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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, 

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Please note that late entry or reentry after 6:30 pm

is not permitted.

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-fourth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,551st Concert

Geir Draugsvoll, accordionist

Presented in connection with the

Norwegian Christmas Festival at Union Station

December 4, 2005

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission free
Program

Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931)

De profundis (1978)

Geirr Tveitt (1908-1981)

Two Inventionsfor Accordion

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, bwv 565

Arranged for accordion by Geir Draugsvoll

Traditional Norwegian Folk Dances 

Arranged for accordion by Tor Christian Faugstad

Hop Dance

Bridal March

Hailing

INTERMISSION

Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)

Holberg Suite

Arranged for accordion by Geir Draugsvoll

Per Norgard (b. 1932)

Anatomic Safaii (1967)

The Musician

Geir Draugsvoll is internationally recognized as one ofthe foremost living

accordionists. He was born in Voss, Norway, in 1967 and studied at the

Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen with Mogens Ellegaard. Draugsvoll

combines a busy concert schedule with teaching at the Royal Academy and

at the Hochschule fur Musik und darstellende Kunst in Graz, Austria. His

repertoire of works for solo accordion and orchestra includes works by Sofia

Gubaidulina, Astor Piazzolla, Luciano Berio, Gyorgy Ligeti, Aki Takahishi,

Edison Denisov, Arne Nordheim, and Vagn Holmboe, and he has been

invited to play these unusual works by such orchestras as the Camerata

Roman, the Hamburg Camerata, the Kremerata Baltica, the Lithuanian

Chamber Orchestra, the Moscow Soloists, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra,

the Russian National Orchestra, and the Trondheim (Norway) Solistene.

The long list of world-class musicians who have performed with Draugsvoll

includes James Crabb, David Geringas, Dan Laurin, and Martti Rousi, and

the equally long list of prestigious venues in which he has played includes

the Great Hall ofthe Moscow Conservatory, Queen Elizabeth Hall in

London, the Konzerthaus in Berlin, and the Musikhalle in Hamburg.

A champion of new music for his instrument, Draugsvoll has commissioned and premiered works by Bent Lorentzen, Moens Winkel Holm, Klaus

lb Jorgensen, Staffan Mossenmark, Jesper Koch, Gunnar Valkare, Jacob ter

Veldhuis, and Andy Pape, among others. His recordings on the Simax,

DaCapo, emi Classics, and Phono Suecia labels have received consistently

enthusiastic reviews. Geir Draugsvoll appears at the National Gallery by

arrangement with Pro Arte International Management of Bergen, Norway.

3
Program Notes

Thanks to the efforts of Geir Draugsvoll and a few other classical accordionists, the accordion is experiencing a second genesis on the concert stage. Its

initial period of widespread popularity came not long after the first accordion to feature a piano-style ivory keyboard was produced in Vienna in

1863. Organists, in particular, were pleased to have a portable instrument

on which to play, and transcriptions for the accordion of works for the pipe

organ were common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 

Among the many changes that occurred in music after World War 11, transcriptions and the instruments on which they were commonly played fell

out offavor, and the accordion was relegated to popular and folk music.

Accordion historians trace its roots back to the cheng, an instrument that 

was already known in China in 3,000 BCE. It was the first known instrument

to use the free-vibrating reed principle, which is the basis ofthe accordion’s

sound production. The cheng had between thirteen and twenty-four bamboo 

pipes, a small gourd that acted as a resonator box and wind chamber, and a

mouthpiece. The cheng attracted the attention of European musicians and

craftsmen after being taken to Russia around 1770. In the 1820s the German 

instrument maker Christian Friedrich Buschmann (1775-1832) invented 

mouth-blown instruments ofthe free-reed family. Buschmann added bellows

and a button keyboard to make his “Handaeoline,” the first clearly recognizable forerunner ofthe modern accordion.

The accordion first appeared in Norway around 1850 and soon gained

favor in rural areas. During the 1870s the instrument increased in popularity,

and by 1880 there were some well-known players, among whom the most 

highly regarded was Edvard Mathisen (1850-1900). 'The accordion was

extremely fashionable in the early 1930s but then began to decline. Nevertheless, the most famous Norwegian accordionist ofthe twentieth century,

ToralfTollefsen (b. 1914), flourished from the late 1930s onward. In 1936

he played in Great Britain for the bbc, and he was invited to return in 1947

for concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra at Royal Albert Hall.

