Submitted photo / Konstantin Gribov Erik Ochsner will lead the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra in a concert Sunday at Stambaugh Auditorium.

Having guest conducted nine concerts before he was hired last fall as music director of the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra and leading last month’s “Home for the Holidays” performance, Erik Ochsner may be a man who needs no introduction.

However, Sunday’s “Fantastique” program is designed to introduce the orchestra’s new leader to classical music listeners.

During a brief 14-hour stop at his New York home after returning from Poland on Monday and before flying to Youngstown on Tuesday, Ochsner credited YSO Chief Executive and Operating Officer Matt Pagac with the idea.

“Matt suggested, ‘Why don’t we try to make this a little bit about introducing you, and then the orchestra and the audiences both get to know you a little bit better,'” Ochsner said. “I like that idea … In order for the audience to be moved, the orchestra players and the conductor also have to be moved. If we just play blah, blah, blah, then that’s what the audience is going to feel.

It’s our job to perform, and it’s easier and really more meaningful sometimes, for me, if there is a personal connection to something.”

The concert will open with Richard Wagner’s “Siegfried’s Death and Funeral March” from “Gotterdammerung.” Ochsner first heard the work they way many people did — it’s featured prominently in a classic Bugs Bunny cartoon — but early in his career Ochsner spent three summers in Germany working in different roles with the Bayreuth International Youth Festival in the same town as the Bayreuth Wagner Festival.

“I saw 17 performances of Wagner operas in this famous Festival Hall, the Fespielhaus,” he said. “It has a very strong and important part in my life. This particular orchestral excerpt is very, very famous, and it turns out that the orchestra has not played this piece before, so I was like, hey, even a better reason for us to do it.”

His Finnish heritage is represented by “Night Ride and Sunrise” by Jean Sibelius, and the first half will close with two pieces by John Williams, who has five Academy Awards as a film composer. Ochsner has traveled the world conducting orchestras where they are providing live musical accompaniment for film screenings, including several films Williams scored.

“There’s a wonderful excerpt from ‘E.T.’ that’s called ‘Adventures On Earth,’ and it’s great for the orchestra,” he said. “And then next month is the opening of the Winter Olympics, so I also threw in his 1984 Olympic fanfare. It’s not performed all that often, and it’s only four minutes long.”

The second half of the concert will be devoted to Hector Belioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.

The work has personal meaning to Ochsner. His mentor growing up was Erich Kunzel (1935-2009), longtime conductor of the Cincinnati Pops. Kunzel led the glee club at Brown University when his father was a student there, and Kunzel is the one who encouraged Ochsner to study at Dartmouth. Kunzel had studied with French conductor Pierre Monteux, who had studied with Berlioz’s assistant.

“It’s kind of like a lineage,” Ochsner said. “It’s a very important piece to me, a piece that I put up on a pedestal.”

But he also picked it to send a message about the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra and its future.

“It’s a war horse. It’s a staple. Every orchestra should play it. Every audience member should have a chance to hear it live. But the second purpose is, last year there was this sort of confusion. ‘Is the orchestra continuing?’ ‘Did it go bankrupt?’ Maybe the communication didn’t happen the most efficiently that it could have. So I said, ‘Oh heck no, we have a fantastic symphony orchestra in Youngstown. So why not perform Hector Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique. So it had a dual purpose.”

Ochsner wants to start to encourage more community involvement, such as the resident who is bringing two of his bells to Stambaugh Auditorium to use during Symphonie Fantastique. He wants to start a chorus so the orchestra can start performing choral works. All of those efforts lead toward an ultimate goal — no empty seats at performances.

“This is an orchestra that is based in your city, in our city, in Youngstown, and we should support it and support the artists and live music and live performance,” he said. “There are people on the organizing side, on the board of directors, who said, ‘We will never let this die.’

“This is an important part of our cultural scene here in Youngstown,’ but we still have, you know, some ways to build and hopefully one day it’ll be standing room only, or there will be a waiting list for people to get in, because we’ll be sold out. We’re not sold out yet, but we can do that. We’ll get there again.”

If you go …

WHAT: “Fantastique” — Youngstown Symphony Orchestra with Erik Ochsner, conductor

WHEN: 2:30 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: Stambaugh Auditorium, 1000 Fifth Ave., Youngstown

HOW MUCH: Tickets range from $20 to $65 and are available online at experienceyourarts.org and by calling 330-259-9651.