Tuesday, March 3, 2026  •  7:30 p.m.

Weigel Auditorium
Columbus, OH

Symphony Orchestra Concerto Concert

Conductor
Miriam Burns

Graduate Associate Conductor
Raúl Delgado Navarro, master's student in Orchestral Conducting

Composer-in-Residence
Quinn Jensen

Soloists
Derin Ertin, piano
Martin Fihe, violin
Haydn Veith, marimba
Jonathan Mitchell, flute
Cooper Greenlees, saxophone

All program notes written by students of the European Musical Traditions course, led by Prof. Katie Graber. 
 

Program

Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 26

i. Andante — Allegro

Sergei Prokofiev

Derin Ertin, piano

Derin Ertin is a fourth-year student double majoring in music and Electrical Engineering. He currently studies piano with Professor Steven Glaser and previously with Dr. Frank Chiou. In high school, he participated in Chamber Music Connection, where he discovered a passion for chamber music and competed in various competitions. Derin is a former competitive figure skater, and skating remains a hobby he continues to enjoy. After graduating, he plans to pursue a PhD in Electrical Engineering.

Sergei Prokofiev was a Russian composer and pianist well known for his ballets, operas and piano works. Born in 1891, he gained early recognition for his bold musical voice and virtuosic piano skills. Although he first lived in Russia, he left following the Russian Revolution to avoid political restrictions on his music and thus pursue greater artistic freedom. He embarked on an international career, traveling and working in countries such as the United States, Germany and France. During this time, his style blended sharp modern energy with classical influences, particularly those of Haydn and Mozart, whose clarity and formal balance helped shape some of his compositions.

Prokofiev began working on his third Piano Concerto in 1913, but largely set it aside until 1921 when it was premiered with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Although not an immediate success, it became famous after its debut in Europe. The first movement, marked Andante — Allegro, opens with a flowing clarinet solo before quickly developing into a bright and driving piano line. It then continues into a more dissonant, lively melody that resolves back into the initial dreamy clarinet motif, trading between members of the orchestra. The piece accelerates and builds energy before returning to and building on the initial theme, ending the movement with just as much excitement as it started.
 

Achilles

World Premiere

I.   ET PATROCLUS
II.  ET AGAMMEMNON
III. ET AJAX
IV. ET HECTOR

Quinn Jensen, student composer-in-residence

Quinn Jensen is a composition student at The Ohio State University, originally from Van Wert, Ohio. Jensen’s composition Symphony I, Achilles was written in 2025 for symphony orchestra and this marks its world premiere by the Ohio State Symphony Orchestra.

Symphony I, Achilles has four movements: Et Patroclus, Et Agammenmon, Et Ajax, and Et Hector. This work is about the Greek hero Achilles, most known from The Iliad. Achilles encapsulated many elements of a typical hero: superhuman strength, ferocious battles, and great tragedies. However, there is more to Achilles than his heroic acts; he was a human with a warm and gentle disposition. This project is Jensen’s aural expression of what they felt after seeing the painting "Achilles Playing the Lyre before Patroclus" for the first time. This artwork allowed them to view the humanizing aspects of the Greek hero Achilles, and it moved them to create. Woodwinds are heavily featured throughout this piece of music; Jensen’s love for the low clarinet comes from being a clarinetist themself. Jensen uses orchestral sounds to convey various human aspects of Achilles along with the relationships he developed with the characters named in the movement titles. These relationships explore the emotions felt throughout the myth, and give an aural retelling to the humanity of Achilles’ story.
 

Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 77

iv. Burlesca

Dmitri Shostakovich

Martin Fihe, violin

Martin Fihe is a second-year undergraduate music education student from Westerville, Ohio. He has played the violin for 12 years, having previously studied with Linden Rost and Ella Pittsford, and currently with Prof. Andrii Isakov at The Ohio State University. In the past, he has participated in the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra, Youth Philharmonic of Central Ohio, Chamber Music Connection, and the Sewanee Summer Music Festival. Martin plans to teach in public schools in the Columbus area following graduation, and continue to perform.

Born in 1906, Dmitri Shostakovich was a prolific Russian composer whose music spanned a wide range of genres and styles, and was heavily influenced by the works of Bach, Beethoven and Mahler. He wrote multiple symphonies, string quartets, operas, film scores, ballets and more. Despite his popularity today, much of Shostakovich’s success during his life was diminished by government sanctions against him and his music. A book of memoirs, Testimony, was published after his death in 1975 and claimed that while his music was outwardly supportive of the Soviet Union, he was inwardly critical of the regime and lived in fear of retaliation.

Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 77 in A Minor, originally composed in 1948, was premiered by the Leningrad Philharmonic in 1955. Written for his close friend and soloist David Oistrakh, the concerto follows the emotions of Shostakovich during the reign of Stalin in the current Soviet Russia. Shostakovich, under the stress of conformity and terror, decided to keep the piece unpublished until Stalin’s death in 1953.

Movement IV: Burlesque: Allegro con brio — Presto is centered around a dramatic expression of comedy and laughter within a more serious setting. In this movement, the orchestra begins by setting an energetic, almost fanfare-like theme and quick tempo. The violinist then replies with intricate drama and frustration. The two continue back and forth, replying to each other, expanding on ideas until the image of a lively Burlesque begins to take shape.
 

Serenade for Strings, Op. 48

I.  Andante non troppo — Allegro moderato 

Peter I. Tchaikovsky

Raúl Delgado Navarro, guest conductor

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in 1840 in Russia to a French immigrant mother and a father who worked in the metal industry. Though his parents were not professional musicians, Tchaikovsky was introduced to music lessons at a young age in his home. His parents sent him to a boarding school to become a civil servant, but he continued to be involved in music. At age fourteen he composed his first work for his sister, and he was one of the first students at the St. Petersburg Conservatory when it opened in 1862. Some of his famous works include Swan Lake, Nutcracker Suite, and multiple symphonies and concertos. His music is often characterized by emotive melodies and dramatic expression as represented in harmony and orchestration. He was the first Russian composer to achieve a level of international acclaim, paving the way for future composers after him. He incorporated European music traditions with his own Russian traditions to create a new and unique blend that then became his signature style, captivating audiences from all over the world.

Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, which he composed while in Ukraine in 1880, includes four movements. He wrote that the first movement was an homage to Mozart. It was made to be an imitation of his style and captures this with the same elegant and grandiose charm that Mozart was known for in his works. The movement begins with a slow introduction and then moves into a lively section in C major. Later, the shift into minor with intense percussive cello and bass rhythms makes for a dramatic contrast, transitioning into a more upbeat and lively part of the movement. It concludes with a waltz-like portion that consists of fast rhythms that are both elegant and whimsical at times.
 

Concerto No. 1 for marimba and strings

i. Tempo Souple

Emmanuel Séjourné

Haydn Veith, marimba
Raúl Delgado Navarro, guest conductor

Haydn Veith is a fourth-year undergraduate student at The Ohio State University, pursuing dual degrees in music education and percussion performance. Originally from Dassel, Minnesota, he studies percussion with Susan Powell and Joseph Krygier. Haydn has been actively involved in the marching arts, performing with ensembles including the Crossmen Drum and Bugle Corps, Rhythm X, and the Sanford Award-winning Cavaliers. In addition to his marching experience, he has performed with the Tabula Rasa Percussion Quintet, the Ohio State Dance Department, and internationally acclaimed marimbist Michael Burritt, among others. Alongside his performance career, Haydn is an active arranger and educator, working with high school percussion programs throughout Minnesota and Ohio.

Emmanuel Séjourné, born in France in 1961, is a renowned composer and mallet percussionist. Combining European classical music with popular genres, his music blends emotive and energetic styles. His works have been performed by orchestras around the world, and his first Concerto for Marimba and Strings has become a staple for the repertoire, having now been performed hundreds of times. This Concerto was written in 2005 and first consisted of two contrasting movements. In 2015 Séjourné expanded the work to a more standard concerto form of three movements. The first movement begins with a lyrical introduction by the orchestra followed by an animated marimba cadenza. The conversation between the soloist and ensemble continues throughout the movement, increasing the expressive drama and leading to a tranquil ending.
 

Poem

Charles T. Griffes

Jonathan Mitchell, flute

Jonathan Mitchell is a second-year MM student in flute performance and music composition. He currently serves as the flute studio graduate teaching associate and recently released his second published piece, Fanfare for Six Flutes (or Ensemble) through Theodore Presser. Mitchell will perform Poem for Flute and Orchestra by American impressionistic composer, Charles Griffes.

Charles Griffes (1884–1920) was an American composer for voice, piano, and chamber music. In his youth, he moved to Berlin to study at the esteemed Stern Conservatory with pianists Ernst Jedliczka and Gottfried Galston. He returned to New York in 1907 with a renewed interest in composition and teaching, becoming the director of musical studies at the Hackley School for Boys and continuing to pursue his composing endeavours. Charles Griffes’ Poem premiered just months before his death in 1919, and has continued to be an integral cornerstone of flute repertoire.

