The Fifty-seventh Season of

Maestro Marios’ career asa performing pianist and teacher has 

included several years on the faculty ofCatholic University where

he taught piano, conducting, and chamber music, as well as direc­

torship of the Wilmington, Delaware, School of Music, where he

presented an annual jazz festival and clinic. Manos founded and

directed for ten years the renowned Killarney Bach Festival in the

Republic ofIreland and was the music director ofthe 1992 Scandi­

navian Music Festival in Folding, Denmark.

-Program notes by Elmer Booze

Concerts at the National Gallery ofArt

1998-1999

Underthe Direction of George Manos

October 1998

11 Anthony Goldstone and

Caroline Clemmow,

duo pianists

Music for piano, four hands by

Mozart, Schubert, and

Rimsky-Korsakov

18 Francine Kay, pianist Schumann: Novelette

Fantasiestiicke

Satie: Trois valses

Debussy: Preludes

Lislejoyeuse

25 The Alcan String Quartet

November

Debussy:

Kelly-Marie

Murphy:

Grieg:

String Quartet

This Is My

Voice

String Quartet

1 National Gallery Orchestra Beethoven:

George Manos, conductor

Kathryn Hearden, soprano

Coriolanus

Overture

Scene: “Ah,

perfido!”

Symphony No.7

8 Mark Rush, violinist

Tannis Gibson, pianist

15 Kirill Gliadkovsky,pianist

22 National Gallery Orchestra

George Manos, conductor

Claudia Chudacoff, violinist

Marcio Botelho, cellist

29 Joao Carlos Martins, pianist

Beethoven: Sonata in G,

Op. 3013

Nicholas Sonatafor Solo

Maw: Violin

Prokofiev: Sonata, Op. 94a

Clementi: Sonata, Op.24!2

Beethoven:“Moonlight”

Sonata

Prokofiev: Sonata No.

3

Schumann:

“Bunte Blatter”

Symphonic

Etudes

Mozart: Don Giovanni

Overture

Symphony No. 35

Brahms: Concertofor

Violin,

Cello, and

Orchestra

J. S. Bach: Ten Preludes

and Fugues

from“The

Well-tempered

Clavier”

Mozart: Sonata, K. 309

Sonata, K. 330

The use ofcameras or recording equipment during

theperformance is not allowed.

Forthe convenience ofconcertgoers

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:30p.m.

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and

F. LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

pm: i H

2219th Concert

NATIONAL GALLERY ORCHESTRA

GEORGE MANOS, conductor

Sunday Evening, October 4, 1998

at SevenO’Clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission Free
Presented in honor ofthe Exhibition: Van Gogh’s Van Goghs:

Masterpiecesfrom the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Van Gogh’s paintings. They were appreciated by only a few colleagues and were frequently scorned by critics and the public.

PROGRAM

Richard Wagner Prelude to “Die Meistersinger

(1813-1883) von Nurnberg” (1861-1867)

Gabriel Faure

(1845-1924)

Masques et bergamasques,

from “Comedie musicale”

Opus 112 (1919)

Ouverture

Menuet

Gavotte

Pastorale

INTERMISSION

Cesar Franck Symphony in D Minor

(1822-1890) (1886-1888)

Lento; allegro non troppo

Allegretto

Allegro non troppo

For the most part, Vincent van Gogh’s preferences in and reactions to music belong among the private mysteries of his life.

A bit of evidence of his admiration for the music ofWagner exists in the form of this excerpt from a letter written by Theo van

Gogh in 1888: “before [Vincent] left, I went out with him several times to hear a Wagner concert; we both liked it very 

much....” Van Gogh’s choice of Paris as the venue in which to

live and work between 1886 and 1888 placed him in the center

of avant-garde creativity, both in the visual arts and in music. 

Paris was also the chosen home of many musicians from other

countries, including the parents of Belgian-born Cesar Franck,

who moved there in 1835 for the sake of the career of their son.

