WCO Cycle 3 Concert Program

PROGRAM Program

Washington Chamber Orchestra

Jun Kim, Conductor

Symphony No.104 in D major, Hob.I:104 “London”

Adagio–Allegro Andante

Menuet:

AllegroSpiritoso

-Intermission-

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64

Allegromoltoappassionato

Andante

Allegrettonontroppo–Allegromoltovivace

Judith Ingolfsson, Violin

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

*You are kindly asked to silence your cell phones before the concert

Performers

Jun KiM , AR tistic DiRectOR / cOnDuctOR

Commended as having snappy energy and a terrific ear for detail by Milwaukee Magazine, and as bestowing “stylish support” by the Baltimore Sun on Schumann Cello Concerto Recording, Korean-American Conductor, Jun Kim has extensively conducted orchestras in North America and Europe.

After winning a prize in the 2012 International Conducting Competition in Romania, Kim went on to win several more prestigious awards, including the first prize in the inaugural Malta Phiharmonic Orchestra Conducting Competition in Malta, the second prize in the Orquesta de Cordoba Conducting Competition in Spain.

As the winner of the L’Academie Lyrique Conductor’s Award, Kim was invited to guest conduct the North Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, one of the oldest orchestras in Europe, at the Smetana Hall in the heart of Prague. Jun Kim was awarded the Beethoven Conducting Prize, given to the best conductor each year by the European Music Academy. After being selected as a Discovery Series Conductor at the Oregon Bach Festival under Maestro Helmuth Rilling, Kim was personally selected by Maestro Kurt Masur for the Kurt Masur Conducting Seminar in New York.

Over the span of his career, Kim has appeared with orchestras in the U.S, including the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Duluth Symphony Orchestra, and Richmond Symphony Orchestra, and orchestras in Canada, the U.K., Russia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Poland, Malta. Jun Kim was selected to participate at the St. Magnus Festival in the U.K. and conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He was also chosen as an emerging conductor to work with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Equally adept as an Opera Conductor, Kim was the first prize winner of the 2015 American Prize in Opera Conducting. He has conducted opera productions by Verdi, Puccini, Mozart, Offenbach, Ravel, and Purcell, among others.

Jun Kim holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree and an Artist Diploma from the University of CincinnatiCollege Conservatory of Music, a Master of Music degree from Indiana University, and a Bachelor of Music degree from the Peabody Institute of John Hopkins University. Jun Kim has worked under the Maestros such as Dumitru Goia, Johannes Schlaefli, Marin Alsop, Gustav Meier, Jorma Panula, Xian Zhang, and Markand Thakar, as a accalimed violinist, he has studied violin with Miriam Fried, Victor Danchenko, and WonBin Yim.

Jun Kim is the Director of Orchestral Activities, Music Director of UWM Symphony Orchestra & Opera Theater, and an Associate Professor of Conducting at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and he is the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Washington Chamber Orchestra in D.C.

Performers

JuDith inGO lfssOn , ViOlin

Violinist JUDITH INGOLFSSON is internationally recognized for her intense, commanding performances, uncompromising musical maturity and charismatic performance style. Based in both Baltimore and Berlin and enjoying a global career, she appears regularly as concerto soloist, chamber musician and, in recital, as half of the Duo Ingolfsson-Stoupel, founded with her husband, pianist Vladimir Stoupel, in 2006. The New York Times has characterized Ms. Ingolfsson’s playing as producing “both fireworks and a singing tone,” while Strings Magazine praised her tone as “gorgeous, intense, and variable, flawlessly pure and beautiful in every register.”

Judith Ingolfsson made her first appearances on the international music scene as a prize winner of the celebrated International Violin Competition Premio Paganini in Genoa and the Concert Artist Guild Competition in New York City. Winning the Gold Medal of the 1998 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis provided her with the final breakthrough as an internationally sought-after artist. In 1999, National Public Radio’s “Performance Today” named her “Debut Artist of the Year” for her “remarkable intelligence, musicality, and sense of insight.”

Judith Ingolfsson has appeared on the concert stages of North and South America, Europe and Asia, performing with prestigious ensembles that include The Philadelphia Orchestra, Indianapolis, National and St. Louis symphony orchestras, Bollington Festival Orchestra (UK), Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Mainz, Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt-Oder, Budapest and Jena philharmonic orchestras and the Royal Chamber Orchestra of Tokyo. She was also heard as soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra on its acclaimed 15-city 2000 North American tour, highlighted by performances at Carnegie Hall and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

In recital, Judith Ingolfsson has been presented on many of the world’s leading stages, among them: Carnegie Hall, Washington, DC’s National Gallery of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, La Jolla Chamber Music Society, Pro Arte Musicale of Puerto Rico, Konzerthaus Berlin, Reyjavík Arts Festival, La Asociación Nacional de Conciertos de Panamá, Macao Cultural Center, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Center. She is also an avid chamber musician, who has collaborated with the Avalon, Miami and Vogler string quartets and the Broyhill Chamber Ensemble, and has performed as a member of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two, both on tour and at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Ms. Ingolfsson is a welcome and frequent guest at international music festivals, having been invited to those in the United States, Finland, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland. In 2010, she was artist-in-residence in Villa Esche in Chemnitz, Germany.

