Vallejo Symphony Orchestra’s second concert of the season is going to the dogs.

And the cats, rabbits and birds, too.

VSO is teaming up with the Humane Society for Sunday’s Concert for the Animals, donating a portion of every paid admission to the nonprofit animal adoption agency.

“We’ve been looking for ways to partner with community groups,” symphony publicist Tim Zumwalt said. “We came up with several ideas, and the first one, partnering with the Humane Society. It seemed the most viable.” Last year VSO donated $5 from each ticket of their “Chamber Music Gems” concert to the Red Cross for Typhoon Haiyan relief efforts in the Philippines.

For their partnership with the Humane Society, “We are getting a lot of public response. I’ve been talking to a lot of people who have never come or haven’t been here in many years. This is generating an enthusiasm in the community,” Zumwalt said.

Once the partnership was settled, determining the concert’s playlist was “almost simultaneous,” he said. “It’s animals. We started with the obvious pieces like ‘Peter and the Wolf,’ then we went to Saint-Saens ‘Carnival of the Animals,’ then we added a few more animal-inspired pieces so the theme maintains throughout the concert.”

“I think this is going to be a fun show,” music director and symphony maestro David Ramadanoff said. “The focus is making it geared towards families with children.”

The concert will open with Ottorino Respighi’s La Primavera from Trittico Botticelliana — “a bit of a stretch as far as the theme is concerned,” Ramadanoff conceded, pointing out that “primavera” means spring, and each of the movements is inspired by a Botticelli painting.

“I think the music celebrates being alive. It’s springtime, and you feel even more alive with the freshness that spring brings,” Ramadanoff said.

Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” follows, conducted by associate conductor Pamela Martin.

“Prokofiev had a reputation for a long time of being sort of a bad boy in modern music because he was writing stuff that was so dissonant,” Ramadanoff said.

For the piece, actor Corey Fischer, a friend of Ramadanoff’s, will provide narration.

“He is a wonderful actor, director, writer and also a musician in his own right,” the maestro said of Fischer. “He had not done a project like this with an orchestra before, so it was a wonderful opportunity to collaborate for the two of us.”

Next up, Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” “has been played by so many different instrument combinations, and (is) so familiar,” Ramadanoff said. But VSO will be “playing it in its original form.”

“It is an incredible musical description, particularly through the violins, the clarinet, and the flute at different times to taking the line to show the motion, the buzzing, the sound that the bumblebee makes,” Ramadanoff said. “It’s very fast, very rapid, and a challenge for everybody in the orchestra that plays it. But it’s also a lot of fun.”

The last piece of the night will be Charles-Camille Saint-Saens’ “Carnival of the Animals.”

Saint-Saens had interests in many different fields, Ramadanoff said, such as geology, botany, anthropology and astronomy, and he was also a world traveler, interested in cultures and the animal and plant life of different countries. “In a way this plays a role in this funny piece that he wrote, purely for the amusement of his friends and students,” Ramadanoff said.

Saint-Saens wrote “Carnival of the Animals” while on a rest during a concert tour. “It was for a small ensemble, one string player for each of the string parts, a flute, a clarinet, a percussionist, and two piano soloists,” Ramadanoff said.

“It was an instant hit with his friends and students. Franz Liszt had requested a special performance of it. But he felt that maybe it was too frivolous to be published in that it would work against his reputation as a serious composer. He didn’t allow most of it to be published during his lifetime.”

“Carnival of the Animals” will feature the dueling pianos of two guest pianists, Eric Tran and Nathan Cheung, who call themselves the Happy Dog Duo.

“That was a lucky accident,” Ramadanoff said of securing the talented duo for the concert. “Eric ended up playing piano for me as part of the orchestra in a world-premiere piece that I did with the Master Sinfonia Chamber Orchestra. He didn’t have a car so I would give him rides to rehearsals.

“He mentioned that he had this duo and I said, ‘Have you ever played “Carnival of the Animals?” and he said ‘Oh, countless times.’

“I said, ‘How would you like to do it with the Vallejo Symphony?’ … and it just fell into our laps. It was a very happy accident.”

If You Go
Concert for the Animals will be Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Hogan High School Auditorium, 850 Rosewood Ave., Vallejo. For tickets and information visit vallejosymphony.org.