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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,

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Please note that late entry or reentry of

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Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-ninth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,810th Concert

Stephen Framil, cellist

Daniel Lau, pianist

November 21, 2010 

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Gaspar Cassado (1897-1966)

Requiebros in D Major for cello and piano (1934)

}. S. Bach (1685-1750)

Suite no. 6 in D Major for unaccompanied cello, BWV 1012 (172

Allemande

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Sonata in A Minor for cello and piano, D. 821 (“Arpeggione”)

Allegro moderato

Adagio 

Allegretto

INTERMISSION

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Sonata in D Minor for cello and piano, op. 40

Allegro non troppo

Allegro 

Largo

Allegro

Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840)

Introduction and Variations on “Dal tuo stellato”

From Mose in Egitto by Gioachino Rossini
The Musicians

STEPHEN FRAMIL

Distinguished as the first American cellist to perform in Hanoi since the

Vietnam War, Stephen Framil has performed as concert soloist, chamber

musician, and conductor in Hong Kong City Hall, New York’s Avery Fisher

and Weill Recital Halls, and Philadelphia’s Verizon Hall. Among the many

orchestras that have featured him as guest soloist are the Bombay, Bangalore, 

Franz Liszt, Latvian Philharmonic, and Nashville Chamber Orchestras; the

Manila, Volgograd, and Vratza Philharmonic Orchestras; the National

Philharmonic of Moldova; the Oltenia State Filarmonica; and the Redlands,

Vietnam National, and Zaporozhye Symphony Orchestras. He has performed

with the Brunei Music Society, on the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert

Series in Chicago, and with the Hong Kong Chamber Music Society. Framil

is the music director and conductor ofCamerata Philadelphia and artistic

director ofthe Port City Music Festival in North Carolina.

A versatile and dedicated educator, Framil has given cello and chamber

music master classes at music schools and conservatories worldwide and

has adjudicated for the Hong Kong Schools of Music Festival and the Schadt

String Competition in Allentown, Pennsylvania. An advocate ofinner-city

music education, Framil is the director ofthe Philadelphia Community

Conservatory and the Philadelphia Youth Ensemble. Both programs provide

music lessons and orchestral experience to underserved youth. Framil has

held professorships at the University of Delaware, Andrews University in

Michigan, and Towson University in Maryland.

Framil’s recordings for Radio 4 Hong Kong include the complete suites

for solo cello by J. S. Bach as well as the complete works for solo cello by

Zoltan Kodaly and Gaspar Cassado. He has recorded the Haydn cello

concertos with Paul Freeman and the Czech National Symphony Orchestra.

Stephen Framil appears at the National Gallery by arrangement with ssp

International, llc, ofWayne, Pennsylvania.

4

DANIEL LAU

Pianist Daniel Lau has received enthusiastic press notices for both his solo

and chamber performances; “Exemplary artistry” (Washington Post)] “Beautifully shaded playing” (Baltimore Sun); “Playful nuances, translucent phrasing,

and miraculous sonorities” (La Liberte, Fribourg, Switzerland). With many

recitals and concertos with orchestras to his credit, Lau collaborates frequently

with singers and instrumentalists as a chamber musician. With soprano

Sabrina Coleman Clark, he has performed a multimedia show, “Marian

Anderson; A Legacy of Hope,” for thousands ofschool children. Lau is a

founding member ofthe Ravel Trio, praised recently by the Swiss Journal

du Jura for “splendid interpretation [and] vigorous and nuanced playing.”

Since 2006 Lau has released six recordings with a variety of artists,

including a CD with award-winning engineer Marc Arbort and a self-produced

solo cd, Transcendent Colors. With a special interest in Asian American and

African American composers, Lau has premiered many solo and chamber

works and can be heard on a number ofrecordings featuring music by contemporary composers. A dedicated educator, he has given master classes

and clinics throughout the United States and serves as chair ofthe Maryland

State Music Teachers Association. He serves as coordinator for the Chamber

Music Festival and competition coordinator for the American Liszt Society,

and coordinator ofthe Liszt-Garrison International Piano Festival and

Competition. He has taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of Music and the

College of Notre Dame of Maryland and is currently assistant professor of

music at Washington Adventist University.

A versatile violinist and conductor as well as a pianist, he has served as

music director for a number of opera productions. He received a bachelor of

music degree in piano performance from Loma Linda University, where he

served as concertmaster ofthe orchestra and first violinist ofthe llu String

Quartet. He also earned master and doctor ofmusical arts degrees from the

Peabody Conservatory of Music.

5
Program Notes

Gaspar Cassado was born into a musical family in Barcelona on September 30,

1897. The son of composer, church musician, and piano store owner, Joaquin

Cassado, Gaspar began his musical training at age five, singing in the church

chorus conducted by his father. Before he reached age ten, he was able to

play duets with his older brother, who was also showing great promise as a

violinist. Determined to give his sons the best musical training possible,

Joaquin moved the family to Paris in 1907, where they remained for seven

years. With the help of a grant from the city of Barcelona, Gaspar studied

with the man who would become one ofthe central figures in his life, fellow 

Catalonian Pablo Casals. Gaspar Cassado also had the opportunity to study

composition with Manuel de Falla and Maurice Ravel. Primarily active

throughout his career as a performer, Cassado also composed a number of

pieces, most ofthem for cello. His Requiebros in D for cello and piano is one

ofhis more frequently performed works.

Although they are today among the most widely known works ofJohann

Sebastian Bach, the six suites for unaccompanied cello were not rediscovered

as concert pieces until the late 1900s. No autographed manuscript survives, 

so the order in which the suites were written is a matter ofspeculation,

based on comparative analysis ofthe style ofthe pieces. Alternatively titled

Suite or Partita, they were likely composed between 1717 and 1723, when

Bach was the Cappelmeister at the court of Prince Leopold ofAnhalt-Cothen.