4

The first work featured in this program is by a Russian composer

residing in Germany, Sofia Gubaidulina, who first studied at the Kazan

Conservatory, graduating in 1954, and later studied composition at the 

Moscow Conservatory with Nikolay Peyko. In 1969 and 1970 she worked

at the Moscow experimental studio for electronic music and was a member

of the Astrea improvisation group. She has been the recipient of numerous

prizes and awards, including the Koussevitzky Prize (1990 and 1994),

the State Prize of Russia (1992), the Kulturpreis des Rreises Pinneberg

(1997), the Praemium Imperiale, Japan (1998), and the Preis der Stiftung

Bibel und Kultur (1999). Philosophical, spiritual, religious, and poetic ideas 

often serve as the impetus behind Gubaidulina’s works. She believes that

religion and music share a common goal, namely of “restoring the legato

oflife, re-ligio.” Gubaidulina’s Tatar extraction and her birth in the Tatar

Republic have had a profound effect on her work, which has been regarded 

as a synthesis of various elements of Eastern and Western tradition.

Gubaidulina’s Western orientation is evident in her choice of Latin, Italian,

and German texts and titles; it is frequently the case that a work’s title sums

up its content and meaning.

Geirr Tveitt was born in Bergen and studied in Leipzig and in Paris

under Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959). Tveitt was a dedicated collector and

arranger offolk music from the region along the Hardanger Fjord in western Norway. Misfortune was no stranger to Tveitt. His hand-built studio 

overlooking the Hardanger Fjord was destroyed by snow in i960, and his

house burned to the ground in 1970, incinerating almost 80 percent of his 

notes and scores. An unusual feature of his musical output is that much of

it is built on the Lydian, Dorian, and other modes, rather than classical

major and minor tonalities.
Per Norgard is one ofthe most original artists in the cultural life of

Denmark. His work as a composer, teacher, and theorist through almost

half a century has had an enormous significance for the development of

contemporary Danish art music. Norgard has written works in all categories, for amateurs as well as for professionals, and he is considered a

pivotal composer in Central European modernism. His occupation with

new structural approaches led to the discovery ofthe so-called infinity

row, a serial system or musical growth principle, which can be compared to

the symmetrical formations of nature. Norgard is known for continuously

breaking with his own traditions. His ironic pastiches and beauty-seeking 

metaphysics ofthe 1970s gave way to works strongly inspired by the

schizophrenic artist Adolf Wolfli in the 1980s and were followed in the 

1990s by experiments that Norgard calls “tone lakes.”

6
Program Notes on Anatomic Safari

Like most safaris, Per Nprgard’s Anatomic Safari is

better understood and appreciated with a guide. In this

work, the composer takes the listener through the

anatomy of the accordion, an instrument that is quite 

complex, in spite of its appearance.

Through nine small movements, the accordion is

presented in the manner of a beast encountered on a

safari. (Edvard Grieg once stated that the accordion 

sounds like “a pig with a sore throat.”) Starting with the

“lungs” of the instrument, one can hear the first deep 

breaths of the sleeping beast in the first movement,

1) Respiration.

Waking up with a shock, the beast tries to move its

body, starting with a jazzlike bass ostinato, and resulting 

in a grotesque dance:

2) Movements:

After so much physical activity, the beast/instrument 

starts exploring other sound possibilities in

3) Clusters, and 4) Fluctuations,

followed by an extremely short

5) Reaction.

The music then turns to percussive effects in

6) Percussion,

in which the effects are easily audible and recognizable.

Again, the physical and rhythmic activity becomes too

much for the poor instrument, and it descends into

7) Vertigo — Vertigo Double.

Once can almost imagine that the accordion has

contracted malaria on its safari!

As it recovers, the accordion is very eager to get back to

more familiar paths, and this can easily be heard in

8) Toccata - Impatience,

which rapidly takes the piece into the last movement:

9) Fantasy — Pietro’s Return,

which is perhaps very close to where the accordion 

really belongs. And where is that? In twelve minutes, the

composer provides the answer to that question.

Notes on Anatomic Safari by Geir Draugsvoll