Concerts at the National Gallery ofArt

December 2001

9 Yale Russian Chorus

Mark Bailey,

artistic director

16 Havard Gimse, pianist

23 Alessandra Marc, soprano

Joseph Holt, pianist

30 James Tocco, pianist

Russian liturgical music by

Slavinetsky, Fateyev,

Smolensky, Ippolitov-Ivanov, 

Tchaikovsky, and other composers

Grieg: Norwegian Peasant Dances

Sibelius: Kylliki, Op. 41

Chopin: Nocturne No. 1

Scherzo No. 2

Prokofiev: Sonata No. 8

Christmas Concert

Brahms: Sonata No. 1

Corigliano: Etude-Fantasy

Rachmaninoff: Moments musicaux

For the convenience ofconcert goers

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

Selectionsfrom concerts at the Gallery

can he heard on the second Sunday ofeach month

at 9:00 p.m. on WGMS, 103.5 FM

The use ofcameras or recording equipment during

the performance is not allowed.

The Sixtieth Season of

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and

F. LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

2399th Concert

STEFAN VLADAR, pianist

Sunday Evening, 2 December 2001

Seven O'clock

West Building, East Garden Court

Admission free
PROGRAM

Music ofFrederic Chopin (1810-1849)

Four Ballades

Op. 23, in G Minor (1831-1835)

Op. 38, in F Major (1836-1839)

Op. 47, in A-flat Major (1840-1841)

Op. 52, in F Minor (1842)

INTERMISSION

Twenty-four Preludes, Op. 28

(1836-1839)

No. 1 in C Major 

No. 2 in A Minor 

No. 3 in G Major 

No. 4 in E Minor 

No. 5 in D Major 

No. 6 in B Minor 

No. 7 in A Major

No. 8 in F-sharp Minor

No. 9 in E Major

No. 10 in C-sharp Minor

No. 11 in B Major

No. 12 in G-sharp Minor

No. 13 in F-sharp Major 

No. 14 in E-flat Minor 

No. 15 in D-flat Major 

No. 16 in B-flat Minor 

No. 17 in A-flat Major 

No. 18 in F Minor 

No. 19 in E-flat Major

No. 20 in C Minor

No. 21 in B-flat Major

No. 22 in G Minor

No. 23 in F Major

No. 24 in D Minor

Viennese pianist Stefan Vladar returns to the National Gallery for his

second appearance, having played his Washington debut here in 1998.

Among the most active and distinctive Austrian pianists of his

generation, he studied at the Vienna Music Academy with Renate

Kramer-Praisenhammer and Hans Petermandl. The youngest contestant 

in the 1985 International Beethoven Competition of Vienna, Vladar won

its top prize. In the years since winning that contest he has enjoyed an

international career that includes collaborations with such renowned 

conductors as Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Rafael Fruhbeck de

Burgos, and Christoph von Dohnanyi. Vladar is a regular guest at many

of the world’s most prestigious festivals, including the Festival and

Mozartwoche in Salzburg, the Schleswig-Holstein and Rheingau

Festivals in Germany, and, at the personal invitation of the late Rudolf 

Serkin, the Marlboro Festival. Since 1988 he has been the artistic

director of the Neuberger Kulturtage in Styria, where he also established 

the annual Neuberger Schumann-Tage. In 1999 Vladar assumed the

artistic directorship of the Oberdsterreichische Stiftskonzerte and was

appointed professor of piano at the University of Music and Performing

Arts in Vienna. Highlights of Vladar’s 2000-2001 concert season

included performances with the American Symphony Orchestra in New

York and the New World Symphony Orchestra in Miami Beach, Florida.

In addition, he toured as guest soloist with the Vienna Symphony

Orchestra under Vladimir Fedoseyev and played in Europe and Japan.

Stefan Vladar has recorded piano concertos of Mozart with the Academy

of St. Martin in the Fields under Sir Neville Marriner, as well as solo and

chamber music of Schumann, Beethoven, Brahms, Johann Sebastian

Bach, and Richard Strauss on the Sony, Naxos, Camerata, and Koch

Classics labels. He appears at the National Gallery by arrangement with

Matthew Sprizzo of Staten Island, New York.

