Park University International Center for Music Presents: ICM Orchestra, 2023

WELCOME TO OUR 21ST SEASON!

Dear Esteemed Patrons and Devotees of Music,

It’s not merely the notes that create a melody but the passion and dedication behind each one. As the Artistic Director of the International Center for Music, my journey in music has been deeply personal and profoundly enriching. The same fervor that drove me to delve into the depths of musical discipline drives our students, faculty, and guests artists. Their commitment to their craft is not only a source of endless inspiration but also what sets our program apart.

Kansas City is truly privileged, as within its bounds lies an audience with an appetite for genuine talent and a heart that beats in rhythm with the finest melodies. Our concert series provides an invaluable opportunity to experience this prodigious talent in an accessible manner, making worldclass music available to all.

Our mission at the International Center for Music at Park University has always been clear – to offer an environment reminiscent of the intensive training I was fortunate to undergo, a space free from distractions where the sole focus is on achieving musical excellence without the burden of financial pressures.

In addition to our homegrown prodigies, the ICM Concert Series is also graced by legendary guest performers, individuals whose contributions to the world of music have been monumental.

As we usher in another season of musical brilliance, I warmly invite you to be a part of our melodious journey. Come, immerse yourself in a world where past, present, and future converge in harmonious symphony.

With profound gratitude,

Stanislav Ioudenitch Founder and Artistic Director International Center for Music at Park University

P.S. Each performance is a manifestation of our shared love for music. Your presence and applause amplify our drive to elevate the art form further.

ICM ORCHESTRA

STEVEN MCDONALD, MUSIC DIRECTOR

DAVID AMADO, CONDUCTING

Italian Serenade

................................................................ Hugo Wolf (1860-1903)

Molto vivo

Ancient Airs and Dances for Lute, Suite #3 .....................................................

Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936)

1. Anonymous: Italiana

2. Jean-Baptiste Besard: Arie di corte

3. Anonymous: Siciliana

4. Ludovico Roncalli: Passacaglia Intermission

Serenade for String Orchestra, op.48

................................................

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-93)

1. Pezzo in forma di Sonatina

2. Valse

3. Elegia

4. Finale: Tema russo

MAESTRO DAVID AMADO

David Amado has been music director of the Delaware Symphony Orchestra since 2003, and in July 2016 he began a second music directorship at the Atlantic Classical Orchestra in Florida.

As a guest conductor Amado has led numerous prominent orchestras. In addition to the St. Louis Symphony, where he served as associate conductor from 2001 to 2004, he has led the Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Rochester Philharmonic, and the Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Milwaukee, National, New World, and Toronto symphonies. Recent engagements have included the Mobile, New Bedford, New Haven and Toronto symphony orchestras and California’s Symphony Silicon Valley. In June of 2019, he made his debut at the Mostly Modern Festival in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Amado has been praised by the media, audiences, and fellow musicians for his deep musical insight and visceral energy. These qualities have allowed him to reinvigorate the Delaware Symphony, which has become a premier regional orchestra during his tenure. In 2010 the DSO released a critically acclaimed CD on the Telarc label, partnering with the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet in

concertos by Joaquín Rodrigo and Sergio Assad; the recording debuted at number 11 on the Billboard charts and earned a Latin Grammy nomination. April of 2018 saw the release of a NAXOS recording featuring the DSO and Brasil Guitar Duo under Amado’s direction in concerti by Paulo Bellinati and Leo Brouwer.

Amado began his musical training in piano, studying in The Juilliard School’s pre-college and college divisions before going on to Indiana University, where he received a master’s degree in instrumental conducting. Returning to New York, he pursued further conducting studies at Juilliard with Otto-Werner Mueller. His first professional conducting post, an apprenticeship with the Oregon Symphony, was followed by a six-year tenure with the St. Louis Symphony, where he served as both a staff conductor at the orchestra and music director of the St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra.

