Composed in Berlin between 2 March and 2 July 2008 and revised in 2011-2012, the concerto is about half an hour in duration, and divides into a slow and a quick movement, in each of which the five musical races combine in diverse ways: The opening "Passacaglia à la sarabande" alternates three statements of a “V-I-L-N-I-U-S” motto (A-A-E-G-A-G-Eb) with three presentations of the Sarabande from J. S. Bach’s Fifth Suite for unaccompanied ‘cello (BWV 1011), each incorporating some figurative or abstract representation of a national element: sheng-type chords, quotations of zither music, and poetic fragments from mediaeval China; the rhythms and harmonies of Brazilian indigenous and popular music; the dissonant polyphony, nonsense syllables, and wide vocal glissandi of the Lithuanian sutartines; and in the optional soprano solo at the movement’s core, some Spanish lines from the Miguel de Cervantes novel Don Quixote.
As in the Bach, the fugal ritornelli are interspersed with elaborate cadenzas for the instrumental soloists, in one place in the form of the actual tracing on the guitar and ‘cello fingerboards of the Chinese brushstrokes for the ideographs for ‘broken string’.
On the other hand, the Afro-Brazilian elements come into their own as a candomblé ceremony in miniature, the ethnomusicologically documented drumming, cowbell, and clapping effects all mimicked by the string orchestra and solo guitar without any actual percussion.
The concerto ends with the dense Baroque counterpoint of solo guitar and ‘cello unwinding into silence like a rundown motor, by means of well-coordinated coups de grâce administered to the soloists’ tuning pegs by three players from the orchestra.
Critical reception was divided, one review stating baldly, "Musik ist es nicht",[4] but another was more enthusiastic: Jeffrey Ching – born in 1965 in the [former] Spanish-American colony of the Philippines, the son of Chinese Buddhist parents – presents himself in his musical work as a wanderer between cultures.