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 of

the West Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

Music Department

National Gallery ofArt

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

Mailing address

2000b South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-seventh Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,732nd Concert

National Gallery Piano Trio

Luke Wedge, violin

Benjamin R. Wensel, cello

Danielle DeSwert Hahn, piano

with

Vilmos Szabadi, violin

Szilvia Kovacs, viola

June 14, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Trio no. 2 in E Minorfor Piano, Violin, and Cello, op. 67 (1944)

Andante; Moderate

Allegro non troppo

Largo

Allegretto

Laszlo Weiner (1916-1944)

Duofor Violin and Viola

Moderate

Allegro vivace

Lento

Allegro molto

INTERMISSION

Ernst von Dohnanyi (1877-1960)

Piano Quintet no. 1 in C Minor, op. 1 (1895)

Allegro

Scherzo: Allegro vivace

Adagio, quasi andante

Finale: Allegro animate
The Musicians

LUKE WEDGE

Luke Wedge received a master ofmusic degree in violin performance from

Northwestern University and a bachelor ofmusic degree in English Literature from the University of Kansas. His principal instructors included David

Perry, Gerardo Ribeiro, and Ben Sayevich. Wedge has made solo and recital

appearances in Chicago; Lawrence, Kansas; and Washington, DC. He is

an experienced orchestral musician and has been engaged by the National

Gallery Orchestra, the National Symphony, and the Ravinia Festival, among

others. He is a member ofthe United States Air Force Strings and, since

2003, has been a member ofthe Covington String Quartet, which was the

quartet-in-residence at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

from 2003-2006.

BENJAMIN R. WENSEL

Benjamin R. Wensel holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music 

and Eastman School of Music. He has performed in seminars and master

classes for members ofthe Cleveland, Guarneri, Juilliard, Miami, and Ying

quartets; studied chamber music with Peter Salaff and members ofthe

Audubon and Cavani Quartets; and participated in solo master classes with

Clemens Michael Hagen, Steven Isserlis, and Michel Strauss.

Wensel has performed with the National Symphony Orchestra, the

ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra,

and the Syracuse Symphony as well as with many fine local ensembles.

A founding member ofthe Tarab Cello Ensemble, Wensel performed in

the premieres ofmore than twenty new works written by established

and emerging American composers, and participated in the ensemble’s

residencies at Princeton University, Stetson University, and the University

of South Florida. He taught chamber music and maintained a studio at

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the Hochstein School of Music in Rochester, New York, where he was the

cellist ofthe Hochstein String Quartet. Currendy a member ofthe faculty at

the Washington Conservatory, Wensel maintains a private studio in Arlington, Virginia, and plays with the newly formed Messaien Quartet as well as

the National Gallery Piano Trio. He can be heard on recordings produced

by the Bridge, Harmonia Mundi, and Summit record labels.

DANIELLE DESWERT HAHN

Brussels-born pianist Danielle DeSwert Hahn is a freelance collaborative

pianist and coach and the music program specialist at the National Gallery 

ofArt. She has worked as a pianist and coach with the Ash Lawn Highland

Opera Festival, Chautauqua Opera, Indianapolis Opera, Kentucky Opera,

the New Orleans Opera Association, Portland (Oregon) Opera, the San 

Francisco Opera Center, Sarasota Opera, and the Washington National

Opera. From 2004-2006 she was the principal repetiteur with the Baltimore 

Opera Company and Washington Concert Opera.

She performs regularly in chamber music and voice recitals, including

performances at the Arts Club ofWashington, the Jewish Community Center

ofGreater Washington, the Kennedy Center, the Mexican Institute ofCulture,

the National Gallery, the Russian Embassy, and the White House. She is

principal pianist with the Inscape Chamber Music Project. She holds a master

ofmusic degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she

studied with Martin Katz, and a bachelor ofmusic degree from the University 

ofCalifornia, Santa Barbara. She also studied with Warren Jones and Anne 

Epperson at the Music Academy ofthe West and was an apprentice coach

with the Washington Opera, working with Placido Domingo.

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VILMOS SZABADI

Award-winning Hungarian violinist Vilmos Szabadi has enjoyed a successful 

international performing career since 1988, when he was invited by Sir Georg

Solti to play Bartok’s Second Violin Concerto during a Bartok Festival at Royal

Festival Hall in London. The success ofthat concert led to invitations from the

bbc Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the rte Concert 

Orchestra in Dublin. Szabadi was among the musicians invited by Prince 

Charles to perform at the 1992 Buckingham Palace celebration of Solti’s

eightieth birthday. Szabadi studied under Ferenc Halasz at the Franz Liszt

Academy of Music in Budapest, and later continued his studies with Sandor 

Vegh, Ruggiero Ricci, and Lorant Fenyves. In 1982 he won first prize with 

special mention in the Hungarian Radio Violin Competition and in 1983 he

received equivalent honors in the Jeno Hubay competition in Budapest.

Szabadi plays an instrument on loan from the Hungarian state collection—

a Laurentius Storioni violin made in Cremona in 1778. In 1995 Szabadi

established a chamber music festival in Keszthely, Hungary, which has

since been relocated to the baroque palace at Godollo near Budapest. In

1999 he cofounded the Vienna Belvedere Trio with artists from the Vienna

Philharmonic Orchestra.

SZILVIA KOVACS

Born in 1987, violist Szilvia Kovacs is the 2008 winner ofthe National String

Competition in Hungary. She has been appointed co-section leader in the

Pannon Philharmonic, and has toured Germany, Poland, and Romania as a

quartet member with Vilmos Szabadi. She is currently in her final year at

Pecs Music Academy.