Following German tradition, each suite comprises a group of dance movements that are related by key signature. Some older dance forms, such as

the courante, allemande, sarabande, and gigue, are mixed with dances in

what was in the eighteenth century a “new” style: minuet, bouree, and gavotte.

Each suite is introduced by a prelude of distinct character. Set in the triumphant key of D major, the sixth suite is freer than the others, with frequent

improvisatory passages and cadenzas.

6

A five-stringed instrument resembling the cello, the arpeggione was 

invented in 1823. It is thought that arpeggione virtuoso Vincent Schuster

commissioned Schubert to write a sonata for the instrument the following

year. By the time the work was published in 1871, use ofthe arpeggione had

died out, and the sonata was played by cellists and violists. Since then transcriptions for other instruments, including double bass and flute, have been

published. An example of Schubert’s late chamber music in miniature,

the Sonata in A Minor was composed during the same period as his String

Quartet no. 14 in D Minor (“Death and the Maiden”), when the composer was 

suffering from the later stages ofsyphilis and prone to bouts of depression.

In his book Franz Schubert and the Mysterium Magnum, Schubert scholar

M. Frank Ruppert notes that the composer was deeply involved with poetry

even when writing instrumental works, and draws a connection between

each ofthe three movements ofthe “Arpeggione” Sonata and a poem Schubert set as a song in 1824. The opening Allegro is gentle and wistful, never

becoming too fast or too loud—Schubert was well aware that the arpeggione was incapable of playing fast and loud at the same time—and he may

well have had the poem “Ewige Liebe” (Eternal Love) by Ernst Schulze

(1789-1817) in mind as he wrote it.

Strings, sound in the evening stillness;

From so far away bring my dream back to me.

I hear the music in swelling harmonies,

Filling the halls with sounds oflove.

My despairing heart is rocked and raised

Above its storm offear on a flood ofmelody.

Never have these strings sung for power or for gold;

They joyfully display their precious treasure for little reward.

Ifsome resist their beauty, the songs return to their muse.

Ah, if only in song I could realize my golden dream,

Or in a battle could fight for it and make it real!

But love grants her reward easily to neither poet nor warrior.

How gladly would I die for love;

But for me love shines only in the distance, like a friendly star!

7
The rich, hymn-like Adagio has a more somber mood, akin to Heinrich

Hiittenbrenner’s (1799-1830) “Wehmut” (Melancholy).

The vesper bell chimes; peace is poured down from the heavens;

The eye clouds with tears, but does not close.

My youth is wasted; I am alone and unloved;

Every flower for me has wilted......This is my complaint!

When I was young, my heart and my world were my joy;

Now that my youth is lost, my very breath is a waste!

The stream flowing from the rocky spring and the mountains

cannot love;

Only a heart can do that, and hearts can be so easily broken by

sadness.

Sound, gentle vesper bell, throughout this quiet valley;

As dawn crowns the day, so does death crown a life ofsorrow!

The second movement moves without pause into the final Allegretto,

which, although only slightly faster in tempo that the first movement, moves

forward more urgently to its conclusion, inspired perhaps by the imagery in 

Karl Lappe’s (1773-1843) poem “Flucht” (Flight).

I want to live out-of-doors; death dwells enclosed in a box!

See the sunset reflecting upon the hillside...

Life blooms out-of-doors; misery stays inside.

Hurry, then; run outside before the heart slows.

I need the light and space!

I want to live out-of-doors!

Dear bird, let us both fly away, driven aloft by nature!

Shostakovich’s Sonata, op. 40, is a relatively early work, composed just

prior to his being censured by Soviet authorities for having composed

“bourgeois” music in the form ofhis opera Lady Macbeth o/Mtensk. Legend

has it that Shostakovich read the official statement of censure while on his 

way to the premiere performance ofthe sonata. Rife with cynicism, despair,

and mockery, it was composed during a period ofturmoil in his marriage,

and can be interpreted as an expression ofthe composer’s personal sorrow 

as well as ambivalence about the changing political situation in his country.

Written in the style ofhis larger symphonic works, the sonata has four

movements, the first ofwhich, Allegro non troppo, uses the standard sonataallegro form and gives no hint ofthe surprises to come. The second movement (Allegro) is a difficult and dissonant scherzo, in which the composer

seemingly thumbs his nose at those who wanted him to make his music

more “accessible.” The aria-like third movement juxtaposes despair and

passionate hope, and the finale, also marked Allegro, concludes abruptly,

perhaps mocking those who would expect to hear a brilliant, showy finish.

No one knows for sure why Paganini composed a set ofvariations 

entirely on the violin’s G string on an aria from Gioachino Rossini’s (1792- 

1868) opera Mose in Egitto (Moses in Egypt). There is no doubt, however, that

it is a finely crafted work, and it has been adapted by cellists as a showpiece

for the G string on their instrument. Lighthearted, witty, and effervescent,

this exercise is one of a large number of deliberately difficult compositions

that made Paganini the master oftechnical prowess by which future generations ofvirtuosi would be measured.

Program notes by Danielle DeSwert Hahn

9
Next week at the National Gallery ofArt

National Gallery ofArt Chamber Players

Renaissance Italian music

Presented in honor of

Arcimboldo, 1526-ljgj: Nature and Fantasy

November 24, 2010

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

East Building Auditorium

Ian Shapinsky, pianist

Music ofChopin, Mozart, Tchaikovsky,

and other composers

November 28, 2010

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court