By 1886, when Van Gogh arrived in Paris, Franck was counted as

a lion of the city’s musical world, as was Gabriel Faure. Nevertheless, most of their compositions suffered the same fate as

Die Meistersinger vonNurnberg, Richard Wagner’s only comic opera, begins with a prelude that has become one of the world’s

most popular orchestral excerpts. As an introduction to the opera, it presents a musical summary of the forthcoming action,

beginning with a majestic and brawny melody that will later be 

sung by the mastersingers. Several independent melodies follow that are adroitly combined to give the prelude the role of a

raconteur. Among the many relationships that occur in the opera, love is the most prominent, prompting Wagner to write:

“The melodies ofthe mastersingers give rise to a love song; pedantry and poetry are reconciled.” At the conclusion of the prelude, several themes are fused in a contrapuntal passage, signaling a victorious end.

Masques etbergamasques was commissioned by the librettist Rene

Fauchois for a new opera to be performed at the Opera-Comique.

The pieces functioned as incidental music between scenes of

spoken dialogue in the comic opera. For the original performance, 

a choral Pavane and an orchestral version of Faure’s piano piece,

Clair de lune, were added to the four movements on this program. The atmosphere surrounding the music reflects the ambience of an era long past. However, musicologist Edward Cole 

contends that the music is looking both backward and forward:

“[Faure is] invoking elegant dance and song forms of the past

and tinting them with just enough modern color to spice them

palatably in a contemporary way.”

Written during Franck’s sixty-Fifth year, the Symphony in D

Minor (his only one) was greeted with resentment and disaffection when first performed on February 17, 1889 at the Paris

Conservatoire. The famous French composer Charles Gounod

(1818-1893) remarked: “[The symphony is] the affirmation of

incompetence pushed to dogmatic lengths.” Franck, on the other

hand, was not to be intimidated, and when asked his opinion on

hearing the first performance merely smiled and replied, “Oh, it

sounded well; just as I thought it would!”

The symphony has an innovative cyclical form. Within this

form Franck abandons the traditional four movements in favor

of three, each ofwhich shares melodic relationships to the main 

theme. The theme makes its initial appearance in the introductory Lento, presented by the basses and celli. The Lento is

followed by the Allegro non troppo, which utilizes the same melodic theme via double diminution, an unusual practice in nineteenth-century France. The second movement, Allegretto, plays

a dual role in the symphony, as both a slow movement and a

scherzo. In addition, the use of the English horn as a solo instrument and the harp as an orchestral instrument were groundbreaking for the time. The finale, Allegro non troppo, seems to

“push the envelope” even further for Franck. Harmonic innovations that startled his contemporaries, particularly the free modulations bridging unrelated keys, were extended to the use of

some parallel progressions of dominant-seventh chords. The

cyclic element manifests itself completely in this movement, as

themes heard in the first two movements reappear and form a

crystallization that is immediate and gratifying. Franck’s loyal

disciple and biographer Vincent D’Indy (1851-1931) wrote of

the work: “from this moment, cyclical form, the basis of modern

symphonic art, was created and consecrated...”.

Franck was an organist by training and received the order of

the Legion of Honor in 1885 for his work as a professor of organ

at the Paris Conservatoire. His affinity for that instrument is demonstrated by the massed orchestral sounds in the D Minor Symphony that create an imposing organ effect, against which the

strings, brass, and woodwinds are pitted alternately. Franck died

before he could know the enormous impact this work was to

have on future composers; however, he undoubtedly would have

enjoyed the notion that his only symphony has taken its place 

among the greatest symphonic masterpieces ever composed.

Conductor, composer, and pianist George Manos has been director of music at the National Gallery of Art and conductor of 

the National Gallery Orchestra since 1985. He is also artistic

director ofthe American Music Festival and ofthe Gallery’s resident vocal and chamber ensembles, which he founded. A native of Washington, George Manos organized and conducted

the Hellenic, Washington, and National Oratorio Societies and 

the American Composers and Conductors Chamber Orchestra.

Manos directed the efforts of this last ensemble toward the presentation of new works by American composers.