The Orchestra of Sandy opens its new season Tuesday in Good Shepherd Lutheran Church with a concert called "How Composers Paint With Music" and which will include Antonin Dvorak's popular Symphony No. 9 ("From the New World").

"This will be our first performance of the complete work since I've been music director," said Joel Rosenberg, who is beginning his 15th season with the Sandy-based ensemble.

"Contrary to what's been said about it, Dvorak didn't use any spiritual melodies in this work. They are all original themes that capture the feeling of spirituals and folk songs."

The Ninth, together with the "American" Quartet, op. 96, were written in large part in Iowa, where Dvorak spent several summers visiting a Czech community. "The symphony really represents the composer longing for his home country."

Also on the program will be Georges Bizet's youthful Symphony in C.

Bizet, who is best remembered today for the opera "Carmen," wrote his symphony at 17.

"He wrote it in a month as an exam piece for the Paris Conservatory," Rosenberg said. It was never performed in the composer's lifetime. It wasn't until nearly 80 years later that the score was rediscovered, and the symphony was premiered in Switzerland in 1935 by Felix Weingartner.

"It's the work of a young student with a lot of potential," Rosenberg said. "It's classical in the style of Mozart, and it's really a wonderful work for its melodic freshness."

The concert will open with Camille Saint-Sa?s' "Danse Macabre." "It was originally a song that Saint-Sa?s later reworked for full orchestra, with the vocal line played by the violins."

Saint-Sa?s was a skillful orchestrator, and this piece shows in great detail "how a composer paints a picture in music," Rosenberg said. "We'll first illustrate the various sections of the piece and what the different instruments represent before playing the whole thing through."

Like Bizet, who entered the Paris Conservatory when he was 9, Saint-Sa?s was also a musical prodigy. "There is a story about him when he was 10," Rosenberg said. "He had just finished accompanying at a recital. He turned to the audience and said, 'I can play any movement from Beethoven's 32 sonatas. Which one do you want to hear?' "

IF YOU GO …

What: Orchestra of Sandy, Joel Rosenberg, conductor

Where: Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 8600 South and 700 East

When: Oct. 6, 8 p.m.

How much: $10 general admission, $8 students

Web: oc-sc.org

Also: Oct. 16, 7:30 p.m., Assembly Hall on Temple Square, free (abbreviated program)

Also: Oct. 19, 8 p.m., Eccles Center for the Performing Arts, 1750 Kearns Blvd., Park City, free but donations accepted

e-mail: ereichel@desnews.com