Friday, October 6, 2023
7:30 p.m.
Graham Tyler Memorial Chapel
Concert is free with reservation. Please indicate for which concert you are reserving seats and how many.

The Orchestra of the International Center for Music at Park University will present its first concert of the 2023-24 season on Friday October 6th at 7:30 PM. The program will be under the direction of guest conductor David Amado, music director of the Florida Classical Orchestra, and who will be making his return engagement with the ICM Orchestra. Maestro Amado has selected works for string orchestra of Hugo Wolf, Ottorino Respighi, and Peter Tchaikovsky to open this 7th year of concerts by the orchestra.

The Austrian composer Hugo Wolf is best known for his solo songs with piano, although he composed in many genres. A great admirer of the music of Richard Wagner, Wolf’s style contains many of the Wagnerian traits of heavy chromaticism, elusive tonality, and great depth of emotion, yet combined with a sense of ease reminiscent of Schubert. Wolf combined his work as a composer with that of music critic, which was not always amenable to his personality. His Italian Serenade, heard on this concert, was written after he had decided to return exclusively to composition, and this decision might account for the work’s bright and witty style, in seeming contradiction to the weight of many of his songs.

Ottorino Respighi was one of the most versatile of Italian musicians from the early 20th-century; composer, teacher, musicologist and violist, in 1900 he even became principal violist for the orchestra of the Russian Imperial Theatre in St. Petersburg. Respighi’s music was enormously popular during the first part of the 1900’s, receiving premier performances by such conductors as Willem Mengelberg, Arturo Toscanini and Serge Koussevitzky, and in 1932 he was even commissioned to write a work commemorating the recent death of American bandmaster John Philip Sousa! Although composing in many genres, he is best known today for his tone poems written for large orchestra: Pines of Rome, Fountains of Rome, and Roman Festivals. The Ancient Airs and Dances Suite #3 heard in this concert is the third set of pieces that Respighi wrote based on 16th-century Italian lute music but worked into string colors illustrative of his time in Russia working with the master of orchestration Rimsky-Korsakov.

Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings is certainly one of his most well-known works, and displays some of the fascinating contradictions typical of the composer. Although the first movement was intended to be in the style of Mozart, and is written in the lighter style of the Classical sonatina, the towering opening chords confirm it as being in the most intense 19th-century Romantic style. The second movement, in Tchaikovsky’s favorite form of the waltz, has become a well-known piece on its own, often performed in concerts as an individual work. The brooding third movement, Elegy, shows the composer at his most inward; a bittersweet and tender mood throughout, but with occasional glimpses of sunshine. A lighthearted dance movement based on a Russian theme concludes this tour-de-force of Romantic string writing.

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 will make 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.