Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, dc

Mailing address

2000B South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-third Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,519th Concert

Cyrus Forough, violinst

Stephen Aclcert, pianist

16 January 2005

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission free
For the convenience of concertgoers

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:oo pm.

The use of cameras or recording equipment during the

performance is not allowed. Please be sure that cell phones,

pagers, and other electronic devices are turned off.

Please note that late entry or reentry after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

2,519th Concert

16 January 2005, 6:30 pm

Jean-Marie Leclair (1697-1764)

Sonatafor violin and piano in D Major (Tambourin) (1723)

Adagio molto maestoso

Allegro

Sarabanda: Largo

Tambourin: Allegro vivace

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Sonata No. 2 in A Major for violin and keyboard instrument

BWV IOI5 (1717-1723)

Dolce

Allegro

Andante un poco

Presto

Alan Fletcher

Study (Woman Holding a Balance) (2004)

World premiere performance

INTERMISSION
Johann Sebastian Bach

Partita No. 2 in D minor for violin solo

BWV 1004 (1720)

Allemanda

Corrente

Sarabanda

Giga

Ciaccona

Camille Saint-Saens

Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, op. 28 (1863)

4

The Musicians

A former pupil ofArthur Grumiaux, David Oistrakh, and Josef Gingold, 

violinist Cyrus Forough is a laureate ofthe Tchaikovsky International

Competition, first prize winner ofthe Milwaukee Symphony Violin

Competition, and winner ofthe United States Information Agency’s

National Violin and Piano Duo Competition with his wife, pianist Carolyn 

McCracken. Representing the United States as artistic ambassadors, the

Forough/McCracken Duo concertized and gave master classes in the Far

East and throughout South America. Forough’s recital and orchestra appearances throughout eastern and western Europe, Russia, and the Middle East

have received unanimous praise from both the critics and the public. He 

has performed with the Milwaukee Symphony, the Alabama Symphony, and

the Belgian National Radio Orchestra, and his live and recorded performances have been broadcast on radio and television on four continents.

Cyrus Forough is a professor of violin at both Carnegie-Mellon 

University in Pittsburgh and Roosevelt University's College of Performing

Arts in Chicago. He is much in demand as a pedagogue and among his students counts prizewinners in many national and international competitions,

as well as members ofthe Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the

New World Symphony, and the symphony orchestras of Calgary, Houston,

and Milwaukee, among others. During the summer of 2005, Forough will

join the faculties of the Academie Internationale de Musique de Montpellier

in France and the Beverly Hills International Chamber Music Festival and

Master Classes in Los Angeles.

5
A graduate of Oberlin College, Northwestern University, and the 

University of Wisconsin, Stephen Ackert studied organ and harpsichord as

a Fulbright scholar in Frankfurt, Germany, where his teachers were Helmut

Walcha and Maria Jaeger-Jung. From 1974 to 1978 he served as a specialist 

in Western music for the National Iranian Radio and Television Network

in Tehran. He also served as manager and musical director ofthe network’s

resident chamber orchestra. Since January 2004, Ackert has been head of

the music department at the National Gallery of Art. In addition to administering the Gallery’s weekly concerts, he presents lectures and lecture-recitals 

on subjects that bring together the visual arts and music. Ackert has taught

applied organ and piano, choral music, music appreciation, and music

theory to junior and senior high school and undergraduate students. He is

currently a member ofthe adjunct music faculty ofthe Northern Virginia

Community College in Alexandria, Virginia.

6

Program Notes

Jean-Marie Leclair was the eldest of eight children of Antoine Leclair, a

French lacemaker and cellist who was professionally active between 1695

and 1720, and his wife, Benoite Ferrier. Six ofthe children had notable 

careers as violinists and composers, but Jean-Marie (precisely identified as

“I’aine” to distinguish him from his younger brother, whose full name also

included both the names Jean and Marie) was the most influential ofthe

six, and was credited by subsequent generations of violinists as the founder

ofthe French violin school. His numerous sonatas for violin and keyboard 

instrument fuse the Italian model, as established by Archangelo Corelli

(1653-1713), with French dance forms as they are found in the music

of Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), Marin Marais (1656-1728), and other

French baroque sources. From Italian sonatas he adopted the sequence

of four movements, slow-fast-slow-fast, and the propensity for lyrical

melodies made up of short phrases. From the French tradition he inherited

the detache bowing technique and frequent use of dotted rhythms. Leclair

made more demands on the violinist than either his Italian or French forebears: for the left hand, there are excursions into third and fourth positions,

multiple stops, double trills, and tremolo effects. From the right hand and

bow arm, his music demands tied-bow staccatos and rapid crossings from

one string to another. The title ofthe last movement (Tambourin) refers to

a Provencal folk dance performed on the fife and drum, which are imitated

by the violin and the keyboard instrument, respectively.

Johann Sebastian Bach composed his six sonatas for violin and keyboard

instrument and six sonatas and partitas for solo violin at a time when his 

creative focus was directed almost exclusively toward instrumental music. 

