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Music Department

National Gallery of Art

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Washington, DC

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cover: Paul Stevenson Oles, 1971, National Gallery of Art Archives

The Sixty-seventh Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,688th Concert

Brazilian Guitar Quartet

Everton Gloeden and Luiz Mantovani, 8-string guitars

Tadeu do Amaral and Clemer Andreotti, 6-string guitars

October 22, 2008

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

East Building Auditorium

Admissionfree
Program

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Ouverture from Orchestral Suite no. 4, bwv 1069

Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)

Bachianas brasileiras No. 1

Introdu^ao -Embolada

Preludio -Modinha 

Fuga-Conversa

Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909)

from Iberia Suite

Evocacion

Triana

Ronaldo Miranda (b. 1948)

Vanagoes serias sobre um tema de Anacleto de Medeiros (1991)

(Serious Variations on a theme by Anacleto de Medeiros)

Francisco Mignone (1897-1996)

Lenda sertaneja

Congada

All works arranged for guitar quartet by the Brazilian Guitar Quartet.

The Musicians

Known as the “Dream Team” in their home country, tire Brazilian Guitar

Quartet began touring outside Brazil in 1999 and has since become one ofthe

world’s most sought-after guitar ensembles, performing before large audiences

and receiving rave reviews and many return invitations. Tire quartet is unique

in the world for its use oftwo eight-string guitars. These innovative instruments, developed by Paul Galbraith (a founding member of bgq who appeared

in solo recitals at tire National Gallery in 1992 and 2005), greatly increase the

range ofboth sound and repertoire.

The Brazilian Guitar Quartet’s United States engagements include

concerts in the 92nd Street Y and the Metropolitan Museum ofArt in New

York City, the Da Camera Society in Los Angeles, Dumbarton Church in

Washington DC, the Latino Cultural Center of Dallas, the Museum of Latin

American Art in Los Angeles, Baltimore’s Shriver Hall, Atlanta’s Spivey

Hall, and the WolfTrap National Park for the Performing Arts. The Quartet

has also appeared at the Albuquerque Winter Chamber Music Festival, the

Carmel Bach Festival, the Chautauqua Institute, the Florida International

Festival, Pro Arte Musical of San Juan, Puerto Rico, the Ravinia Festival

in Chicago, the Round Top (Texas) Guitar Festival, the San Luis Obispo

Mozart Festival, the Winter Park Bach Festival, and El Paso’s World on a

String Festival. In 2004 the quartet and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

gave the world premiere of a specially commissioned concerto by Brazil’s

composer ofthe year, Ronaldo Miranda, at the first World Guitar Congress

in Baltimore.

International appearances include a performance at the first International Guitar Festival ofAdelaide, Australia, in a program entitled “Bach,

Brazil and Beyond;” concerts at the international guitar festivals of Hong

Kong and Monterey, Mexico; and tours ofCanada, Denmark, England,

Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Scotland, and other countries. The quartet

has been featured in live performances and interviews on Voice ofAmerica

and National Public Radio’s “Performance Today.”

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The ensemble’s repertoire ranges from Bach to Brazilian music to

masterworks from Spain. Its latest recording, an original arrangement of

the complete Iberia Suite by Albeniz, has received glowing accolades in the

international press; the Folha de Sao Paulo called it “a recording of historical

significance that deserves a place alongside that ofAlicia De Larrocha.”

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Program Notes

Johann Sebastian Bach’s four Orchestral Suites were written between 1717-1723,

when he was Kapellmeister at the court ofPrince Leopold ofAnhalt-Cothen. 

There he had one ofEurope’s finest orchestras at his disposal; another happy

coincidence was that the prince was a Calvinist whose court’s ascetic religious 

services did not require Bach to write weekly church music. As a result, he

devoted most ofhis efforts during this period to orchestral and instrumental

composition, and produced an unprecedented string ofmasterpieces, including Book 1 ofthe Well-Tempered Clavier, the French and English keyboard suites, 

the sonatas and partitas for solo violin, the Brandenburg Conceitos, and tire

orchestral suites. The suites were composed for varied instrumental combinations, with Bach himself at the harpsichord.

