EDITOR’S NOTE: This concert has been moved to 7:30 p.m. Saturday because of the winter storm that is predicted for Sunday.

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Erik Ochsner, the new leader of the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra, will get his official welcome at Sunday’s concert.

Ochsner was named to the position in September and led the YSO at its holiday pops concert in December. He also led the orchestra as a guest conductor several times over the past few years when a new leader was being sought.

Sunday’s show has been earmarked as Ochsner’s formal introduction to the audience as YSO music director and conductor.

The classical music concert, dubbed “Fantastique!,” will start at 2:30 p.m. at Stambaugh Auditorium.

Matt Pagac, president and CEO of the orchestra, will deliver remarks from the stage before the music starts, and Ochsner will share his own message to the audience.

An invitation-only cocktail party for YSO donors and members will take place after the concert, with Ochsner and the musicians present.

To become a donor or a member, call the symphony office at 330 744 4269. Two more concerts remain in the current season.

The program for Sunday’s concert is personal for Ochsner. He assembled it with music that helped shape his career, including some of his favorite works and a tribute to his Finnish heritage.

“I made it a little bit biographical for me,” Ochsner said in an interview in November. “Every piece that I programmed has some really close personal connection.” 

The evening will begin with Richard Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung: Siegfried’s Death – Funeral March.” 

Better known as “Twilight of the Gods,” the nine-minute suite is the conclusion to Wagner’s famed “The Ring of Nibelung” cycle. Originally created in 1848 as a poem titled “Siegfried’s Tod” (“Siegfried’s Death”), Wagner spent the next 26 years expanding the project until he created his masterpiece: a 15-hour, four-opera cycle.

Ochsner has declared that he has no favorite composer but says Wagner is high on his list. 

In tribute to the conductor’s maternal Finnish heritage, the concert will continue with Jean Sibelius’s tone poem, “Night Ride and Sunrise.” Then, in honor of Ochsner’s extensive film-with-live-orchestra repertoire, the YSO will perform works by cinema composer John Williams, including “Adventures on Earth” from the film “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.”

The concert will culminate with French composer Hector Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique” – the first symphony to tell a detailed, continuous story.

Written in 1830, “Fantastique” is widely regarded as the pioneer of programmatic music, forever changing the landscape of orchestral music.

The fifth movement of “Fantastique” will feature two bells played from the lobby – one of which is from an 1894 school that once existed on Market Street in Youngstown. The bells will be on display in the lobby, along with the history of the 1894 bell.

The concert will mark just the fourth time that the YSO – which was launched in 1926 – has performed the 49-minute “Symphonie Fantastique.” The other times were in 1972, 1996 and 2005.

The piece plunges listeners into dreams of obsessive love and conjuring dreams and dances, with musical imagery of a wistful countryside, a march to the scaffold and a nightmarish witches’ sabbath.

“It’s a staple of the orchestral repertoire, and it’s hard for an orchestra,” Ochsner said. “But I want to push. I want to demand that we do the highest level performances that we can. … We have an amazing symphony orchestra here.”

It’s been a busy month for Ochsner. 

He flew back to his home in New York City earlier this week after leading a performance in Warsaw, Poland.

“I was invited to conduct a concert of 20 pieces of music with four singers and a 50-piece orchestra,” he said.

The performance was part of an evening of entertainment for the National Association of Polish Pharmacists. “It was my second time there for this concert, and I was already invited back for 2027,” he said.

Tickets for Sunday’s YSO concert are available at YoungstownSymphony.com, by phone at 330 259 0555 and at the box office at the DeYor Performing Arts Center, 260 W. Federal St., downtown, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. The box office will also be open before the concert.

Pictured at top: Erik Ochsner, music director and conductor of the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra.