Pennsylvania teenager's composition performed by Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

By: KDKA producer Ashley Funyak 

Thousands of Pittsburgh-area elementary and middle school students got to witness a world premiere performance at Heinz Hall. It was composed by a teenager from Pennsylvania, who traveled from the Philadelphia area to Pittsburgh to see it take the stage.

"I first started composing when I was around 10 or 11 years old," said 17-year-old Ethan Hsu told students. "So really, I was actually about your age when I started. There are a lot of musical inspirations for me, especially the work of J.S. Bach and Beethoven. I play piano and cello, so they are big musical voices in my life. I also watch a lot of YouTube, so there were cool music videos that I saw which got me into composing."

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra put out a call for compositions, allowing anyone in Pennsylvania to submit. The group says more than a hundred works were considered, but Hsu's piece was selected as the winner. This means his piece was performed by members of the Orchestra as part of their "Schooltime" concert series. It's a free program offered by the Orchestra for local schools, allowing some students to see their first classical music performance and learn more about how music is made.

Hsu says inspiration came after a recent trip last summer to Japan.

"There were a lot of temples and shrines of mythological creatures," says Hsu. "I wanted to do something where I could connect that to my own Asian heritage, and write a piece about a mythological creature. The piece was born then."

"Qilin is a dragon/deer creature that symbolizes prosperity," Hsu explains to the audience, which is also the title of the composition. "There is a dance-like figure at the start, very festive, that eventually transitions into a soaring theme that symbolizes that prosperity, and ends off with a very huge finale."

Hsu says the piece took him three days to compose through the use of computer software.

"It was a really incredible, eye-opening experience," says Hsu. "There are so many nuisances and details that I couldn't hear with a computer-generated recording. I've had a couple of orchestra pieces read before by student-level orchestras, but this experience was completely new to me. Having an orchestra of this caliber play my piece, I'm still processing it."

"This was a particularly technically tricky composition," says Jacob Joyce, an associate conductor with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, who was also part of the panel that judged the competition. "Which I think is particularly good for Ethan to get to hear because the PSO can play it at a level a lot of other orchestras couldn't quite do." 

"It's an unbelievably strong piece, especially for someone at a high school level," says Joyce. "It was a pleasure to conduct the piece as well. It's a very exciting piece."

Hsu plays with his high school's orchestra and is also a co-director of the Pitt Orchestra. Hsu does theater, and if that's not enough, he is also going to Juilliard Pre-College to study composition.

"I think if you had asked me a couple of years ago, I would have just said it's a passion project," says Hsu. "But now I'm starting to treat composition as a sort of goal in life, almost like a career."

"My big time goal for now is to become a teacher at an institution, a professor of music," says Hsu. "Teaching is one of my passions, that's why I'm so excited that  these students get to hear my work. Hopefully, I will also start teaching, and I'm really passionate about extending my knowledge to other people."