Staff file photo / Andy Gray Austintown native Christopher Cicconi is music director and conductor of the Warren Philharmonic Orchestra, which performs Saturday at Lakeview High School auditorium.

For its spring concert, the Warren Philharmonic Orchestra will start small and swell to more than 100 musicians for its finale.

Music Director and Conductor Christopher Cicconi programmed two works that embody the concert’s “Sounds of Spring” title — Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F Major, known as his “Pastorale” symphony.

“Appalachian Spring,” which opens the concert, takes the ensemble back to its roots as the Warren Chamber Orchestra and Copland’s composition to its origins as the score for a ballet by Martha Graham.

“Everyone knows Copland’s ‘Appalachian Spring’ overture,” Cicconi said. “One thing a lot of people might not know is that the original version of this was just for 13 instruments. When you usually hear the big one, you get trombones and trumpets and the whole shebang. But originally it was one of each woodwind, a really involved piano part, and then the strings in two and then the double bass. This is the piece where you really get the ‘Simple Gifts.'”

It will be followed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Concerto in A Major for Piano and Orchestra K. 488 featuring guest artist Aleksandra Velgosha on piano.

Born in Moscow, Velgosha is a doctoral candidate at James Madison University, where Cicconi is director of bands and professor of wind conducting.

“She’s a brilliant pianist, and she’s one of the first musicians that I met here when I started this position,” Cicconi said.

“She’s just one of the most amazing pianists I’ve ever heard, but also one of the most collaborative pianists, really super easy to work with, very down to earth, and just a wonderful human all around.

“This will be the first Mozart concerto I’ve ever conducted. So I’m really excited to share that with Warren, and I’m really excited to share that with her and the audience members.”

Velgosha has appeared in solo and collaborative performances through the U.S. and Europe. She has played at the Port City Music Festival, American Liszt Society Festival and Staunton Music Festival and appeared as soloist with such ensembles as Tula Regional Orchestra in Russia and with the New England Youth Ensemble in Maryland and JMU Wind Symphony and Brass Band in Virginia.

Velgosha also will be the pianist on “Appalachian Spring.”

“You’re going to see the breadth of her abilities as not only as a soloist, but as a collaborative pianist,” Cicconi said.

“She really runs the gamut of being able to function as a soloist and an artist in that form, but also really being able to serve as a wonderful collaborative pianist, and being able to sort of follow cues and tempi and a lot of things like that. She really excels at that.”

Beethoven’s “Pastorale” symphony will follow the first intermission, and its fourth movement creates an orchestral version of a familiar spring occurrence in the Mahoning Valley — a thunderstorm.

“The score is perfect,” Cicconi said. “There’s this rumbling, like it’s off in the distance, and then all of a sudden the thunderstorm is right on top of you. Then it sort of ends in the same manner in which it started. Right when the storm sort of dissipates and disappears, there’s this beautiful horn solo, which introduces the last movement of the symphony, so it’s sort of a full circle moment. It’s just such a beautiful thing, that horn solo sort of heralds, ‘All right, we’re fully in spring now.'”

For the finale, the orchestra will be joined by the Youngstown State University Youth Orchestra, directed by Michael S. Butler, to perform the fourth movement of Dimitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 in D minor. The combined orchestras will feature more than 100 musicians.

“It’s really a great mentoring opportunity,” Cicconi said. “I think it’s going to be a really nice collaboration to round out the end of the concert and the end of the 2025-26 season.”

If you go …

WHAT: Warren Philharmonic Orchestra with Christopher Cicconi, conductor, and Aleksandra Velgosha, piano

WHEN: 7 p.m. Saturday

WHERE: Lakeview High School auditorium, 300 Hillman Drive, Cortland

HOW MUCH: Tickets are $30 for adults, $15 for students and free for children ages 13 and younger and will be available at the door. For more information, call 330-399-3606 or email warren.philharmonic@gmail.com.