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 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 20783

wiviv.ngfl.gov

The Sixty-sixth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,666th Concert

Parisii Quartet

Arnaud Vallin and Jean-Michel Berrette, violin

Dominique Lobet, viola

Jean-Philippe Martignoni, cello

With

Jerome Correas, baritone

Emmanuel Strosser, pianist

March 16, 2008

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Presented in honor ofthe exhibition

In the Forest ofFontainebleau:

Painters and Photographersfrom Corot to Monet

Program

Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983)

String Quartet (1917-1919)

Modere

Intermede

Final

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Don Quichotte a Dulcinee

Chanson romanesque

Chanson epique

Chanson a boire

Reynaldo Hahn (1875-1947)

Quintet in F-sharp Minorfor Piano and Strings

Molto agitato e con fuoco 

Andante (non troppo lento)

Allegretto grazioso

INTERMISSION

Gabriel Faure (1845-1924)

La Bonne chanson

For baritone, piano, and string quartet

Une sainte en son aureole

Puisque l’aube grandit

La lune blanche luit dans les bois 

J'allais par des chemins perfides

J’ai presque peur, en verite 

Avant que tu ne fen ailles

Done, ce sera par un clair jour d’ete 

N’est-ce pas?

L’hiver a cesse
The Musicians

Formed in 1984 by four prize-winning graduates ofthe Conservatoire National 

Superieur de Paris, the Parisii Quartet won early acclaim with its triumphs

at three major international competitions: Banff (1986), Munich (1987), and

Evian (1987). Invitations followed from the major concert halls and festivals

of Europe, and the Parisii has since toured regularly throughout Europe and

the United Kingdom. Highlights ofthe Quartet’s recent European seasons

include concerts in Barcelona, Edinburgh, Lausanne, Madrid, Moscow, and

Saint Petersburg. Much in demand in Paris, the ensemble has been featured

at the Opera de la Bastille in a presentation of all the quartets by Haydn. It

has also performed all ofthe Beethoven string quartets at the Salle Gaveau,

and it has appeared frequently at the Musee d’Orsay.

Noted for its performances of distinctive and unusual repertoire from

the eighteenth through the twenty-first centuries, the Parisii has distinguished itselfwith award-winning recordings ofintriguing works by French

composers Reynaldo Hahn, Gabriel Pierne, and Germaine Tailleferre, 

as well as the complete works for string quartet by Anton Webern. The

ensemble has recently completed a recording ofthe sixteen string quartets

of Darius Milhaud, which won the Grand Prix Charles Cros, and made

the premiere recording of Le Livre pour quatuor by Pierre Boulez.

Jerome Correas has established a reputation as one ofthe finest French

bass-baritones, with wide-ranging musical abilities and interests. He has

had major roles in operas ofthe eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth

centuries, including Handel’s Admetto with the Montpellier and Sydney

Operas, Dallapiccola’s Volo di Notte in Paris, Rameau’s Zoroastre in Brussels,

Lyon, and New York, and Verdi’s La Traviata in Toulouse. He has toured

throughout France and in Australia, China, South America, and the United

States in collaborations with noted conductor William Christie, winning

widespread acclaim for his performances in works by Handel, Marais, 

Lalande, Rameau, and others. He performs frequently in concert halls

and at festivals in the great choral works of Bach, Beethoven, Charpentier,

Couperin, Faure, Handel, and Rameau.

4

Pianist Emmanuel Strosser began his musical studies at the age ofsix with

Helene Boschi in his native town of Strasbourg, France. He later enrolled in

the Paris Conservatoire and studied piano with Jean-Claude Pennetier and

chamber music with Christian Ivaldi. After being unanimously awarded the

first prizes in both these disciplines he completed his training under Dimitri

Bashkirov, Leon Fleischer, and Maria Joao Pires. Laureate ofthe International

Chamber Music Competition of Florence, he was a finalist in the Clara Haskil 

Competition in 1991. An assistant to Alain Planes at the Paris Conservatoire, 

Strosser appears regularly as a soloist in recitals and with many French orchestras (notably the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France) as well as with European orchestras in Spain, including

those in Barcelona and Bilbao; Italy; and in the North ofEurope. Strosser can 

be heard in several recordings, among them works by Gabriel Faure for Assai,

and Mozart piano solo pieces for Harmonia Mundi.

