Columbus Symphony kicks off Masterworks season with violinist Stefan Jackiw

It’s not every day that a family of academics produces a violin virtuoso.

The parents of acclaimed violinist Stefan Jackiw are retired physics professors; his mother, So-Young Pi, taught at Boston University, and his father, Roman Jackiw, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Although they played classical music on the radio, and took young Stefan to concerts, they didn’t push their only son to pursue what in time became an all-consuming passion. When he was 4, he was given a violin by family friends — and off he went.

“I was lucky in the sense that I had parents who were both supportive, but not crazy, crazy pushy with my violin study,” said Jackiw, 36, ahead of his appearance with the Columbus Symphony. The musician will perform as part of the Masterworks season opener in concerts Oct. 22 and 23 in the Ohio Theatre.

“(My parents) just wanted me to enjoy it and didn’t necessarily see it as a profession for me,” said Jackiw, a resident of New York City.

Not that there weren’t signs of the young violinist’s precociousness: At 7, he started learning what he considers his first “grown-up piece” — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Violin Concerto No. 3” — and, around the same time, he accompanied his parents to Vienna, where they were attending a physics conference. Stefan took the family to see Mozart’s house.

“It was sort of a Mozart immersion period,” Jackiw said. “I had watched the movie ‘Amadeus’ many times earlier in my life.”

By 14 and 15, he said, he realized he wanted to make music professionally. Even so, when Jackiw entered Harvard University, he first planned to pursue a major in French literature, then switched to psychology and finally ended up with a degree in musicology.

“(My parents) were wary of abandoning my liberal arts studies,” he said.

Fortunately for music lovers, though, Jackiw was able to dabble in other disciplines while retaining his focus on the violin.

Columbus Symphony Music Director Rossen Milanov, who has previously collaborated with Jackiw in concerts with other orchestras in Detroit, Slovenia and Chautauqua, New York, describes himself as musically in synch with the violinist — in harmony, you might say.

Among the things they have in common, the conductor said, are “the way we think about music, the way we think about phrasing and the way we even could understand each other without necessarily discussing the details of the pieces we are interpreting.”

Jackiw, who was originally booked to play in Columbus during last year’s pandemic-impacted season, returns the compliment.

“(Milanov’s) top priority is to do the piece justice and to bring across a convincing interpretation,” Jackiw said. “He wants to do the best job as he can, which is what I want to do. To have someone who’s on the same team, in a way, makes a huge difference.”

In Columbus this weekend, Jackiw will be featured on Johannes Brahms’ “Violin Concerto,” a piece tailor-made by the German composer for his friend, Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim.

“(Brahms) sent countless drafts of the piece to Joachim, and asked Joachim for feedback,” said Jackiw, who notes that the piece reflects the sensibilities of each artist, from Brahms’ “Germanic symphonic” style to Joachim’s “swashbuckling, folk-virtuoso” style.

“That tension that’s going back and forth is really crucial to this piece,” he said. “There’s very heart-on-your-sleeve, raw violin writing in this violin concerto.”

Milanov will be at the edge of his seat — or, more accurately, at the edge of his conductor’s podium — to hear what Jackiw brings to the piece.

“I have not done Brahms with him, but knowing the depth of his musicianship and his pure energy, ... I’m expecting this to be very exciting,” Milanov said.

On its own, the symphony will open the show with Jessie Montgomery’s “Banner,” a multicultural reinterpretation of “The Star-Spangled Banner” (including nods to the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing”); and will conclude the concert with Antonin Dvorak’s “Symphony No. 8.”

“When you come to the symphony,” Milanov said, “I can guarantee you that, for two hours, you are going to leave your daily preoccupations and problems, and you can just enter a different world.”

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At a glance

The Columbus Symphony will open its Masterworks season with concerts with violinist Stefan Jackiw at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 22 and 23 in the Ohio Theatre, 39 E. State St. An open dress rehearsal, also with Jackiw, will take place at 10 a.m. Oct. 22. Tickets cost $10 to $81.73, or $14 for the dress rehearsal. Masks and proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test are required. For more information, visit www.columbussymphony.com.