While Daniel Asia was writing his Scherzo Sonata in 1987, he began to realize that this virtuosic, highly pianistic music had orchestral implications as well; that same year he transformed five of the sonata's movements into his Symphony No. 1, simplifying some of the original score's structure along the way. The resulting sectional arch form is reminiscent of Bartók, in form if not in content. The symphony was initially commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra; the Seattle Symphony soon became a co-commissioner and premiered the work through the efforts of its composer-in-residence (and Asia's former teacher), Stephen Albert.

The Symphony No. 1 inhabits the unsettled, lyrically dissonant sound world characteristic of Anton Webern and Alban Berg. However, Asia's thematic elements are immediately coherent to the ear, even in more rhapsodic, improvisatory passages. The most prominent of these is a burbling, questioning motif that recurs throughout the first movement, as well as in the last. Despite the overall lack of tonal sonorities, the symphony itself is anchored, both at beginning and end, firmly on the note D, which serves as a tether for the inner movements' adventurous chromaticism.

The symphony's arch structure moves inward from both ends with a pair of scherzos—somewhat fierce movements that share a pair of short, scurrying theme groups. A figure that scampers up through the orchestra in the second movement is echoed in the fourth by one that ascends more lithely. At the symphony's center, serving as a sort of large trio section between the scherzos, is a twittering allegretto—the score's least tonally centered music.

The most striking element of Asia's work is its wash of tone colors. Asia achieves this not merely with the help of a lavishly-stocked percussion section and triple woodwinds and brass, but by carefully deploying small contingents of players in unusual combinations.





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