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Program Notes

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Trio no. 2for Piano, Violin, and Cello, dedicated to the

memory ofhis great friend and mentor, musicologist Ivan Sollertinsky, is

perhaps his most deeply felt composition. Sollertinsky died in February 1944,

just a few months after he had given the radio address for Moscow’s fiftieth

anniversary observation ofthe death ofTchaikovsky. Composed during a

troubled, war-ridden time in Russia, the trio is pervaded by a profound sense

of grief, but is still a masterful example offormal invention, making a purely 

classical form sound distinctly modem.

The trio opens with high cello harmonics, creating a stark, almost eerie

landscape. The violin joins in, muted, and is followed by the piano in a dark

and mysterious continuation ofthe canon. The pace increases to moderato

and the second theme grows out ofthe first, becoming increasingly more

agitated through the development section, and dying out in the end. In the

sardonic scherzo and trio ofthe second movement, we hear heavy dance-like

rhythms and a mock waltz, which sound somewhat joyful, but are tinged

with dissonances that render the dance more sarcastic than happy. It is

in the third movement that the depth ofthe sadness is most felt, and it is

particularly poignant following the slightly wild second movement. The

hauntingly tragic melody placed above a series ofmonochromatic chords

is a modern realization of the passacaglia, a form used by Shostakovich in

his Symphony no. 8 and again later in his first violin concerto.

There is no break between the third and fourth movements, and in

some ways the third acts as an introduction to the scope ofthe tragedy that

is to unfold in the final movement. March-like and relentlessly rhythmic,

this movement is Shostakovich’s forum for protesting the horrors of World 

War 11. He was deeply affected by the atrocities and persecution committed

against Jews during the war, and in this movement he incorporated for the

first time traditional Jewish music. In this instance, the choice was inspired

by events that occurred at Treblinka concentration camp, and the folk-dance

theme he used is his own manifestation ofthe death-dance the prisoners

were forced to do before being executed.

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The name of Laszlo Weiner (1916-1944) is known to the world primarily 

due to the efforts of his former wife, the world-famous singer and teacher 

Vera Rozsa, who settled in Great Britain after World War 11 and actively

promoted her late husband’s music. Like many musicians, Weiner showed 

his talent early in childhood. At age eighteen, he entered Zoltan Kodaly’s

composition class and studied conducting under Jeno Adam and Erno

Unger. He was a splendid pianist, often appearing in concerts, chiefly as an 

accompanist. He pursued his studies at the Budapest Academy of Music

between 1934 and 1940. His career, however, never flourished, since the 

anti-Jewish laws permitted only restricted appearances, mostly through

the actions of omike (the National Hungarian Israelite Cultural Society).

Despite his youth and isolation, news of his talent spread, and, surprisingly, 

the Hungarian Ministry of Religion and Public Education awarded him a

prize for his Sonatafor Viola and Piano in 1942.

Weiner’s four-movement Duo is dedicated to his good friends Viktor

Ajtay (who later became the concertmaster ofthe Chicago Symphony 

Orchestra) and Pal Lukacs, (a violist who was the source ofinspiration for

the greater part ofWeiner’s surviving works). Although the movements do

not carry individual titles, they follow the order of classical sonata—an 

opening Allegro; a Scherzo; a slow, doleful third movement; and a sparkling

finale, brimming with life.

Ernst von Dohnanyi (bom Erno, but he used the Germanic spelling for

most ofhis published works) began his musical career, like many nineteenthand early twentieth-century composers, as a virtuoso pianist. His began his

studies with his father, but soon moved on to the Royal Academy of Music

in Budapest, studying both piano and composition. His first symphony was

performed there in 1897. He toured successfully as a pianist throughout

Europe and eventually the United States, taught at the Berlin Academy of

Music from 1908-1915, and was for a time the conductor ofthe Budapest

Philharmonic Orchestra. He composed for every genre, including symphonic

music, concerti, choral music, and even a few operas, but he was most prolific

creating chamber music and works for solo piano.

Despite the fact that his classmates and contemporaries included Bartok

and Kodaly, two composers who made nationalism their stylistic mission,

Dohnanyi bypassed the doctrine by and large. Heavily influenced by

Brahms—to the point of blatant imitation—Dohnanyi was a romantic

composer through and through. One does hear the occasional Hungarian

melody or folk element emerge, but he intentionally wrote works in the 

romantic style. His Quintet no. 1 in C Minor, op. 1, was endorsed by Brahms, 

who promoted the work in Vienna. Employing only formal and harmonic

devices from the existing romantic style and staying within the standard

four-movement sonata form, Dohnanyi produced with his first quintet an

original and substantive composition. The piano’s anguished first theme

in the opening movement leads into an emotionally lush second theme,

highlighted in the strings. The syncopated Scherzo and lilting Trio could

stand up next to any similar movement written by Brahms, and the slow

third movement is a beautiful, uplifting moment. The closing Allegro

animato is vigorous and varied. Mostly in rhythmically forceful 5/4 time, 

it is interrupted in the middle by a five-voice fugue, and ends with a second 

statement of the initial theme ofthe first movement, bringing the entire

work full circle.

Notes on Shostakovich and Dohnanyi by Danielle DeSwert Hahn

Notes on Weiner by Vilmos Szabadi

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Next week at the National Gallery of Art

Tara Kamangar, pianist

Music by Hossein, Khaleghi, Prokofiev, and other composers

June 21, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

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