ICM ORCHESTRA

Steven McDonald, Music Director

Violin I

David Horak, concertmaster

Mumin Turgunov

Ilkhom Mukhiddinov

Aviv Daniel

Soobeen Nam

Clara Lee

Violin II

Alice Palese, principal

Yin-Shiuan Ting

Yuren Zhang

Benjamin Lerman

Casey Gregory

Matthew Bennett

Viola

Christian dos Santos, principal

Victor Diaz

Shelley Armer

Andrew Bonci

Cello

James Farquhar, principal

Otabek Guchkulov

Mardon Abdurakhmonov

Jordan Proctor

Diyorbek Nortojiyev

Bass

Kassandra Ferrero

MUSIC DIRECTOR, STEVEN MCDONALD

Originally from Reading, Mass., Steven McDonald, director of orchestral activities, has served on the faculties of the University of Kansas, Boston University and Gordon College. While in Boston, he conducted a number of ensembles, including Musica Modus Vivendi, the student early music group at Harvard University. McDonald also directed ensembles at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, serving as founder and music director of the Summer Opera and Independent Activities Period Orchestra, and conductor of the MIT Chamber Orchestra and the Gilbert and Sullivan Players.

At the University of Kansas, McDonald served as assistant conductor of the KU Symphony, and was the founder and music director of the Camerata Ensemble of non-music majors, and of the chamber orchestra “Sine Nomine,” a select ensemble of performance majors. Additionally, he has conducted performances of the KU Opera. He has also served as vocal coach at the Boston University Opera Institute and at Gordon College.

McDonald served as music director of the Lawrence (Kan.) Chamber Orchestra from 2007-14, during which time the group transformed into a professional ensemble whose repertoire featured inventive theme programs and multimedia performances. In 2009, he was selected to conduct the Missouri All-State High School Orchestra, and in 2011 was the first conductor selected as guest clinician at the Noel Pointer Foundation School of Music which serves inner-city students in Brooklyn, N.Y. An avid proponent of early music, McDonald has also taught Baroque performance practice at the Ottawa Suzuki Strings Institute summer music program, and regularly incorporates historically informed practice into his performances.

McDonald is a graduate of the Boston University School for the Arts, the Sweelinck Conservatory of Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and the University of Kansas School of Fine Arts. His teachers have included Brian Priestman, Nicholas Uljanov, Joop van Zon and Thomas Dunn for conducting, Henk van Eeuwijck and Leo Abbott for piano, Craig Rutenberg for vocal coaching and George Faxon for organ.

PROGRAM NOTES

Hugo Wolf (1860-1903): Italian Serenade

Hugo Wolf has long been the “forgotten” composer of the late-Romantic era. More than a century after his tragic death at age 42, the greatest master of the art song since Schubert and Schumann remains little known to the public, as his hundreds of Lieder are cultivated by a small number of vocal-music aficionados.

Yet during his lifetime Wolf was viewed as one of the revolutionary followers of Wagner’s death-defying chromatic innovations — standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Bruckner, Strauss, and even Mahler. Because Wolf traded chiefly in miniatures — subtly textured and coloristic songs ranging from three to six minutes in length — his music has drawn less attention from the public. But his significance to history is no less pronounced. “The dead Mahler still haunts Wolf’s reputation now,” wrote the critic Martin Kettle in 2003. “While Mahler’s extraordinary symphonies fill the largest halls, Wolf’s no less extraordinary songs still belong mainly to the connoisseur.”

Born of a Slovenian mother and a German father, Wolf showed strong early promise on piano and violin, which his father taught him from the age of five. One of the most profound experiences of his childhood was seeing his first opera, Donizetti’s Belisario, at the age of eight. He

was electrified by both the sound and the idea of setting poetry to vocal music, and he began thirsting for musical studies even as he was expelled from several secondary schools because of bad behavior.

Finally his parents shipped him off to the Austrian capital to study at Vienna Conservatory. All of 15 years old, he became friends with Mahler and other major figures of the day, while also learning the rigors of harmony and counterpoint. Again, he rebelled against the conservative establishment, preferring instead to ally himself with the “music of the future,” which in those days meant Wagner.