Performers

A prolific recording artist, Judith Ingolfsson currently has 13 CDs available. Her debut album on Catalpa Classics won the 2001 Chamber Music America/WQXR Record Award, and her performance of Tchaikovsky’ Violin Concerto with the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, available on BPO Live, was released in 2007. “En Hommage: Simon Laks” was issued on EDA in 2010; in 2011, the GENUIN label released her highly acclaimed recording of the Ysaÿe Solo Sonatas; her Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt recording of Joseph Holbrooke’s Violin Concerto ‘The Grasshopper’ was released on CPO in 2016. With pianist Vladimir Stoupel, Ms. Ingolfsson recorded works of Stravinsky and Shostakovich for Audite, an album that received a 2013 ICMA nomination. In 2016, Accentus Music released a three-CD set titled “Concert-Centenaire,” Duo Ingolfsson-Stoupel’s exploration of French music written from the Belle Époque through World War I, with a special focus on composers whose lives were heavily impacted or even terminated by this calamitous conflict. The three recordings include scores by Louis Vierne, Alberic Magnard, Rudi Stephan and Gabriel Fauré. “Blues, Blanc, Rouge,” with the sonatas of Ravel, Ferroud and Poulenc was issued in 2017, also on Accentus. The Duo’s “La Belle Époque: Works by Eugène Ysaÿe, Théodore Dubois and César Franck,” was released in 2019; Ms. Ingolfsson’s newest album, “The Happiest Years,” solo sonatas by Artur Schnabel and Eduard Erdmann, was issued in 2020 - both on GENUIN. Duo Ingolfsson-Stoupel’s most recent recording, violin sonatas of Rathaus, Tiessen and Arma, was released in August 2021 on OEHMS Classics.

Born in Reykjavík, Iceland to an Icelandic father and Swiss mother, Judith Ingolfsson began her violin studies at the age of three and gave her first public performance on Icelandic State Television at age five. At eight, she recorded as soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra for Icelandic State Radio and, a few weeks later, made her orchestra debut in Germany. Her family immigrated to the United States in 1980, and, at the age of 14, she was admitted to Philadelphia’s famed Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with Jascha Brodsky. Ms. Ingolfsson went on to earn her Master’s Degree and Artist Diploma from the Cleveland Institute of Music as a student of David Cerone and Donald Weilerstein.

Currently, Judith Ingolfsson holds the position of Professor at Baltimore’s Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University. With her husband, the renowned pianist Vladimir Stoupel, she is co-artistic director of France’s Festival and Academy “Aigues-Vives en Musiques” and Germany’s Festival “The Last Rose of Summer” in Berlin. Together, they also curate a pair of concert series in Berlin - at the Institut Français and the Mendelssohn-Remise.

Judith Ingolfsson performs on a Lorenzo Guadagnini violin, crafted in 1750, and a viola created by Yair

Performers

Violin

sHeng-tsung

Wang***

yoonyoung bae**

Jumi im

JooHyun Julia lee

Kimberly galva

cinDy Wang

eunJu KWaK*

claire cHo

yeoKyeong Kim

olivia Webb

Jian song

Washington Chamber orChestra

Jun Kim, music Director/conDuctor

Viola

rebecca Henry* asli ozeK

becKy JoHnson

Cello

Peter Kibbe*

micHelle cHoi

JoHn Keane

Double bass

Kimberly JoHnson*

Flute

racHel cHoe lee melinDa WaDe-englisH

oboe

Jiyoon oH mary riDDell

Clarinet

JiHoon cHang

Jennifer tscHeulin

bassoon

Jimmy Qun ren caitlin olDHam

SPECIAL THANKS TO:

*Joel Conrad, LHT Audio

*Kun Sik Lee, Photographer

horn

saraH soisson Kat robinson

trumpet

Julia tsucHiya-mayHeW tHeresa bicKler

timpani

nonoKa mizuKami

Concertmaster ***Haydn

**Mendelssohn

*Principal

Program Notes

Franz Joseph haydn, symphony no. 104 “ London”

By 1790, Haydn was no longer in service to the Esterházy family. His longtime patron, Prince Nicolaus, had died, leaving Haydn a handsome pension while he maintained some connection with the court. However, the new Prince, Anton, although he increased Haydn’s pension, dismissed the entire musical establishment, leaving Haydn with little to do. So, the composer moved to Vienna.

