[1]The work is scored for solo organ and a small orchestra comprising bass clarinet, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, three percussionists, and strings.
Barbara Jepson of The Wall Street Journal described the piece as "generically titled but audacious" and called it "a substantial work that requires all those involved to be quick-change artists."
Although the violins, trumpet and organ supply occasional high notes, most of the work’s orchestral colors are in the burnished lower registers—cellos and double basses, trombones, tuba, bassoon and some skillful writing for the earthy contrabassoon, played with notable musicality by Holly Blake.
It has a serious side, reflected in a hefty supply of dissonance within Rouse's typically expansive harmonic palette, as well as pregnant, chromatically inflected themes in the slow movement.
I favoured the bracing third movement in compound metre, which started with a jagged fugue-like subject in quick notes and, abetted by Jacobs's wizardry, gathered fury to become a fiendish, manic gigue.