The Friends of Chamber Music Kansas City opened their 51st season in grand style at the Folly Theater on Saturday, Sep. 19 with a captivating program of American works not often heard in concert. In a 12-program series entitled “Landscapes,” this concert was labeled “American Landscapes.”
Artistic Directors Hyeyeon Park and Dmitri Atapine (featured in the image above) are frequent chamber music performers all over the country, including the remarkable Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. They surround themselves with other outstanding artists who serve as soloists with major orchestras and teach at the nation’s top conservatories. Saturday night was no exception.
The program opened with the “Serenade for String Quartet,” Op. 1 written by the 18-year-old Samuel Barber. The work was played by violinists Danbi Um and Chad Hoopes, violist Scott Lee (who serves as a viola professor at the UMKC Conservatory) and cellist Atapine. The work was not the most interesting music Barber composed, but it did show a glimmer of the composer he would become. Atapine in comments from the stage described him as a “young, voracious composer” at that point in his career.
The performers played beautifully, with a warm tone and flawless blend in the slow, moody opening. The tempo increased, but the quartet took liberties with the pulse for expression and warmth. The slow second movement began with the players performing in pairs. First violinist Danbi Um played with a lyrical and beautifully delicate tone. The final dancelike movement was rhythmically active, even boisterous. Frequent pizzicato (plucked) strings were accurate and mostly together, although the final one for viola and cello was not.
While Amy Beach is not a composer who is especially well known, she is one of the great American musicians of the turn of the 20th century. Her music is imbued with romantic flair and fervor, and her compositional technique is fabulous.
Pianist Hyeyeon Park joined Um, Hoopes and Atapine, and violist Masumi Rostad replaced Lee for Beach’s “Piano Quintet in F-sharp Minor,” Op. 67, composed in 1907. The opening movement featured rich, sonorous harmonies. Park excelled in rapid piano passages over dramatic and lyrical string lines. In the second theme, her playing was rhapsodic and especially lovely.
But it was the slower central movement that was the highlight of the performance. The simple, wistful theme was played beautifully by violinists Um and Hoopes, filled with expression and sensitivity. Park’s solo section in the middle of the movement was dazzling, both technically sound and emotionally charged. The quintet’s rich musical climax near the end of the movement was especially moving. The fiery final movement was a technical showcase and capped off a brilliant performance.
The evening ended with the longest work on the program, Antonin Dvořák’s “String Quintet in E-flat Major,” Op. 97. Dubbed the “American” Quintet, it was composed in the summer of 1893, right after he produced the better known “American” String Quartet. Dvořák wrote the music while residing in Spillville, Iowa, on a respite from his duties as Director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York.
Scored for two violins, two violas and cello, the work featured Dvořák’s signature melodic and harmonic richness. The opening movement presented a slow passage at the beginning and ending, along with a faster central section where the performers infused the music with great energy and superb tone. The second movement featured highly rhythmic, dancelike episodes that are said to be influenced by Native American drumming that the composer experienced. Violist Rostad and violinist Hoopes exhibited exquisite playing in brief passages in which they were featured.
The third movement was a highly effective theme and variations, with occasional rapid passages handily delivered by Hoopes and Atapine. The finale featured a light and whimsical theme with alternating lyrical segments that shrouded some complex rhythmic content. The work received an impressive performance and was warmly received by the audience.
After the performance concluded, Atapine joked that the performers wanted to “end the concert on a high note,” then proceeded to set up two music stands for violinists Hoopes and Um. The selection was the iconic “Stars and Stripes Forever” by John Philip Sousa (composed just a few years after the Dvořák Quintet). Who would have guessed there was a two-violin arrangement for the piece? While the performance did not exude the attention to detail and tone of the rest of the program, the mood was celebratory and lighthearted. At one point, Atapine and violists Lee and Rostad marched behind the performers and waved to the audience.
The Friends of Chamber Music Kansas City presents several intriguing concerts in the next month, including VOCES8, the Modigliani Quartet and pianist Gabriela Montero. For more information, visit www.chambermusic.org.
This concert was reviewed on Saturday, September 19, 2026.