Tannhäuser and Lohengrin transformed Wolf’s musical outlook entirely, and when the boy dared to show Wagner some of his own works in late 1875 (mostly Lieder), the elder composer was quite complimentary. At the same time, Wagner urged Wolf to begin writing larger-scale works. Wolf also met Brahms, whose gifts he admired, but when he began working as a music critic in the 1880s, he joined the strong polemical opposition to Brahms’ alleged “conservatism.”

Throughout the 1880s, when Wolf was achieving initial fame in Vienna as a preeminent composer of art songs, he began to exhibit symptoms of what was most certainly bipolar disorder — the effects of which were sharply intensified by the syphilis that would eventually lead to his complete mental breakdown and painful death.

Wolf also composed an opera and a variety of choralorchestral works. Beginning in his mid-twenties, he penned a handful of instrumental works, including a D-minor String Quartet, an Intermezzo in E-flat for quartet, and the symphonic poem Penthesilea.

In May 1887 he began the original quartet version of the Italian Serenade, possibly under the influence of Eichendorff’s novella From the Life of a Good-for-Nothing — in which the hero, a violinist, travels to Italy and observes

the performance of a serenade. Wolf completed a first movement, the fleet and light-hearted piece we know today, and in subsequent years worked on a slow movement and a tarantella but never completed them. The eight-minute Molto vivo suggests (as some have said) a young man seeking a woman’s attention but being comically rebuffed at each turn. In 1892 Wolf re-scored the movement for orchestra. In this form, it received its premiere in Graz in 1904, a year after the composer’s death.

The Romantic period’s fascination with music of the past was part of its general veneration of musical tradition. Just as Mendelssohn showed interest in the music of J.S. Bach and Brahms in masters of the Renaissance, Respighi spent a great deal of his life studying the works of little-known Italian composers of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Though he was a generation younger than the great 19th-century Romantics, he remained anchored in tonal harmonies and conventional structures throughout his career.

This occupation with history first manifested itself in such works as the transcription of Claudio Monteverdi’s Lamento D’Arianna for voice and orchestra, composed in 1906 for a trip to Germany. A decade later, in 1917, he

Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936): Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite No. 3

produced the first of his three suites he called Ancient Airs and Dances, a set of deft orchestrations of lute music and other works by Simone Molinaro, Vincenzo Galilei, and other composers of the Renaissance and early Baroque. Two subsequent suites, composed in 1923 and 1931, continued this model of creating accessible concert works by transcribing neglected music of the past.

Born into a musical family in Bologna, Respighi took up the violin at age eight and proved a quick study. From the age of 12 he studied at the Liceo Musicale di Bologna, becoming a master of violin and viola, and at 16 he explored composition studies with Giuseppe Martucci, Italy’s premier composer of instrumental music. In the fall of 1900, Respighi accepted a post as principal violist of the Imperial Theatre in St. Petersburg, which presented a season of Italian operas each year. There he met Rimsky-Korsakov, with whom he devoted a brief but intense period of study of orchestration and composition.

Graduating from the Liceo in 1902, Respighi moved to Berlin, where served as first violinist of a touring string ensemble. In 1913 he made the decisive move to Rome, accepting a prestigious post as professor at the Liceo Musicale di Santa Cecilia. He would spend much of the rest of his life there: It is no accident that three of his most popular works are colorful, impressionistic portraits of the city he loved: Fountains of Rome (1916), Pines of Rome (1924), and Roman Festivals (1928).

In 1916, Respighi met Sergei Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballets Russes, who encouraged him to create music for a ballet that would become La Boutique fantasque (in fact they were orchestrations works by Rossini), which today is considered a classic of the ballet repertoire. Arturo Toscanini presented several performances of Fountains of Rome in Milan in 1918, which was received with enormous public acclaim: Almost overnight, Respighi was catapulted to the top echelon of Italian composers of his day.

