The Sixty-third Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,527th Concert

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 National Gallery Chamber Players Wind Quintet

Sara Nichols, flute, Ronald L. Sipes, oboe

James Bryla, clarinet, Philip C. Munds, French horn

Danny K. Phipps, bassoon, with Gabor Csalog, pianist

Presented in honor of Andre Kertesz in cooperation with

the Embassy of the Republic of Hungary

March 13, 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.

Program

Ferenc Farkas (1905-2000)

Antiche danze ungheresi del ly. secolo (1959)

Julius Fucik (1872-1916)

Der alte Brummbar op. 210

Gyorgy Ligeti (b. 1923)

Six Bagatellesfor Wind Quintet from Musica ricercata (1953)

INTERMISSION

Ludwig Thuille (1861-1907)

Sextet in B-flat Majorfor Piano and Wind Quintet op. 6 (1891)

Allegro moderato

Larghetto

Gavotte: Andante, quasi allegretto

Finale: Vivace
The Musicians

NATIONAL GALLERY CHAMBER PLAYERS WIND QUINTET

Since the enthusiastic public reception ofits first concert in 1995, the

National Gallery Chamber Players Wind Quintet has become a regular

feature ofthe Gallery’s popular Sunday evening concerts. Founded by

former National Gallery music director George Manos, the ensemble

explores and presents masterpieces of chamber music that are not often

heard as well as the standard classics for wind quintet.

SARA NICHOLS

Sara Nichols is the principal flutist ofthe Baltimore Opera and was acting

assistant principal flutist ofthe Baltimore Symphony for two years. She 

also appears with the Opera Theater of Saint Louis. In addition to frequent

appearances with the National Gallery Orchestra, she performs at Wolf

Trap. Nichols is a member of Quintigre, the award-winning resident wind

quintet at Towson University in Towson, Maryland, and plays flauto traverse

with Pro Musica Rara. She is a member ofthe music faculty at Towson 

University and the Baltimore School ofthe Arts.

RONALD L. SIPES

Oboist Ronald Sipes studied with Marc Lifschey and received the Bachelor 

and Master of Music degrees from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Fie has played principal oboe in the Orquesta Sinfonica de Castille y Leon

(Valladolid, Spain), the New World Symphony, and the Orquesta del Estado 

de Mexico. Since moving to the Northern Virginia area in 1994, Sipes has

played with numerous orchestras and ensembles, including the National 

Gallery Orchestra, the Washington Opera, and the Theater Chamber Players.

4

JAMES BRYLA

Clarinetist James Bryla, a former pupil of Sidney Forrest, received the

Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Catholic University of

America, where he also served on the faculty. Fie made his solo debut with

the National Symphony Orchestra at age twenty-one as the winner of

the 1987 Young Soloist Competition. In addition, he has won numerous

other awards, including the Milton W. King Memorial Certificate, the

Presser Scholar Award, and the International Clarinetist Competition

(1986 and 1987). Bryla is currently the principal clarinetist ofthe National

Gallery Orchestra, the Alexandria Symphony, and the East Wind Consort.

PHILIP C. MUNDS

Philip C. Munds occupies the chair of assistant principal French horn in

the Baltimore Symphony. A native of Napa, California, and a graduate of

the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he has performed with the San

Francisco Symphony and as principal hornist ofthe Santa Cruz, Modesto, 

and Berkeley, California, symphony orchestras. From 1989 to 1997, he

was associate principal horn ofthe United States Air Force Band. He has

also played with the National Gallery Orchestra, the Richmond Symphony, 

and the Alexandria Symphony.

DANNY K. PHIPPS

Retired Senior Master Sergeant Danny K. Phipps was the principal bassoonist

with the United States Air Force Concert Band at Bolling Air Force Base

for twenty years. A graduate ofthe Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia,

Phipps received the Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from

the Catholic University ofAmerica. Currently an active performer and teacher

in the Baltimore/Washington area, he is the principal bassoonist with the

National Gallery Orchestra and the National Gallery Chamber Players as well

as the Annapolis Chamber Orchestra. He is the associate dean ofthe music

conservatory and professor of bassoon and bassoon literature at Shenandoah

University in Winchester, Virginia, where he has been a faculty member

since 1987.

5
gAbor csalog

The National Gallery Chamber Players Wind Quintet welcomes as a collaborating musician for this concert the celebrated Hungarian pianist Gabor

Csalog, who teaches chamber music at the Bela Bartok Conservatory in

Budapest. He has appeared in the United States under several auspices,

including the University of Iowa School of Music’s Piano Festival in

2000-2001. Csalog was born in i960 in Budapest. He began playing the

piano at age six and was accepted at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music

at age eleven. He studied with Hungary’s most renowned piano teachers, 

including Gyorgy Kurtag, Zoltan Kocsis, and Andras Schiff. As a postgraduate student at Indiana University in Bloomington, he was the teaching 

assistant to the renowned Hungarian pianist/teacher Gyorgy Sebok for two

years. Csalog is a noteworthy performer of contemporary music, having

worked closely with composers Kurtag and Laszlo Sary. Csalog’s first solo

recording, released in 1990, includes works by Robert Schumann and 

Alexander Scriabin. Csalog has recorded mazurkas and nocturnes for

the Hungaroton label as well as a selection of Schubert’s works for the 

Fono Records label. One of his most recent projects is a CD that pairs the 

Transcendental Etudes of Liszt and Ligeti, recorded for Budapest Music

Center Records.

6

Andre Kertesz

In a seventy-year career that spanned much ofthe twentieth century, Andre 

Kertesz (1894-1985) made some ofthe most deceptively simple yet compelling and poetic photographs ever created. The exhibition of his works

on view February 6 through May 15, 2005, at the National Gallery of Art

is the first major retrospective of vintage Kertesz photographs held in the

United States; the show also presents works never before exhibited or

reproduced. Following its premiere in Washington, the exhibition will

travel to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where it will be on view

June 12 through September 5, 2005.

