Victor Yampolsky: Strings Masterclass & Rehearsal

Maestro Victor Yampolsky visits the Department of Music

In our orchestra rehearsals at Andrews we’ve discussed how performing a variety of compositions can shed light on how artists have experienced our world throughout history. Therefore, it also makes sense that our students should be able to benefit from hearing multiple perspectives in our classrooms on campus. That is a primary reason we are pleased to welcome an esteemed musician to our campus to grace us as a guest instructor on Feb. 11, 2020. On this date, Maestro Victor Yampolsky will lead a Master Class for the Department of Music’s string musicians, then shortly after will direct an Open Rehearsal with the Andrews University Symphony Orchestra. During the orchestra’s Open Rehearsal on the Howard Center stage, from 7–9 p.m., Maestro Yampolsky will be amplified while working with the orchestra, and all members of the public are invited to attend and listen. This opportunity will mark a year since Maestro Herbert Blomstedt visited us, interacting with our community in presentations and an Open Rehearsal with the AUSO.

Maestro Victor Yampolsky is connected to Andrews University’s Department of Music since he was the primary professor and mentor for the Symphony Orchestra’s current conductor Chris Wild throughout Wild’s doctoral studies at Northwestern University in Illinois. Wild notes, “Musicians such as Yampolsky are in rare company, in that he spent significant time studying and working intimately with some of the 20th century’s greatest musicians, studying with violinist David Oistrakh and composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein, and collaborating with composer Dmitri Shostakovich while Yampolsky was both assistant concertmaster and assistant conductor of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. Therefore, my tentative plan and hope is that we will prepare and present a Russian piece for him on Feb. 11 and that both students and any interested members of our community may attend and enjoy listening to Maestro Yampolsky enlighten the orchestra.”

Wild adds, “When I had the opportunity to share a lunch with Maestro Blomstedt last winter in Berrien Springs, he asked who I had studied conducting with, and he mentioned that he knew my teacher’s father, the pianist Vladimir Yampolsky. This was of little surprise, since the elder Yampolsky frequently recorded with Moscow’s finest musicians, including David Oistrakh.” And so, Victor Yampolsky was raised in a musical family, and eventually found himself pursuing a career in the family trade, studying violin with David Oistrakh at the Moscow Conservatory. After establishing himself as a leader of the Moscow Philharmonic’s violins and also a budding young conductor, he sought an opportunity to emigrate from the Soviet Union to the United States. During his inquiries to secure such an opportunity, he learned that a recommendation from a prestigious American musician might help him secure the necessary documentation for such a move. Therefore, Yampolsky summoned the courage to approach Leonard Bernstein following a performance that Berstein conducted at the Vatican in Rome in 1973. A private audition for Bernstein was scheduled in the days following, and within a year Yampolsky was a violinist member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Yampolsky’s proximity to Bernstein continued for years thereafter, as Yampolsky became conductor for the annual summer high school festival orchestra at Tanglewood, while Bernstein conducted Yampolsky and the rest of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s members next door, at Tanglewood in western Massachusetts. Eventually, Yampolsky left Boston to pursue a conducting career that included posts as music director of the Omaha Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Peninsula Music Festival, and director of orchestras at Northwestern University. Wild summarizes, “When studying under Maestro Yampolsky, he conveyed to me his conviction that there cannot be any compromise when becoming a conductor. Conductors have a great privilege and responsibility to ensure that a rich heritage of music making is passed along to new listeners without it becoming diminished.”

Chris Wild, Andrews University Symphony Orchestra Conductor