Saturday night's IRIS Orchestra concert was a rich mix, weighted toward the traditional but with the brightest spot a premiere performance of Jonathan Leshnoff's "Rush."

Leshnoff is a gifted, young composer who has debuted works twice before at IRIS. The orchestra is a superb partner for Leshnoff's thoughtful and accessible works and a Naxos CD of IRIS performing these orchestral pieces is scheduled to be released soon.

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"Rush," as the name implies, bursts with adrenaline and emotion. Its beauty comes from all directions and not all of it frenetic. There are deliciously quiet moments that add to the richness and provide contrast to the overall energy. The composer continues his string of smart, lyrical pieces that never fail to engage.

Maestro Michael Stern presented two other works at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre that were traditional standards of elegance and beauty.

Guest performer Augustin Hadelich brought off Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto with considerable grace and a nice sense of its rhythms. His approach was light, a touch too light in fact. Hadelich's devotion to technical excellence is commendable, but while the love was there, the undercurrent of passion was barely present -- so subdued sometimes that the orchestra occasionally overwhelmed his performance.

His encore -- Paganini's Caprice No. 9 -- was more like it, perhaps because it was an apt piece for Hadelich to display his wizardry with the details.

The evening's opening number was Brahms' Serenade No. 1, a gorgeous composition, gorgeously performed. The orchestra nailed it, from soaring horns to elegant pianissimos to the rousing Rondo.