The Central Oregon Symphony’s Winter Concert this weekend at Caldera High School features the year’s Young Artist Competition winners.

The competition is held each December, and because of the availability of technology to widen the playing field, two of the winning teens hail from near — Seattle and Camus, Washington, respectively — and the third from far — the Hoosier state.

The winner from Indiana, Lily Sullivan, 17, learned of the Young Artist Competition from one of last year’s winners, who was also from the Midwest, said symphony conductor and music director Michael Gesme.

“He had a good time,” said Gesme, explaining that word of the annual competition among possible competitors spreads chiefly through word of mouth. And in order for that to happen, it must be a positive experience for the usually high school-aged musicians.

“We try to be aware of that, and help with literally whatever they need,” he said. “It’s one thing to win a competition, but then there’s also the doing of it. We try our best to really do it right, and really treat the kids like the pros that they are.”

Part of that entails matching the kids’ approaches to the music they’ll be playing on the Winter Concert, which are the same pieces they entered into the competition in order to win their spots on stage with the Central Oregon Symphony.

“My approach is to say, ‘How do you like this to go?’” Gesme said. “It’s usually their first time with an orchestra, or one of their first times with an orchestra. … I want the first time that that happens to be as low-stress as possible from our end.”

The concert program

Camus-based pianist Emily Liu, 15, has been playing piano since age 4 and will open the concert with Edvard Grief’s Concerto for Piano in A Minor, Op. 16.

She is playing the first movement,” Gesme said. The tune turns up occasionally in film and TV and is “one of those pieces that you might say, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, and then you hear the first few notes and you’re like, ‘Oh, that one,’ Gesme said. “It’s just this iconic sound.”

Lily Sullivan, the violinist from Indiana, will play the first movement of Brahms’ Concerto for Violin in D Major, the complexity and nuances of it make it kind of piece you’d expect to hear from a mature player.

“You really have to know what you’re doing,” Gesme said. “It’s not all about fiery technique. It’s about musicality that wins the day. She’s amazing. I’m super looking forward to that one.”

Cellist Jesse Krentz, 16, of Seattle, is the winning solist third up. He grew up in a family of cellists and began studying the instrument with his father at age 6. He’ll be playing the first of two works by Edward Elgar in the concert, the Elgar Cello Concerto, to close the first half of the performance.

The Enigma Variations

After intermission, the orchestra will tackle another piece by the British composer Elgar, his famous Enigma Variations, composed at the tail end of the 19th century. It’s an epic work featuring 14 variations on a theme.

The idea is he has a musical theme or idea presented at the start of the piece.

“It can’t last a minute,” Gesme said. “And then he proceeds 14 different musical portraits of his friends and acquaintances based on that theme.”

“If you didn’t know that that was what’s going on, it’s still 14 amazing variations on a theme,” he said.

That was the case when it was initially published; Elgar would was cagey about the people musically described by each variation, restricting their identification to initials or cryptic names he’d bestowed upon them.

That mystery has largely been solved, thanks to biographical information that has been discovered about each. But there is another mystery at play, and it has yet to be solved. Elgar wrote: “The Enigma I will not explain — its ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed … further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes,’ but is not played.”

Elgar suggested another theme, possibly referring to another famous work, is evident in the Enigma Variations, but not really detectably there.

“People were like, ‘What do you mean?’ so he would give more. ‘It could be an actual accompaniment for another well-known tune,’” Gesme said. Elgar, who died in 1934, never revealed the answer.

“Elgar, his wife and I believe one other person, knew what he intended, and they all took it to their grave,” Gesme said. “The best part is it might be any one of the people who have found something (is correct). He could also have just been having fun.”

If You Go

What: Central Oregon Symphony Winter Concert featuring winners of the Young Artist Competition

When: 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday

Where: Caldera High School, 60925 SE 15th St., Bend

Cost: Tickets are reserved for Central Oregon Symphony members only

Contact: cosymphony.com for information