Each of the four Ballades of Chopin had its inspiration in the poetry of

his compatriot Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855). The elocutionary quality

of these works earned for Chopin the rightful designation as a creator 

rather than a mimic or renovator. According to the New Grove

Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the ballade is “an instrumental 

(normally piano) piece in a narrative style. It was first used by Chopin,
[who] composed four ballades [having] compound meter (6/4 or 6/8) and

a structure...governed not so much by formal procedures as by a

programmatic or literary intention.” The great German music scholar and

author, Friedrich Niecks (1845-1924), declared: “None of Chopin’s

compositions surpasses his Ballades in masterliness of form, beauty, or 

poetry of content.” The English Chopin scholar Arthur Hedley (1905-

1969) admonished: “To give a worthy account of these masterpieces is a

task not to be undertaken lightly. They represent four summits of

pianism.... If there is to be a conquest of any one of them, something 

more is required than mere nimble fingers and a few facile recipes for 

expressiveness.”

The Ballade in G Minor, Op. 23, is the opening window on four 

musical storytelling adventures. It begins like a fairy tale: “Once upon a

time, long ago....” Marked largo and in 4/4 time, this seven-bar 

introduction gives away to an ongoing narrative at the change of tempo

(,moderato) and meter (6/4). The deep passion expressed in the following 

measures seems to emanate from great longing (possibly for Chopin’s

homeland). A brief reprieve (meno mosso, sotto voce), is followed by a

short and capricious waltzlike passage, and after a return of the opening 

statement, a coda of ferocious scales and octaves brilliantly closes the

work

Ballade No. 2 in F Major, Op. 38, is dedicated to Robert Schumann 

and is said to have been the favorite of the great nineteenth-century 

Russian pianist, Anton Rubinstein. This particular ballade is the only

one believed to be linked to a specific Mickiewicz poem. The poem,

Sxvitez, spins a tale of a town and its inhabitants’ relationship with an

enchanted lake. The musical realization consists of two contrasting 

themes: the first (andantino) is unpretentious, pleasant, and meditative, 

while the second {presto con fuoco) is impetuous and rapacious almost 

to the point of being barbaric.

Considerably less aggressive than its neighbors, though not without 

passion, is the third Ballade, Op. 47. It has an outline that can be

identified with the sonata-allegro form. There are primary and secondary 

themes in the opening segment, followed by a development section, the

theme of which is extracted from the second subject but is freely

devised. The development section concludes with a brief recapitulation

based on the primary theme. Op. 47, according to music critic James

Huneker (1857-1921), “is the delight [of the schoolgirl], who familiarly

toys with its demon, seeing only favor and prettiness in its elegant

measures.” In spite of its apparently delicate fagade and flowery opening

segment, Ballade No. 3 carries an elegant air of gallantry. In the words

of the American writer Herbert Weinstock (1905-1971), this ballade “is

one of Chopin’s masterpieces.... Nothing else he composed has [its]

special quality of exultance [or the] radiant jubilation that makes this

[particular work] seem to glow upon the piano.”

Ballade No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 52, is the most eloquent and luxurious

of the four. It is a daring canvas of passionate lyricism. The opening

theme, a masterpiece of simplicity, is richly developed through Chopin’s

use of polyphonic techniques. Music critic Jean Roy sees this work as a

mingling of the “classical forms of variation and rondo masterly 

executed by Chopin.” Expanded and embroidered with each return, the

theme in its narrative tone becomes more reflective and intense, until

five long serene chords introduce a final coda of immense audacity and

velocity. Rapid scale passages in double thirds and sixths, coupled with

crackling dissonances, bring the work to a brilliant and dramatic close.

Chopin found complete satisfaction in composing works for solo

piano, excelling in the shorter musical forms (preludes, etudes, waltzes,

scherzos, and ballades). Modeled after the Well-Tempered Clavier of

Johann Sebastian Bach, whom Chopin idolized, the Preludes, Op. 28,

cover all major and minor keys. They are, as John Gillespie says in Five

Centuries of Keyboard Music, “very much like Bach’s preludes, not in

technical style but in attitude and basic concept. The

Preludes...faithfully reflect the soul of the romantic musician: brief

portrayals, some, such as No. 24, melancholy and even desperate, others,

such as No. 3, light and gay.” Before displaying his collection, a jeweler

will polish his stones to perfection. The musical jeweler Chopin polished 

his Preludes to the highest state of flawlessness that is humanly possible. 

Again quoting Gillespie: “[when] played as a set, [the Preludes] provide

a tonal mosaic, a prism of different hues. Heard singly, each emerges as

a delectable inspiration bom of concentrated emotion.”

Program notes by Elmer Booze