The first of four programs celebrating the 250thanniversary of Beethoven’s birth, this concert features Beethoven’s rhythmically pulsating Symphony No. 7, which Beethoven considered one of his best and Richard Wagner dubbed “The Apotheosis of the Dance.” Israeli-born composer Avner Dorman’s percussion concerto“Spices, Perfumes, Toxins!”is a multicultural tapestry of 21stcentury rhythms utilizing over 20 instruments, performed by members of Knoxville's ownNief-Norf.Nief-Norf is a multi-tiered contemporary music ensemble devoted to the performance, scholarship, and commissioning of adventurous musical works. With percussionists at its nucleus, the ensemble seeks opportunities to challenge and expand their ideas about what contemporary classical music is and can be in the 21stCentury. Founders Andrew Bliss and Kerry O’Brien took the ensemble's name from a descriptor of strange sounds: some say "bleep-blop," they prefer "nief-norf." A program with this much musical fire would not be complete without Beethoven’s Overture toPrometheus, the mythological hero who gave fire to humankind.