Abundant job offers came his way, but nearing 60, famous and secure financially, the composer decided that he had no need to seek another permanent appointment. Thus, he accepted the most beguiling of the many commissions he was offered: for a half dozen symphonies, ordered by Johann Peter Salomon of London, impresario, violinist, and conductor of his own orchestra, reportedly England’s finest.

Haydn was treated like royalty – or at least like Europe’s greatest composer – upon his arrival in England at the beginning of 1791 for a residency during which the first set of Salomon’s symphonies, Nos. 93-98, would be presented. Later, another series of six – the rest of the 12 so-called “London Symphonies” – was composed in Vienna. Haydn returned to a breathlessly expectant London in February of 1794. The English were not disappointed.

The last symphony, the present work, to which alone among the 12 the name “London” has become particularly attached, was first heard on April 13, 1795, and was also the main event of Haydn’s London farewell concert, for his own benefit, three weeks later. Of the latter, Haydn recorded in his diary: “The hall was filled with a picked audience. The whole company was delighted and so was I. I took in this evening 4000 gulden. One can make as much as this only in England.” It should be noted that by this time Salomon was no longer able to afford his own series and Haydn had become associated with another presenter.

Whether or not Haydn had decided that this would be his last symphony – which it is – everything about it projects the feeling of a “statement,” including the boldly decisive, symmetrical introduction, as distinct from the improvisatory feeling Haydn conveys in similar circumstances elsewhere: two portentous D-minor episodes framing a smaller one in the key of F major. The dark drama nonetheless gives way to something quite different (otherwise it wouldn’t be Haydn, master of the unexpected), a charging, joyous Allegro.

Reversing the procedure, the Adagio begins with an innocent, lilting G-major melody in the first violins, which darkens almost imperceptibly as the other strings enter, then changes its personality as the winds play a little lament, whereupon the whole orchestra bursts out in (minor-key) fury.

The burly minuet has a particularly jaunty trio, dominated by solo oboe and bassoon, while the grand finale – to London and to Haydn, the symphonist – is a potpourri of Slavonic folk tunes which Haydn heard during his years on the Esterházy estates. The opening theme had long been thought of as a London tribute, quoting from the street-song “Hot Cross Buns,” but in recent years has been identified as “Oj Jelena,” a ballad sung by the Croatians living in Eisenstadt when Haydn made his home there.

—Herbert Glass

Program Notes

W.a.mozart the marriage oF Figaro overture

There is perhaps no more popular or beloved violin concerto than Felix Mendelssohn’s masterpiece in e minor. The prodigy’s concerto breaks the Romantic violin concerto tradition of vapid showpieces with little need for artistry or passion, and whose orchestra parts are sparse, insipid, and uninteresting. Mendelssohn referred to these Paganini inspired works as merely “juggler’s tricks and rope dancer’s feats.” Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto was the first significant concerto for violin since Beethoven’s of 1806, and was the last until the concertos of Bruch in 1868, and Tchaikovsky and Brahms, both written in 1878.

In 1838, Mendelssohn wrote to the violinist Ferdinand David and stated, “I would like to compose a violin concerto for you next winter; one in e minor sticks in my head, the beginning of which will not leave me in peace.” Mendelssohn had been appointed the music director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1835, and immediately named his childhood friend, Ferdinand David, the orchestra’s concertmaster. The concerto would be Mendelssohn’s last orchestral endeavor, and took him six years to complete from the time he initially wrote to David. David was involved in every aspect of the concerto’s composition and served as its technical advisor – a testament to how much Mendelssohn respected David, seeing that Mendelssohn was a capable violinist himself. The work premiered on March 13, 1845, with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, David as soloist, and Neils Gade conducting.

The Mendelssohn Violin Concerto is groundbreaking and goes against established concerto conventions in several ways, beginning overtly in the opening of the first movement. Instead of a lengthy orchestral introduction which would lay out the principal themes of the concerto, Mendelssohn writes a measure and a half introduction, that really only serves to outline the key of e minor, and immediately brings in the soloist with the principal thematic material. This changes the formal structure of the first movement by alleviating the need for a double exposition (one for the orchestra, and one for the soloist). Mendelssohn again breaks with tradition in the placement of the concerto’s cadenza – putting it before the recapitulation instead of after it. It is believed that Ferdinand David was possibly responsible for the cadenza’s material, which notably, Mendelssohn wrote into the score. It would have been standard procedure of the time to leave it up to the performer to improvise a cadenza. Mendelssohn again goes against standard concerto format by not breaking between the movements of his concerto, instead, creating a single movement work with three distinct movements.

As with all popular and ubiquitous works, there can be critical backlash that questions the artistic or musical value of an oft-played piece. Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto has escaped this fate because it is undeniably a masterpiece in the violin repertoire. In 1921, the esteemed musicologist, Sir Donald Francis Tovey, wrote, “I rather envy the enjoyment of anyone who should hear the Mendelssohn (violin) concerto for the first time and find that, like Hamlet, it was full of quotations.”

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