservations are strongly suggested. www.philorch.org.

- Peter Dobrin

Tale of two Grimauds. Hélène Grimaud is a pianist and a champion of nature and conservation. The two Grimauds come together in a collaboration titled Water with film composer/solo artist Nitin Sawhney. Alas, the title should have been Oil and Water. Sawhney offers seven interludes of electronic and acoustic sound around the theme of water - in counterpart to Grimaud's performances of Ravel's Jeux d'eau, Janácek's In the Mists, and Takemitsu's Rain Tree Sketch II (among others). The Grimaud portions show her at her best, and, in future hearings, I'll be skipping Sawhney, but that's just me. - Daniel Patrick Stearns