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The Seventy-first Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,910th Concert

Michael Lewin, piano

November 11, 2012

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Preludes, Book 11 (complete)

Brouillards (Mists)

Feuilles mortes (Dead Leaves)

La Puerta del vino (The Gate ofWine)

Les Fees sont d’exquises danseuses (Fairies are Exquisite Dancers)

Bruyeres (Heather)

General Lavine—eccentric

La Terrasse des audiences du clair de lune

(The Balcony Where Moonlight Holds Court)

Ondine

Hommage a S. Pickwick Esq. P. P. M. P. C.

(Homage to S. Pickwick, Esquire)

Canope (Canopic Jar)

Les Tierces alternees (Alternating thirds)

Feux d’artifice (Fireworks)

Debussy

Lisle joyeuse (The Isle ofJoy)

INTERMISSION

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

Vallee d’Obermann

From Annees de Pelerinages, vol. 1 (“Suisse”)

Sonetto del Petrarca no. 123

From Annees de Pelerinages, vol. 11 (“Italia”)

Mendelssohn/Liszt

AufFliigen des Gesanges (On Wings of Song)

Liszt

Concert Paraphrase ofthe Waltzfrom Gounod's Faust
The Musician

Launched with victories in the Franz Liszt International Piano Competition,

the American Pianists Association Beethoven Fellowship, and the William

Kapell International Competition, pianist Michael Lewin’s career has taken

him to more than thirty countries, playing with orchestras and in recital in

the Athens Megaron, Holland’s Muziekcentrum Vredenburg, Hong Kong’s

City Hall Theater, London’s Wigmore Hall, Moscow’s Great Hall, and Taipei’s

National Concert Hall. In the United States, Lewin has been heard at the

Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, Lincoln Center in New York, the Library

ofCongress in Washington, and Symphony Hall in Boston. Additional appearances include concertos with the Bucharest Enescu Philharmonic; Cairo 

Symphony; Filarmonica de Guadalajara; Mongolia State Opera Orchestra;

the Colorado, Illinois, Indianapolis, Jupiter, Miami, Nevada, North Carolina,

Phoenix, Puerto Rico, and West Virginia Symphony Orchestras; the Sinfonia

da Camera; and the Youth Orchestra ofthe Americas.

Deeply committed to guiding and nurturing gifted young pianists, Lewin

is one ofAmerica’s most sought-after teachers. He is on the piano faculty 

ofthe Boston Conservatory of Music, where he is also artistic director of

the Piano Masters Series, and a visiting artist at Boston University. A native

New Yorker and Juilliard graduate, Lewin’s teachers include Leon Fleisher, 

Irwin Freundlich, Adele Marcus, and Yvonne Lefebure.

Selected for prestigious career grants from the Martha Baird Rockefeller

Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Aaron Copland

Recording Fund, Michael Lewin was the artistic director of Steinway’s Gala

150th Anniversary Concert, held in 2003 in Boston’s Symphony Hall. A

Steinway Artist, he appears at the National Gallery by arrangement with

Jonathan Wentworth Associates, ltd, www.jwentworth.com.

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Program Notes

Written within a relatively short period oftime between 1909 and 1913, Claude

Debussy’s twenty-four Preludes are divided into two livres (books). Short,

improvisatory, and free-form, they are vignettes filled with character, tending

to concentrate on a specific figuration. Unlike Chopin and Bach, Debussy

did not arrange his set ofpreludes in chromatic order according to the keys

in which they were written. The titles assigned to each Prelude were printed

at the end of each piece, perhaps so the listener’s imagination would not be 

clouded by the imagery provided by the composer.

“Brouillards” (Mists or Fogs) opens the set quietly, suggesting dense fog with

briefmoments ofluminosity, and features bitonality between the two hands.

“Feuilles mortes” (Dead leaves) sounds like a continuation of “Brouillards”

as the two opening chords expand the previous closing chords. Manuscripts

from 1911 suggest that Debussy conceived the pieces as a pair.

“La Puerta del vino” (The Gate ofWine) provides dramatic contrast.

Inspired by a postcard he received from Manuel de Falla, Debussy depicted

Granada’s “Gate ofWine,” a Gypsy meeting place. Despite never having visited 

Spain, he knew flamenco music with its alternating sections offrenzied

strumming and soulful singing.

“Les Fees sont d’exquises danseuses” (The Fairies Are Exquisite Dancers)

is Debussy’s musical response to Arthur Rackham’s illustration for J.M.

Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. Rackham’s little fairy dances on a

cobweb between two branches, depicted in a delicate style that Debussy

captures with a filigree of broken chords, trills, and tremolos.

“Bruyeres” (Heather) projects a simple, pastoral atmosphere with its

diatonic melodies and harmonies.