During the 1920s and ‘30s, Respighi composed a series of operas, beginning with Belfagor (1923), and he traveled to the Americas, where he performed in Carnegie Hall, in Brazil, and elsewhere. Back in Italy, Fascism was on the rise, and although Respighi attempted to steer a neutral course, he was (unfortunately) held in high regard by the regime. His last years found him still transcribing works of earlier composers, such as Benedetto Marcello’s Didone, but also composing increasingly adventurous original works. Influenced by the styles of Strauss, Debussy, and Rimsky-Korsakov, Respighi used their ideas of sound and color and forged them into a personal, if lighter, musical style.

The Suite No. 3 from Ancient Airs comprises four movements: a graceful Italiana, the plangent Arie di corte (a set of six courtly songs, after Jean-Baptiste Besard), the gentle Siciliana, and the Passacaglia (after Ludovico Roncalli).

Throughout its history the serenade — initially designed as a musical greeting performed outside the home of one’s beloved — has retained something of the light-hearted serenity of its origins. When Mozart or Haydn composed a serenade, it was usually a set of movements written for courtly entertainments requiring uncomplicated instrumental music. Even in the 19th century,

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): Serenade for Strings, Op. 48

composers still wrote works with formal nods to popular courtly genres, long after public concerts had supplanted the requirements of feudal lords.

But the function of the genre had shifted: The serenade or suite became, for the 19th century, an opportunity to relax from the structural rigors of the symphony. Thus the serenades of Brahms, Dvořák, and Tchaikovsky are work s that call for supreme instrumental skill yet also permit a free, unfettered concentration on melodicism and charm — and were often performed in contexts requiring less formal music.

In addition to his six completed symphonies, Tchaikovsky also wrote four suites for orchestra and several other concert works such as Francesca da Rimini and the C-major Serenade, works that were formally less restrictive and particular. “All my life,” he wrote, “I have been troubled by a difficulty in grasping and manipulating form in music.”

Ironically, as he sketched the Serenade for Strings he thought at first that the work might become another symphony. His most recent symphony (the Fourth, of 1877) had dealt a substantial toll on his mental and physical health, however, and one can well understand how happy the composer was to steer these sketches down a less formal path.

The summer and fall of 1880 gave rise to two of the composer’s most notable compositions — the 1812 Overture, which Tchaikovsky said he found “loud and noisy” and “lacking any warm feelings of love,” and the Serenade, later published as Op. 48, which his musical mentor Anton Rubinstein immediately dubbed his best work. Completed in November 1880, the Serenade was played informally at the Moscow Conservatory shortly afterward; Eduard Nápravník, principal conductor of the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre, led the public premiere in St. Petersburg in October 1881.

Aficionados of dance today, or of music for the dance, can hardly avoid thinking of George Balanchine when hearing Tchaikovsky’s piece, for the choreographer used it for his first full-length American ballet. Using students of his newly formed School of American Ballet, in 1934 the Russian-born dancer-choreographer created a piece that is considered a staple of world ballet: a fusion of French, Russian, and distinctly American dance that is a classic of the New York City Ballet and of companies around the world. It is a perfect embodiment of the complex relationship between the cultural heritage of feudal Russia and the New World.

The music begins with a stately introduction that looks back to the 18th-century serenade — which often required a processional march to open and close the event (during which, in actual performances at court, both nobles and musicians would march in and out, processional-style). The first movement proper begins with a “Piece in the form of a sonatina” which is to say a sonata-like structure but without a development section. The Moderato waltz contains all the flavor of the ballet music for which Tchaikovsky is so well known; the Élégie finds the composer in his finest melodic vein. The vigorous finale is built from a Russian folk tune.

—Paul Horsley

SAVE THE DATE FRIDAY

MARCH 8, 2024

KAUFFMAN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

THERE’S NEAR THE STAGE. THERE’S FRONT ROW. THEN THERE’S MEETING STARS FACE-TO-FACE.

