The New York City Ballet’s latest novelty is "Schoenberg/Wuorinen Variations," a happily serviceable tribute to the modernist esthetic that is unlikely to be confused with ‘Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet," a work that was choreographed by George Balanchine in 1966 and, incidentally, is receiving a revitalized performance this season. Both ballets nonetheless belong to that category that is a City Ballet specialty: pieces sporting slash marks or hyphens in their titles to signify that one composer has arranged the music of another in the scores. In so doing, the second composer changes the perception of the original musi; the choreographer, in each case, responds to this composer’s gloss upon another. Richard Tanner’s "Schoenberg/Wuorinen Variations," which had its world premiere with the City Ballet in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., on July 24 and its local premiere on Friday night at the New York State Theater, uses Charles Wuorinen’s two-piano arrangement of Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra (Op. 31). In a reverse process, Schoenberg had, in the 1930’s, created an orchestrated version of Brahms’s G minor Piano Quartet. This expansive orchestration led Balanchine into an opulent four-section essay on Neo-Romantic content and neo-classical ballet style with echoes of Austro-Hungarian imperial grandeur. Balanchine, a modernist like Schoenberg, offered a filtered view of the original inspiration. Mr. Wuorinen, a leading contemporary American composer, cannot be labeled a post~modernist. And as his illuminating program note suggests, he is not aiming at a mere piano reduction of an orchestral score. Instead, he sees Schoenberg’s first orchestral essay in his new "method of composing with l2 notes" in 1928 as depending less on "vivid orchestral colors" than on individual notes. "What we lose in color in this version, we gain in clarity," Mr. Wuorinen writes. Mr. Tanner hears the notes and their dissonance, and he certainly responds with clarity if not totally sustained inventiveness. As a company house choreographer, he can always turn out a craftsmanlike effort and while his model was Balanchine’s "leotard ballets" to modern music, he has a voice of his own. Mr. Wuorinen, who has composed three scores for the City Ballet, sees Schoenberg’s orchestral variations as "a monument of modernity," and Mr. Tanner has also responded in the City Ballet’s modern style. As in the past, he does best with his duets. There is a striking rag-doll duo, danced mesmerizingly by Miranda Weese and Jock Soto. But the major musical theme is set out by Monique Meunier and Peter Hansen. All are part of an ensemble that wears Holly Hynes’s leotards with a folk motif on their belts. Cameron Grant and Richard Moredock, the fine pianists at stage right, seem to drop music into space as the first group, in Mark Stanley’s effective chiaroscuro lighting, opens the work with a cluster. Expanding into circles and then into six pairs, the dancers pull out from each other with a tinge of tension. The theme has Mr. Hansen partnering Ms. Meunier, whose admirable forward style projects every gesture. (She covers her eyes at one point.) The first variation for three couples is brief with fast turns complementing the music’s typical dissonance. Philip Neal and Diana White, another pair of principals, offer a mildly convoluted duet. The third variation introduces Mr. Soto., Alexander Ritter, who learned his role on Friday afternoon, after Edward Liang was injured, surrounds Mr. Soto along with James Fayette, Alexandre Iziliaev and Mr. Hansen. In their duet (fourth variation) Ms. Weese leaps in as three of the men exit. She prances up to Mr. Soto as the music winds down. There is a feeling of push and pull between the two dancers, who end up arms entangled, back to back. Jenny Blascovich, Jessy Hendrickson and Deanna McBrearty and the corps men join the couple. Rivulets of sound set off the superb clarity of the dancing by all. Ms. Weese arches over Mr. Soto’s thigh, and the pose is echoed after a blackout by Ms. White and Mr. Neal (variation six) in a broken-line duet. Ms. Meunier and Mr. Hansen have a major duet that plays on arms enclosing a partner or just air.Two solos contrast with Ms. Meunier’s breadth of style with Ms. Weese’s piquancy until Ms. White leads in a vivid finale.