Heitor Villa-Lobos, Brazil’s most famous composer, launched the

“nationalist” movement in Brazilian music when his compositions were

featured at Sao Paulo’s “Week of Modern Art” in 1922. Villa-Lobos broke

away from the nineteenth-century European tradition, drawing inspiration

instead from tire music oftire choroes-popular musicians of Rio de Janeirowith whom he toured extensively in his youth. He was introduced to the

music of J. S. Bach by his Aunt Zizinha, who played the composer’s great

preludes and fugues. In the Bachianas brasileiras, a set ofnine suites for a

variety of ensembles, Villa-Lobos linked Bach and Brazilian folk music

through melody, instrumentation, harmonic language, and even in the dual

names ofthe movements, the first standard and the second Brazilian.

Bachiana brasileira no. 1, written for cello ensemble, was dedicated to

Pablo Casals. An embolada is a sequence ofverses typical ofthe repentistas

(improvising poets and singers of northeast Brazil who pit their skills 

against one another at great speed, reminiscent oftoday’s rap artists). The

Modinha (the diminutive of moda, a song of Portuguese origin) was one

ofthe earliest forms of Brazilian popular music, dating to the eighteenthcentury. About the Fugue, Villa-Lobos wrote: “The kernel ofthe initial
theme is characterized by the transfiguration of certain melodic fragments

typical of—and dear to—the old-time serenaders of[Rio]... it conveys, first, 

a Bachian spirituality, and then a conversation between four choroes whose

instruments are competing to play the main theme.”

Isaac Albeniz was born in i860 in Catalonia, Spain. A child prodigy, he

was giving public piano performances by age four and was accused ofusing

trickery in his playing. At twelve, he stowed away on a ship to South America. 

He led a haphazard life oftouring and performing in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba,

Puerto Rico, Uruguay, and eventually the United States, where he appeared

in a vaudeville act playing piano behind his back. He finally settled in Paris,

where he became close friends with the major impressionist composers. Iberia,

Albeniz’s last composition, is a set oftwelve pieces for solo piano divided

into four equal volumes. As in much ofhis music, regardless ofinstrumentation, the guitar’s spirit penneates the work. Subtitled “12 nouvelles impressions,” Iberia combines an impressionistic quality with typical Spanish

melodies. Pianists, composers, and musicologists have universally praised its

rich harmonic vocabulary, rhythmic complexity, and ambitiousness of architectural design. Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) hailed it as a pianistic marvel 

and the greatest masterpiece of Spanish music.

Ronaldo Miranda, a native of Rio de Janeiro, was awarded the Carlos

Gomes Prize as Brazil’s composer ofthe year in 2001. One ofthe two most

active Brazilian composers alive today, he is also a journalist, and for many

years was a critic for the Jomal do Brasil. His career was launched in 1977

when he received the First Prize for Chamber Music at the Second Biennial 

for Contemporary Brazilian Music. Numerous national and international

prizes followed. His works, which range from atonal to neo-tonal, include solo

instrumental pieces, chamber works, symphonies, and the opera Don Casmurro. They have been performed in major venues, including Carnegie Hall,

the Salzburg Mozarteum, and the Zurich Tonhalle. Miranda’s Variagoes Serias

(“Serious Variations,” the title alluding to Felix Mendelssohn’s piece ofthe

same name) were originally composed for wind quintet. The theme is from

the ballad Rasga 0 coragdo (Tear My Heart) wilich was very popular in the early

twentieth century, and wras also used by Villa-Lobos in his Choros no. 10.

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Francisco Mignone, the son ofItalian immigrants, was bom in the capital

ofthe state of Sao Paulo, where Italian opera was thriving. The composer

described his Lenda sertaneja (Legend ofthe Outback) no.9 as the most romantic, and most Brazilian, ofthe set often. Although not inspired by specific

folktales, the lendas are permeated with a folk-like atmosphere. The Congada is

an energetic dance ofAfrican origin. It has been described as “a royal procession accompanied by chanting, for the enthroning of a king.” Mignone wrote 

his Congada at age twenty-four as part ofthe second act ofhis opera O Contratador de diamantes (The Diamond Merchant). The popularity ofhis Congada led

the composer to create versions for solo piano (on which this transcription is

based) and piano four-hands. It was performed by the Vienna Philharmonic,

conducted by Richard Strauss, on a tour ofBrazil in the 1920s.

Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

Vienna Piano Trio

Music by Haydn, Schubert, and Smetana

October 26, 2008

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court