To receive an invitation, visit icm.park.edu/icm-gala/ or scan the QR code. Single tickets on sale December 1, 2023

Photographer Damian Gonzalez

PARK ICM FOUNDATION BOARD

The Park University International Center for Music Foundation exists to secure philanthropic resources that will provide direct and substantial support to the educational and promotional initiatives of the International Center for Music at Park University. With unwavering commitment, the Foundation endeavors to enhance awareness and broaden audiences across local, national, and international spheres.

Vince Clark, Chair

Steve Karbank, Secretary

Benny Lee, Treasurer

Lisa Browar

Stan Fisher

Brad Freilich

Holly Nielsen

Ron Nolan

John Starr

Steve Swartzman

Guy Townsend

PICTURED L-R: Julie Clark, Benny Lee, Shane Smeed, Park University President, Edith Lee, and Vince Clark.

Photo by Kenny Johnson

PARK ICM FACULTY & STAFF

PICTURED L-R:

Gustavo Fernandez Agreda, ICM Coordinator

Daniel Veis, Cello Studio

Lisa Hickok, Executive Director

Ben Sayevich, Violin Studio

Lolita Lisovskaya-Sayevich, Director of Collaborative Piano

Steven McDonald, Director of Orchestra

Stanislav Ioudenitch, Founder & Artistic Director, Piano Studio

Peter Chun, Viola Studio

Not pictured: Behzod Abduraimov, Artist-in-Residence

Photo: Damian Gonzalez

PARK INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR

MUSIC

PATRONS SOCIETY

SUPPORT THE ICM, ENJOY BEAUTIFUL MUSIC AND SPECIAL EVENTS JUST FOR MEMBERS

BELOW ARE JUST A FEW OF OUR PATRONS ENJOYING GROUP EVENTS INCLUDING MEETING THE TALENTED ICM ARTISTS

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON HOW TO JOIN OUR PATRONS

SOCIETY:

John and Karen Yungmeyer

Brad and Theresa Freilich, Evelina Swartzman, Shane Smeed and Steve Swartzman

Stanislav Ioudenitch, Angela Walker and Edith and Benny Lee

Ronald and Phyllis Nolan and Vince and Julie Clark

Lolita Lisovskaya-Sayevich, Evelina Swartzman and Ihab and Colleen Hassan

BECOME PART OF THE PARK ICM FAMILY TODAY

Travel to Lake Como!

Join the Park International Center for Music Patrons Society and enjoy everything the ICM has to offer.

Enjoy a full season of incredible concerts at the 1900 Building, each with complimentary tickets and a champagne reception to meet the artists. Experience special salon concerts in member homes and exciting opportunities to watch Park ICM alums at Carnegie Hall, Cleveland’s Severance Hall, and others! Plus this spring, we’re planning a trip to Lake Como, Italy, hosted by Park ICM Founder and Artistic Director, Stanislav Ioudenitch! With just 100 members, our group is small enough that you’ll instantly become one of the family.

For more information, contact Executive Director Lisa Hickok at Lisa.Hickok@park.edu. Sign up today!

Park ICM’s String Studios in Recital

Park ICM’s concert season will continue with an award-winning roster of string musicians in the studios of violinist Ben Sayevich, cellist Daniel Veis and violist Peter Chun. Program and performers to be determined.

STRING STUDIOS

OCTOBER 28, 2023, 7:30P.M.

1900 BUILDING

GENERAL ADMISSION

$30. STUDENTS

$10 WITH I.D.

ICM.PARK.EDU.

PARK INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR MUSIC

PATRONS SOCIETY MEMBERS

The Park University International Center for Music’s Patrons Society was founded to help students achieve their dreams of having distinguished professional careers on the concert stage.

Just as our faculty’s coaching is so fundamental to our students’ success, our Patrons’ backing provides direct support for our exceptionally talented students, concert season, outreach programs and our ability to impact the communities we serve through extraordinary musical performances.

We are continually grateful for each and every one of our Patrons Society members. For additional information, please visit ICM.PARK.EDU under “Support Us.”

