The French composer Étienne Perruchon will be remembered as the mouthpiece of a different country, Dogora—an imaginary nation in central Europe that he first conceived for a collaborative theater work in 1996. He went on to write a whole landscape of music in a range of formats to communicate the songs, dances and language of the made-up Dogorian people. In 2005 he arranged five of his dance tunes for the combination of cello and timpani (plus temple blocks), dedicating the score to his son, the timpani player for the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. Part of the charm of this Dogorian world is how it skates on the edge of plausibility, with resemblances to Bulgaria’s dizzying polyrhythms and Hungarian folk modes that conflict with typical major and minor scales, as heard in the first and last selections. In the mournful middle movement, a singing cello melody and throbbing timpani accompaniment show how these two instruments of the concert hall can convey an earthy, intimate sound that really does seem like it could have been heard in a faraway village.