By DANIEL J. WAKIN

A tall, trim man in chinos and a green checked shirt strode quickly past broken car carcasses, Dumpsters and chunks of unidentified metal. In his hand were mallets, and in his eye was a gleam for the right pieces of junk to transform into concert-worthy sounds. He stopped at a small pile of gas tanks, and unleashed a virtuoso solo performance of drumming.

The man, Christopher Lamb, is the principal percussionist of the New York Philharmonic, and on this hot day late last month he joined colleagues from the orchestra and the composer Magnus Lindberg at a junkyard in a search for pieces of metal to play at performances of Mr. Lindberg’s “Kraft.” The work is a giant complicated work for orchestra, amplified solo instruments and percussion ? plenty of percussion. The soloists, including a cellist, a clarinetist and a pianist, are also drafted into playing the percussion instruments, many spread around the hall. Mr. Lindberg requests that orchestra members go to a junkyard in the area of the performance and pick out found instruments.

“It’s part of the tradition of the work,” he said . “It has to have a local sound.” The piece, completed in 1985, has had two dozen performances. Its performers and Mr. Lindberg have visited scrap heaps in places like the Waterloo area of London; St.-Denis, outside Paris; and Porto in Portugal.

“I’ve always been amazed at the number of performances it’s had, given the complexity,” Mr. Lindberg said. Mr. Lindberg, a Finn and the composer in residence at the Philharmonic, said his idea was to inject a layer of mostly dry, metallic sounds into the battery of standard percussion instruments, which have a greater resonance. “This is just to add a spice,” he said, “a strong chili spice, though.”

Mr. Lindberg said that in writing “Kraft” he was inspired by the composers Edgard Varese and Iannis Xenakis; by industrial rock music he heard while living in Berlin; and by the sounds of the city: traffic, demolition and construction.

The use of found percussion instruments is not new. It has a healthy 20thcentury tradition, in the works of Lou Harrison, Henry Cowell and others. Recently a composer in Beacon, New York, Joseph Bertolozzi, created a work consisting of percussive sounds made on a Hudson River bridge.

The sound engineer for the “Kraft” performance, Lou Mannarino, steered the orchestra to the scrap yard, which was loosely organized. Here was a row of disembodied car doors; there, a line of automobiles without front ends . Here was a heap of tires; there, a spread of wheel suspensions.

Mr. Lamb was all business, moving rapidly from heap to heap. Mr. Mannarino held up a spring coil. Mr. Lamb ran his mallet over it, bringing out a melodious clang. “I need four,” he said.

Wielding a rusted bolt, Mr. Lindberg whacked a chunk of metal, which responded dully. “This is a good sound,” he said. The musicians also picked out large cylindrical tanks, about 1.5 meters tall, with valves at the top, to be cut down to different sizes for different pitches.

“I want them for the future,” Mr. Lamb said. After about an hour, the musicians took their places in the cars. An autoparts customer pulled up and asked what was going on. Told that the occupants were musicians, he asked, “What are we singing?” They are from the New York Philharmonic, he was informed. “Oh, great,” he said, and walked away, briskly and without another word.