We gratefully acknowledge these donors as of September 12, 2023

SCHOLARSHIP

Brad and Marilyn Brewster *

Steven Karbank *

Benny and Edith Lee *

Ronald and Phyllis Nolan *

John and Debbie Starr *

Steven and Evelina Swartzman *

Jerry White and Cyprienne Simchowitz *

SUPERLATIVE

Richard J. Stern Foundation for the Arts – Commerce Bank, Trustee

SUPREME

Shirley and Barnett C. Helzberg Jr. *

Lockton Companies Inc.

Susan Morgenthaler

Muriel McBrien Kauffman Family Foundation

Holly Nielsen *

Mark Ptashne and Lucy Gordon

Steinway Piano Gallery of Kansas City

Gary and Lynette Wages *

EXTRAORDINAIRE

Tom and Mary Bet Brown

Vince and Julie Clark

The DeBruce Foundation

Stanley Fisher and Margaret Zhorov *

Edward and Sandra Fried

Mark One Electric Co.

Perspective Architecture & Design, LLC / Matt and Rhonda Masilionis

William and Susie Popplewell

Kevin and Jeanette Prenger, ’09 / ECCO Select *

Rex and Lori Sharp

PATRON

Kay Barnes and Thomas Van Dyke *

Lisa Browar *

Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner

Wm. Robert Bucker

Cluen Family Fund

Mark and Gaye Cohen *

Paul and Bunni Copaken

Suzanne Crandall *

Scott and Claudia Davis

Beverly Lynn Evans

Paul Fingersh and Brenda Althouse

L R

Jack and Pella Fingersh

J. Scott Francis and Susan Gordon

Brad and Theresa Freilich *

Donald Hall

Colleen and Ihab Hassan

Lisa Merrill Hickok *

JE Dunn Construction Company

William and Regina Kort *

Dean, ‘53 and Charlotte Larrick

Brian McCallister / McCallister Law Firm

Mira Mdivani / Mdivani Corporate Immigration Law Firm

Jackie and John Middelkamp *

Louise Morden

Susan and Charles Porter

Steve and Karen Rothstein

Stanley and Kathleen Shaffer *

Shane and Angela Smeed

Straub Construction

John and Angela Walker *

Nicole and Myron Wang *

WSKF Architects

A Night for Piano Lovers

An entire evening devoted to piano lovers, this amazing concert will feature students of Van Cliburn gold medalist Stanislav Ioudenitch. “It is extremely important for students to have performance opportunities,” said Ioudenitch. “Musicians need to have the practical training of performing. That’s what we’re trained to do, to perform in public. These young artists in my piano studio are already successful musicians. They are award-winning instrumentalists, so something not to miss.”

Stanislav Ioudenitch Piano

Studio Recital

November 30, 2023, 7:30 p.m.

1900 Building

For additional information, visit ICM.PARK.EDU.

GENERAL ADMISSION $30. STUDENTS $10 WITH I.D.

INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR MUSIC

ICM ORCHESTRA FREE HOLIDAY CONCERT

Following the incredible success of our inaugural holiday concert last year, International Center for Music Orchestra at Park University returns to usher in the holiday season. Under the direction of Steven McDonald, the music director of the ICM Orchestra, anticipate being whisked away to the very core of the holiday spirit.

Don't delay – secure your seats today to guarantee your presence at this enchanting musical affair! It's an evening that not only delivers exquisite music but also fosters a profound sense of unity and community, embodying the true essence of the holiday season.

Graham Tyler Memorial Chapel

Dr. Steven McDonald conducting

ICM. PAR K .ED U

In coordination with the Main Street Parkville Association’s Christmas on the River.

For me, it’s not just...

‘I’m the doctor and you’re the patient.’ We’re partners.”

- Raed Al-Rajabi, MD Physician Medicine Clinical Oncology

I don’t know any other way to treat my cancer patients than to become their partner. To be available to them whenever they need me. And that’s not just when they’re sitting across from me at an appointment. Cancer is a unique journey. And for me and all of my team, the only way to undertake it is together.

To schedule an appointment, call 913-588-1227 or visit KUCancerCenter.org to learn more.