Griffes’ Poem is a one-movement flute concerto with a dreamy and poetic atmosphere. This piece is expressive and demanding, but also has a free-form motion to allow the performer to express emotion and a vast range of tonal colors. Poem is not only a beautiful display of the flutist’s skills of lyricism and expression, but also Griffes’ unique blend of influences that create a personal style of composition. The piece begins with an ascending rumble in the strings, setting the scene for the flute and generating the majority of the piece’s melodic material. The flute enters with a variation of the opening motive, followed by a rhythmically and harmonically indistinct course. The rhythmic energy ebbs and flows, the strings periodically interrupting this motion. About halfway through the piece, a passage in the French horns signals a transition from this rhapsodic section to one with more rhythmic stability. String tremolos and a brief, feverish flute solo usher in a lively folk dance, at one point accompanied with radiant tambourines. The dance episode culminates in a lively descending passage that brings back the opening material, now with a solo viola playing a prominent new role.
 

Saxophone Concerto "Cyber-Bird"

iii. Bird in the Wind

Takashi Yoshimatsu

Cooper Greenlees, alto saxophone
Stephen Alexander, percussion
Diana Chubak, piano

Cooper Greenlees is a double major in Saxophone Performance and Computer Science at Ohio State. He is also a pianist and composer. He is a member of the Wind Symphony, where he is principal, and plays in a graduate saxophone quartet and flute/saxophone duo.

Japanese composer Takashi Yoshimatsu was born in 1953 in Tokyo. He did not receive music lessons during his childhood and originally did not plan to pursue composition. After studying music for a short period in college, he dropped out, joined a rock band on keyboard, and composed some contemporary atonal pieces. Later he rejected this atonal style, and his interests in genres such as jazz, rock, and Japanese classical music began to influence his own “neo-romantic” musical voice. His first breakthrough came in 1981 when he composed Threnody to Koki, which, like many of his pieces, had a theme relating to birds. Since then, Yoshimatsu has composed six symphonies and twelve concertos for a variety of instruments, along with many other pieces for piano and traditional Japanese instruments.

The Saxophone Concerto "Cyber-Bird" was composed for Japanese saxophonist Nobuya Sugawa in 1994; the composer describes the piece as depicting “an imaginary bird in the realm of electronic cyberspace.” The work was in part inspired by the passing of Yashimatsu’s sister, who said, “I would like to be a bird in my next life” before she tragically passed from cancer. Yoshimatsu refers to this piece as a “triple concerto” in which piano and percussion are also at the forefront. Movement 3 is titled “Bird in the Wind,” and combines irregular rhythms and lyrical sections to come together in an exciting finale.
 

Personnel

Flute
Lance Korte
Kayleigh Rummel
Karis Brennan
Shreeya Yampati

Oboe
Briele Vollmuth
Ben Newman
Laura Pitner
Maddie Wittman

Clarinet
Asa Mattson
Sam Langer
Christopher Larsen
Leah Henning, bass clarinet
Quinn Jensen, bass clarinet

Bassoon
Brandon Golpe
Bitania Petros
Laila Elhamri, contrabassoon

Horn
Kaylee Skaris
Andrew Waite
Nora Lemmon
Mirai Nawa

Trumpet
Brandon Ising
Jude Abuzeide
Bobby Petty
Connor Milner
Ava Diederich

Trombone
Jackson Fortner
Nick Thompson
Sebastian Pena, bass trombone

Tuba
Adam Briggs

Timpani
Stephen Alexander

Percussion
Nathan Smith
Brody Fogle

Harp
Abigail Bachelor

Celesta
Quinn Bugala

Violin I
Nathan Jeoung, concertmaster
Mara Seppala
Sidd Figurov
Miah Shaffer
Kelsey Chen
D.
Melanie Owen
Martin Fihe

Violin II
David Zhu, principal
Isabelle Tardivon
Amina Janybek
Declan Alford
Raquel Burden
Nina Graber-Nofziger
Chuyang Deng

Viola
Aiden Yi-Hung Jeng, principal
Nicolo Moulthrop
Brandon Waite 
Erica Lopez 
Avery Temple 
Luke Wittrock
Benjamin Windover Noble
Logan Bartlett

Cello
Aidan Dever, principal
Jacob Myers
Darrell Zhang
Anyu Gu
Jake Eyink
Kate Sahr
Jacob Schwengler
Jaeda Wood-Binkley
Margaret Leung
Audra Incledon
Owen Summers

Double Bass
Carson Wolfe, principal
Jeremy Frolo
Jett Maslouski
Owen Lutz
Luca Brusco
Saoirse Hurley
JoJo Schweitzer

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