Including some ofthe most celebrated works in twentieth-century

photography, such as Chez Mondrian and Satiric Dancer, both from 1926,

the exhibition features photographs from all periods of Kertesz’s exceptionally rich and diverse body of work, known for its mysterious blend of

exuberance and sensitivity. Beginning with early photographs of his native

Budapest made in the 1910s and early 1920s, the exhibition moves on to

his studies of Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, and culminates in the final

series of photographs he took of New York in the 1970s and 1980s, shortly 

before his death.

It was during his time in Paris that Kertesz became acquainted with a

wide circle offellow artists and musicians. Most of these were painters and

graphic artists who sought to find the roots of a new Hungarian identity 

through a celebration of Hungary’s rural past and its peasant life. Some,

however, were composer/performers who explored the same creative path, 

two of whom were the subject oftwo of his most famous photographs:

the pianist and composer Imre Weisshaus (known in France as Paul Arma);

and Feri Roth, a violinist who founded the Feri Roth Quartet in Budapest

in 1926. The influence of their art and ideas can be seen in such Kertesz

photographs as Blind Musician, Atony (1921).

7
Program Notes

Even as Andre Kertesz expanded and deepened the parameters of photography in his work ofthe 1920s and 1930s, Hungarian composers were playing an important part in the expansion of musical horizons during the same

two decades. Ferenc Farkas finished his studies at the Budapest Academy

of Music in 1927. In 1929, he left Hungary in order to study composition

in Rome with Ottorino Respighi. The Italian title of Farkas’ work on this

program, Antiche danze ungheresi del 17. secolo (Ancient Hungarian Dances

ofthe Seventeenth Century), pays homage to Respighi, among whose more

famous works are three sets of Antiche arie e danze based on seventeenthcentury Italian melodies. Farkas’ long career as a teacher and composer

included directorship ofseveral music schools and a twenty-five year tenure

as professor of music at the Budapest Academy of Music, where his pupils

included Gyorgy Ligeti and Gyorgy Kurtag.

Julius Fucik was a Czech bandmaster and composer who studied with

Antonin Dvorak. His career took him to various military outposts in the

Austro-Hungarian empire, one of which was Budapest. In addition to 

the comic polka included in this program, the title of which translates The

Grumpy Old Bear, Fucik composed a requiem and nearly three hundred

waltzes, marches, and overtures.

Gyorgy Ligeti was one ofthe first composers to make famous a style of

composition that emerged in the 1960s in which distinct pitches and rhythms

are abandoned in favor of chromatic sound clusters. The style necessitates a

new approach to musical notation, using graphic illustrations ofthe character

ofthe sounds rather than notes and rests. The Six Bagatelles date from the

period before the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, when Ligeti was still living in

Hungary and was allowed to publish only the most conservative of his works.

8

Ludwig Thuille was bom to a Savoyard family in Bolzano, Italy. He 

received his first musical training from his father, an amateur musician who 

died when Ludwig was eleven years old. He was sent to the Benedictine Abbey

at Kremsmimster, Austria, for further instruction. Recognized as a prodigy, he

was transferred to the Royal Music School in Munich, where his teacher was

the prominent German organist Joseph Rheinberger. Thuille was appointed

to the faculty ofhis alma mater in 1883 and established a considerable reputation throughout Germany and Austria as a chamber pianist, accompanist,

and composer. He also wrote an instruction book on harmony that remained

a standard pedagogical work throughout Europe until long after his death.

His Sextet is an early work, exhibiting a fortuitous mixture ofromantic gaiety

and German fervor. In the second movement (Larghetto), the French hom is

beautifully utilized as it presents the theme. The Gavotte shows Thuille playing

with some ofthe expectations of his listeners, most ofwhom knew what to

expect from a dance movement ofthis type. It has the customary binary form

with a return ofthe first section at the end ofthe movement. Normally these

sections have a major key/minor key/major key sequence, but Thuille reverses 

this. As a further innovation, he doubles the speed when he changes the key.

The finale has the feverishly active character ofthe Italian dance known as

the saltarello.

9
The Sixty-third Season of Concerts

at the National Gallery of Art

Under the direction of Stephen Ackert

March-April 2005

West Building, West Garden Court* 

Admission free

Programs subject to change

Detailed information at wuw.nga.gov or (202) 842-6941

MARCH APRIL

March 20, 27, and April 3, 2005

Concerts in honor ofthe exhibition

Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre

20 L’Orchestre de Chambre Fran$ais

Brian Suits, conductor

with Kyung Sun Lee, violinist

Ravel: Pavane

Magnard: Suite op. 2

Lekeu: Adagio for Strings

Debussy: Petite Suite

Saint-Saens: Romance op. 48

27 Philippe Entremont, pianist

Debussy: Selections from

Preludes and Images

Ravel: Sonatine; Gaspard de la nuit

3 Rosa Lamoreaux, soprano

Betty Bullock, pianist

French cabaret concert

April 10, 17, 24, and May 1, 2005

Concerts in honor of the exhibition

Gilbert Stuart

10 Christ Church Cathedral Choir,

Oxford, England

Music by Attwood, Crotch, Billings,

and other British and American

composers of Stuart’s time

17 National Gallery Orchestra

Stephen Simon, guest conductor

Music by Haydn, Boyce, and other

composers of Stuart’s time

24 Penelope Crawford, fortepianist

Stephen Ackert, organist

Music of Stuart’s time for fortepiano,

harpsichord, and organ

‘unless otherwise indicated