Between 1717 and 1723 he served as kapellmeister and director of chamber

7
music at the court of Duke Leopold of Anhalt-Coethen, an informed music

lover. The duke provided his court composer with an orchestra of highly

skilled instrumentalists who provided the incentive for Bach’s remarkable

sonatas, partitas, and suites for violin and cello as well as numerous concerti

for solo instruments and orchestra.

The sonatas belong to a tradition that began in the late 1600s and

reached its full development in the works of Archangelo Corelli, who firmly

established the archetypal four-movement structure, the repeat patterns,

and the key relationships that defined the genre until the generation after

Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach’s Sonata in A Major differs from those of his

earlier contemporaries in that he wrote out both the bass and treble parts

for the keyboard player. (Earlier baroque sonatas were scored for solo instrument and basso continuo, in which case the keyboard player had to improvise the harmonies from a given bass line.) The master composer’s brilliant

ideas for imitative counterpoint between the instruments demanded to 

be written down and performed repeatedly. Ofspecial note is the canon

between the violin and the treble keyboard voice in the third movement of

the sonata (Andante un poco).

A fine violinist in his own right, Bach had a deep appreciation for the

technical and expressive potential ofthe instrument and was aware ofthe

“trade secrets” ofthe string players’ world. In his solo sonatas and partitas,

he calls upon the performer to activate more than one string at once, arpeggiate large chords, and continue melodic lines across numerous rests. The

resulting multiple linear strands make possible the presentation of fugues,

canons, and other forms of contrapuntal imitation on an instrument with

only four strings. The Partita in D Minor is distinguished by its last move8

ment, a chaconne of gargantuan proportions and potency. This movement

sets a benchmark for both the chaconne and its close relative, the passacaglia, 

to which other composers—among them Franz Liszt, Max Reger, Maurice 

Ravel, Paul Hindemith, Benjamin Britten, and Gyorgy Ligeti—have aspired

but never equaled.

Commissioned by the National Gallery of Art and presented for the first

time in this recital, Alan Fletcher’s Study (Woman Holding a Balance) is

inspired by the eponymous painting by Johannes Vermeer in the Gallery’s

permanent collection. The gently flowing musical lines presented in intricate counterpoint in the first half ofthe work reflect the quiet repose and

delicate texture of Vermeer’s genre painting. The composer presents the

performers with a task not unlike that ofthe woman in the painting, as

she carefully manipulates her jewels and weights in an effort not to upset

the balance. He requires the musicians to perform as many as three different subdivisions ofthe beat at the same time in a pattern that shifts rapidly

among pairs, triplets, quadruplets, quintuplets, and sextuplets. They must

present this complexity without losing track ofthe basic pulse or disturbing

the even texture, the musical equivalent of upsetting the balance. In the

second half ofthe piece, the composer presents a recitative in which a soaring reverie on the violin is accompanied by simple chords on the piano.

Just before the piece comes to a close, the roles ofthe instruments are

reversed from those they had at the outset, with the violin now providing

the rhythmically complex arpeggios and the piano echoing the melody in

octaves with which the violin began.

Alan Fletcher is professor of composition and head ofthe School of

Music at Camegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He studied composition

with Edward T. Cone, Paul Lansky, and Milton Babbitt at Princeton University 

and Roger Sessions at the Juilliard School of Music; his piano teachers were 

Robert Helps and Jacob Lateiner. He earned the bachelor of arts degree at

9
Princeton and the master of arts and doctor ofmusical arts degrees at Juilliard

as a Danforth graduate fellow. While at Juilliard, Fletcher received the Irving 

Berlin Fellowship and the Alexandre Gretchaninoff Prize. He also attended

the Institute for Educational Management at Harvard’s Graduate School of

Education and has been a frequent fellow at the MacDowell Colony. During

his student years Fletcher spent time in Washington as an intern on Capitol

Hill. During frequent visits to the National Gallery on his way to and from the

Hill, he often stopped to contemplate Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance,

a painting that has always held special fascination for him.

Alan Fletcher has composed more than seventy works in all traditional

classical forms. His Piano Sonata, written for Sergey Schepkin and commissioned by the FleetBoston Celebrity Series, was selected by Richard Dyer of

The Boston Globe as one ofthe best new works of 1996. I Saw in Louisiana

a Live-Oak Growing, also commissioned by the Celebrity Series, was chosen

as one ofthe best new works of 2001. An American Song for wind ensemble

won a national competition in 2000 to honor the United States Military

Academy at West Point in its bicentennial year. Fletcher’s music is recorded

on Albany Records and published by Boosey & Hawkes.

Camille Saint-Saens was inspired to write two works for violin and

piano after hearing the 1859 debut performance in Paris of the virtuoso

violinist Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1908). Saint-Saens composed his first violin concerto that same year, following it in 1863 with the Introduction and

Rondo Capriccioso, also dedicated to Sarasate. Both the brilliance and willful 

exoticism ofthe latter work reflect the impression Sarasate left on his listeners—among them a contemporary music critic, who wrote, “Even now 

he is a complete virtuoso, combining purity, justness, and energy oftone

with exquisite feeling and pervasive charm.’’

10