The Parisii Quartet, Jerome Correas, and Emmanuel Strosser appear

at the National Gallery by arrangement with Melvin Kaplan, Inc., of

Burlington, Vermont.

5
Program Notes

Germaine Tailleferre was born Marcelle Taillefesse at Saint Maur Des Fosses,

Ile-de-France. As a young woman, she changed her last name to Tailleferre to

spite her father who had refused to support her musical studies. She studied

piano with her mother at home, composed short works ofher own, and

subsequently enrolled in the Conservatory in Paris, where she met Georges 

Auric, Arthur Flonegger, and Darius Milhaud. At the Paris Conservatory she

won first prize in several categories and wrote the eighteen short works in the

Petit livre de harpe de Madame Tardieu for Caroline Tardieu, the Conservatory’s

assistant professor ofharp. Tailleferre associated with the artists of Montmartre

and Montparnasse, including the sculptor Emmanuel Centore, who would 

eventually marry her sister Jeanne. It was in the Montparnasse atelier of one 

ofher painter friends where the initial idea for the cooperative among six

composers, “Les Six,” began. The publication ofJean Cocteau’s manifesto Le

Coq et I'Arlequin resulted in Henri Collet’s media articles that led to instant fame

for the group. Tailleferre was the only female member of Les Six. Tailleferre's

quartet is an early work, from the same period as Jeux de plein air for two

pianos. Modere and Intermede were written first (in November and December

1917) and were performed separately until the Final was added to them in

October 1919. The quartet received its first performance at the Concerts 

Delgrange in 1920. It is dedicated to Arthur Rubinstein.

Maurice Ravel was born in Ciboure, France, near Biarritz, part ofthe

French Basque region that borders on Spain. His mother, Marie Delouart,

was Basque, and his father, Joseph Ravel, was a Swiss inventor and industrialist. At age seven, Ravel began piano lessons and composed pieces by age

twelve. His parents encouraged his musical pursuits and sent him to the

Conservatoire de Paris, first as a preparatory student and eventually as a

piano major. During his schooling in Paris, Ravel joined with a number

ofinnovative young artists who referred to themselves as the “Apaches”

(“hooligans”) because oftheir wild abandon. The group was well known

for its drunken revelry.

6

Ravel studied music at the Conservatoire under Gabriel Faure. During

his years at the conservatory, he tried numerous times to win the prestigious

Prix de Rome, but to no avail. After a scandal involving his loss ofthe prize

in 1905 (to Victor Gallois), even though he was considered the favorite to

win that year, Ravel left the conservatory. The incident—named the Ravel

Affair by the Parisian press—also led to the resignation ofthe Conservatoire’s director, Theodore Dubois.

Don Quichotte a Dulcinee is a set ofthree songs by Ravel that are set to

texts by Paul Morand (1888-1976). This was Ravel’s last completed work. It

had been commissioned for a film by G.W. Pabst, starring Chaliapine, but

the slowness of Ravel’s composing meant that the songs were not used, and

Jacques Ibert provided some songs instead. The first performance was given

by Martial Singher with the Colonne Orchestra on December 1,1934.

Half a century after his death, only a handful of Reynaldo Hahn’s

compositions are still regularly performed: Ciboulette (rightly considered as

a refined operetta) and a number ofsongs (regarded by singers as being

among the very finest, and on a par with those of Debussy and Faure). 

