The moment the sextet began to play the vivacious first movement of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Souvenir de Florence,” the audience watched in silence at the impressive performance, which was held during lunch in the auditorium on June 13.

The sextet consisted of seniors Irene Hwang and Lilly Nowlakha, juniors Ed Fortunato and Anna Tsutsui, sophomore Andrew Jiao and freshman Wonseok Song, who are all currently in the Jefferson’s Symphonic Orchestra. The students performed the first and fourth movement of the string sextet “Souvenir de Florence” to commemorate the end of school with quality music.

“It was a fun experience and it was more challenging to play without a conductor since we had to rely more on listening to each other,” Nowlakha said.

One of the most famous Russian composers, Tchaikovsky dedicated this piece of work to the St. Petersburg Chamber Music Society after being named an Honorary Member. It was named “Souvenir de Florence” as he began working on one of the themes on his visit to Florence, Italy. The first movement, entitled “Allegro con spirito,” begins in high energy without an introduction, while the fourth movement, “Allegro con brio e vivace” features a melody reminiscent of Russian folk music.

The group chose specifically the first and fourth movements for the excitement and familiarity after preparing these two for a festival with the school orchestra.

“We picked the first and fourth movements, because we thought they would be the most exciting for other students to hear and because we knew them the best from when we played the piece with the entire orchestra,” Nowlakha said.

Junior Michelle Namkung of the audience originally came to support Hwang, but was amazed by entire sextet and hoped to watch another performance again.

“I thought it was really great, because that was the first performance by members of TJ Orchestra I had ever gone to,” Namkung said. “The performance was amazing and I was blown away.”