“General Lavine—eccentric” was an American clown who performed at 

the Marigny Theater on the Champs-Elysees. One of Debussy’s more amusing

Preludes, it features a “cakewalk” rhythm and shows the influence ofminstrels

on the cafe life in Paris.

“La Terrasse des audiences du clair de lune” (The Balcony Where Moonlight

Holds Court) is an evocative Prelude, inspired by an Oriental moonlit evening.

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“Ondine” (Undine) presents the mercurial mood of a water sprite. 

Debussy masterfully depicts the swelling ofthe waters as the mortals were 

lured to their watery graves by the sprites’ beauty and captivating songs.

“Hommage a S. Pickwick Esq. P. P. M. P. C.” pays tribute to one of

Debussy’s favorite characters by his beloved Charles Dickens. The piece

begins with an irreverent reference to the British national anthem, “God

Save the King.”

“Canope” (Canopic Jar) was probably inspired by some of Debussy’s

own collection of Egyptian funeral urns. The composer evokes a mysterious, 

ancient atmosphere, even suggesting some Eastern instruments he may

have heard at the 1889 Paris exposition.

“Les Tierces alternees” (Alternating Thirds) is something of an etude, and

stands out as the only purely abstract rather than pictorial piece ofthe set.

“Feux d’artifice” (Fireworks) is one of Debussy’s most difficult and impressive works for piano. Truly living up to its name, it encompasses the entire

range ofthe piano and dynamics from very soft to very loud, with glissandos, 

arpeggios, and even a nod to the “Marseillaise” before the fireworks come to

an end.

Among the sunniest and most extroverted of his works, Debussy’s Lisle

joyeuse does not betray the turmoil that had taken hold of his personal life

during the year he composed it. In 1904 the composer left his first wife

and had taken up with Emma Bardac, the wife of a banker. Paris was giddily

scandalized by the affair. In spite ofit all (or perhaps because ofit), Debussy 

was inspired by a painting by Jean-Antoine Watteau, entitled The Pilgrimage

to Cythera, in which young couples are depicted on the mythological island

oflove. The virtuosic piece, with its rippling textures and lush harmonies is

the perfect musical description ofthe painting.

The title ofLiszt’s three volumes ofAnnees de pelerinage (Years of Pilgrimage)

refers to Goethe’s novel ofself-realization, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.

The first two books were inspired by the composer’s travels through Switzerland and Italy. In his introduction to the entire work, he wrote, “Having

recently travelled to many new countries, through different settings and

places consecrated by history and poetry; having felt that the phenomena of

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nature and their attendant sights did not pass before my eyes as pointless

images but stirred deep emotions in my soul, and that between us a vague

but immediate relationship had established itself, an undefined but real rapport, an inexplicable but undeniable communication, I have tried to portray 

in music a few ofmy strongest sensations and most lively impressions.”

Published in 1855, the first book, “Suisse,” contains the most extended 

piece, “Vallee d’Obermann.” Liszt’s Annees de pelerinage enshrines many

ofthe central features ofromanticism: the desire to wander; the search for

solitude within beautiful landscapes and a sense of oneness with nature; the 

cross-fertilization ofmusic and literature; and the journey of discovery, both 

outward (the physical exploration) and inward (the sense of personal pilgrimage). Liszt conveys Obermann’s sense ofwonder at nature’s impenetrable

grandeur with impressive effect.

“Sonetto del Petrarca no. 123” comes from Liszt’s second volume ofAnnees

de pelerinage, “Italy.” The title is taken from Petrarch’s 123rd Sonnet, I vidi

in terra angelici costumi (I beheld on earth angelic grace and heavenly beauty 

unmatched in all the world.) Angels come to earth, and the beloved’s beauty 

takes the poet’s breath away as the air is filled with sweetness. The music,

with its restless harmonies, achieves a lightheaded stasis.

From Liszt’s vast output of almost 600 works, more than a third are

transcriptions, fragments, fantasies, or variations based on works by other

composers. One ofthe many songs he chose to transcribe was Mendelssohn’s

AufFliigeln des Gesanges (On Wings of Song). Setting a love poem by Heinrich

Heine, the song describes a journey to an exotic land, well-suited to the 

lovers’ “dream of bliss.” As with most of Liszt’s transcriptions, this is a

virtuosic work requiring formidable technique.

Liszt’s lifelong fascination with the Faust story inevitably led him to transcribe selections from Gounod’s opera. As with the Mendelssohn transcription, Liszt’s version ofthe “Waltz” from the opera’s second act carries the

original music to a new level of passion and excitement.

Program notes by Danielle DeSwert Hahn, music program specialist,

National Gallery ofArt

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