Hahn’s symphonic works, piano pieces, chamber music, operas, and most

of his operettas still await revival. Even during his lifetime, Hahn’s name

appeared only rarely in the writings of other musicians. He is absent from

Debussy’s critical articles, the writings of Ravel, Poulenc’s correspondence,

and Milhaud’s memoirs, as ifhis life were spent “out ofthe picture.” One

only has to read Hahn’s own writings to realize that his life did indeed

revolve around other circles. His perception ofthe world and of art included

not only music, but also travel, landscapes, painting, and literature, and his

friends came from the world ofletters and the theatre and included Marcel 

Proust and Sarah Bernhardt. Hahn’s actual conception ofmusic was totally 

personal, bringing together Mozart and Chabrier, Saint-Saens and the

7
chansonniers ofthe belle epoque. This singularity (which has all too often been

passed off'as a subtle ‘worldliness’) no doubt explains not only why Hahn’s

oeuvre has for the most part fallen into oblivion, but also the amazing

response that these works enjoy when they are revived. For Reynaldo Hahn

was by no means a second-rate musician, overshadowed by his contemporaries; he was an extraordinary artist who, in the Paris of 1900, developed

his own, absolutely personal world.

Chamber music takes up a relatively large portion of Hahn’s catalogue

of works. The Piano Quintet was, with the Sonatafor Violin and Piano, the 

most frequently performed of his chamber works during his own lifetime.

French musicians ofthe last years ofthe nineteenth and the early years of

the twentieth century were fond ofworks for piano and strings. The result

was a bumper crop of piano trios, piano quartets, and piano quintets, signed

by such names as Faure, Franck, Pierne, Saint-Saens, Vierne, and Widor.

This contribution by Hahn, composed in 1921 and first performed the following year in Paris at the Salle Gaveau by the pianist Marguerite Vaudilliers

and the Gaston Poulet Quartet, clearly fits in with that context, with its

musical coloring often evocative of Faure, its full harmonies, and its insinuative melodic motifs. Instead ofthe exuberance ofthe anneesfolles as

expressed by the Les Six, this piece is in continuity with the belle epoque,

nourished by classicism. Evoking the slow movement ofthis quintet, the

music critic Claude Rostand wrote: “Of all the works composed by Reynaldo

Hahn, this is the one I would choose ifthere [were] to be only one.”

In 1870, Paul Verlaine wrote a cycle oftwenty-one poems for his bride 

Mathilde Maute de Fleaurville. Faure chose nine ofthese poems, altering

their order for the sake of dramatic and musical architecture, for his most

ardently passionate song cycle, La Bonne chanson. This is his most extroverted and impetuous work, which probably accounts for its relative popularity.

It is said that Faure transferred into La Bonne chanson all the passionate love

he then felt for Emma Bardac, Debussy’s future second wife. The composition ofthe cycle lasted from August 1892 until February 1894, when only

eight ofits nine movements were deemed ready for performance by the

composer. The first performance took place on April 25,1894, in the drawing-room of Madame Lemaire, with baritone Maurice Bages singing and 

Faure at the piano. L’hiver a cesse (no. 9) did not reach the publisher until

September ofthat year. The first public and complete performance was

almost one year later, in April 1895, on which occasion Faure was again the 

pianist and the baritone was Jeanne Remade. Audiences and critics alike

were baffled by the novelty ofthe musical idiom, and Marcel Proust was

one ofthe very few immediate admirers, whereas Saint-Saens thought his 

friend Faure “had gone completely mad.”

Notes on Tailleferre by Jean-Yves Bras (translated by Roger Greaves)

and Wikipedia.org. Used by permission. All other notes provided by

Melvin Kaplan, Inc.

9
Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

Tapestry

Faces ofa Woman

Music by De Dia, McAllister, Szymko, and von Bingen

In honor ofWomen’s History Month

March 19, 2008

Wednesday afternoon, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

Harvard Glee Club

New and Old Glee Club Favorites

March 23, 2008

Sunday afternoon, 4:00 pm

East Building Large Auditorium