rustic high spirits with tinges of melancholy and occasional

moments of defiance. Reflecting on the coda as Schubert’s

last music for piano solo, Robert Schumann wrote: “ [Schubert]

ends gaily and cheerfully, as though fully able to face another

day’s work.”

-Program notes by ToddCrow, adaptedandeditedby

RachelBrintnall

Concerts at The National Gallery ofArt

Under the Direction of George Manos

December 1997

14 Dunsmuir Piano Quartet Brahms: Piano Quartetin C

Minor

Helps: Quartet (1991)

Haydn: Trio in E Major

21 Columbia Collegiate Chorale Christmas concert

James Bingham, conductor

28 Gottlieb Wallisch, pianist Beethoven: Sonata, Op. 31/3

Debussy: Fstampes

Chopin: Sonata No. 2

Polonaise, Opus 44

Mazurka, Opus 3014

January 1998

4 National Gallery Orchestra Gala Viennese New Year concert

George Manos, conductor

Throughoutthe month ofDecember, highlightsfrom the Gallery s

1996-1991 concertseason can be heardon “Musicfrom Washington, ”

broadcast on Wednesdays at 9:00pm on WETA, 90.9 FM.

The use ofcameras or recording equipment

during theperformance is not allowed.

Forthe convenience ofconcertgoers

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:30pm.

The Fifty-sixth Season of

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and

F. LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

2249th Concert

TODD CROW, pianist

Sunday Evening, December 7, 1997

at Seven O’Clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission Free
PROGRAM

Joseph Haydn Sonata in C Major

(1732-1809) Hob. XVI/50 (1794-1795)

Allegro

Adagio

Allegro molto

Bela Bartok

(1881-1945)

Moderato

Allegro molto 

Allegro vivace

Molto tranquillo

Comodo

Finale: Allegro

Dance Suite

(1923)

INTERMISSION

Franz Schubert Sonata in B-flat Major

(1797-1828) D. 960 (1828)

Molto moderato

Andante sostenuto

Scherzo: Allegro vivace

con delicatezza

Allegro, ma non troppo

TODD CROW’s keyboard artistry has received critical acclaim

in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, as well as in

major newspapers in South America and Europe. He made his

London orchestral debut in 1986 at the Barbican Centre with

the London Philharmonic and his Carnegie Hall debut in 1992

as soloist with the American Symphony. He performs regularly

in London and New York and is heard frequently on BBC Radio

in both live and recorded performances. This summer he completed his first season as music director of the Mount Desert

Festival of Chamber Music in Northeast Harbor, Maine, where

he has performed for many years. Mr. Crow is an honors graduate of the University of California and the Juilliard School of

Music. His teachers have included Irma Starr, Erno Daniel, Ania

Dorfmann, and Emanuel Bay. He received the University of

California’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 1986, and is a professor of music at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Joseph Haydn’s last three piano sonatas were written for

Therese Jansen-Bartolozzi, a German-born pianist who settled

in England and became a pupil of Clementi. Entitled A Grand

Sonata for the Piano Forte Composed Expressly for and Dedicated to

Mrs. Bartolozzi by Haydn... Op. 19... London, the CMajor Sonata,

usually considered Haydn’s last solo piano work, was published

in 1800 and over the years came to be known as the “English”

Sonata. This term may refer not only to the place of publication,

but also to a particular instrument Haydn had in mind, an English piano that offered a larger keyboard range and more subtle

dynamics than pianos made on the European continent.

The Dance Suite, Bela Bartok’s first commissioned work, was

written for large orchestra at the behest of the Budapest City

Council to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the unification

of the cities Buda and Pest. Although the first performance in

November 1923 was a disaster, described by Bartok as “sounding like a sight-reading rehearsal,” a 1925 performance in Prague

by Vaclav Talich and the Czech Philharmonic secured the work’s

future as one ofBartok’s most popular. Unlike his “expressionistic” works, which led the composer to the verge of atonality, the

Dance Suite is plainly tonal. None of the movements contains

direct quotations of folk music, although the character of folk

music permeates the musical language. Bartok transcribed the

work for solo piano shortly after composing it, but the transcription was not performed in public until 1945.

Franz Schubert’s last three piano sonatas were composed between May and September 1828, although the B-flat Major Sonata may have been sketched as early as the previous year. Of

the three sonatas, this is the most lyrical and, at least in the

opening two movements, the most solemn and reflective. The

first movement stretches the sonata form to an extent that was

unheard of before Schubert, taking time to build a structure

around three keys. The second movement is one of Schubert’s

great meditative statements, with its relentless, unchanging lefthand accompaniment figure. The fleet and playful scherzo favors the upper register of the piano, while its more serious trio 

resides in a lower tessitura. The last movement is a mixture of