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 after 6:30 pm 

is not permitted.

Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, dc

Mailing address

2000b South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-fourth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,544th Concert

Rita Bouboulidi, pianist

October 16, 2005

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission free
This concert at the National Gallery ofArt

is made possible in part by a gift

from The Charles Delmar Foundation

Program

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Two Rhapsodies op. 79 (1879)

No. 1 in D Minor

No. 2 in G Minor

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Sonata no. 30 in E Major, op. 109 (1820)

Vivace, ma non troppo 

Prestissimo

Andante molto cantabile ed espressivo

INTERMISSION

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Fantasia in C Minor, op. 15 (“Der Wanderer”) (1822)

Allegro con fuoco

Adagio

Presto

Allegro
The Musician

In the course of her international career as a pianist, Rita Bouboulidi has

appeared with the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, playing

the New York premiere of Ned Rorem’s Piano Concerto, with the Boston 

Symphony Orchestra, playing the Schoenberg Piano Concerto, and with

the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, the Hague, Liege, Munich, Oslo,

and Pittsburgh as well as the Philharmonia of London and the Orquesta

Sinfonica Nacional of Mexico City. Eminent conductors with whom

Bouboulidi has performed include Herbert Blomstedt, Sergiu Comissiona,

Bernard Haitink, and Erich Leinsdorf.

Bouboulidi made headlines by performing the complete cycle of all

thirty-two Beethoven sonatas in seven consecutive recitals in New York and

Washington, a feat that she has repeated on ten other occasions in other

cities. Among her recent recitals are appearances at the Athens Concert Hall,

the Boston Atheneum, the Kennedy Center, and WolfTrap as well as guest

appearances at the Chopin Festival in the Czech Republic and the Bratislava

Music Festival in Slovakia. This concert is her third at the National Gallery,

following performances here in 1963, at the invitation ofthe Gallery’s first

head ofmusic programs Richard Bales, and in 1988, at the invitation of his

successor George Manos.

Born in Athens, Rita Bouboulidi graduated from that city’s Conservatory

of Music and Classical Lyceum. She continued her studies at the National 

Conservatory of Music in Paris. During her student years she won a premier

medaille at the Geneva International Piano Competition. Her teachers

were Nadia Boulanger and Edwin Fischer. Recordings of Bouboulidi’s piano

artistry have been produced on the Erato and Disques Charlin labels.

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Program Notes

Johannes Brahms was the rightful successor in the romantic era to Beethoven 

and Schumann. Under his able touch, the seemingly contradictory attributes

of classical and romantic music come together—poetry with impeccable

craftsmanship, classical forms clothed in multiple textures, and compositions

ofmoderate length that, within a short space oftime, plunge to expressions

of deep despair and rise to breathtaking emotional heights. The majority of

Brahms’s compositions for piano solo are shorter works like the rhapsodies

in opus 79. These are mature works, composed after he had made his mark

in every genre except opera, and they are free ofthe external trappings and 

superficial display of technique that appear in the works ofsuch composers

as Franz Liszt (1811-1886) and Max Reger (1873-1916)—and even in some

works by the young Brahms. The rhapsodies and other short piano works 

of Brahms’s last twenty years are brief, reflective pieces in which lyricism, 

conciseness, and emotional experience merge for a fleeting moment. Like

Brahms’s Lieder, these “songs without words” for piano present immensely

varied contrasts in imagery and imagination.

The last three Beethoven piano sonatas stand as that great composer’s

most intimate and movingly introspective keyboard works. They are so well

known that they are often identified among music lovers simply by their opus

numbers (opus 109, no, and in). The Sonata in E Major, op. 109, begins with

a dialogue between two contrasting musical ideas, a theme marked vivace and

an alternating passage marked adagio. The middle movement (Prestissimo)

functions as a high-speed bridge between the two outer movements. In the

last movement (Andante molto cantabile ed espressivo) Beethoven breaks all

existing precedents by concluding a sonata with a theme and variations. This

theme is one ofthe treasures among his many memorable melodies.

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For Schubert’s Fantasia in C Minor, op. 15, otherwise known as the 

Wanderer Fantasy, the composer took the melody from one of his own

songs, “Der Wanderer,” and expanded on it to create his most freely expressive piano work. Later rearranged for piano and orchestra by Liszt, this 

work is something of a departure for Schubert in that it openly exploits

technical elements for dramatic effect and provides ample scope for virtuoso performances. Its four movements are unified by their relationship

to the second movement (Adagio), the rhythmic patterns of which determine the basic rhythmic components of each other movement. In the finale

(Allegro) thematic material from the other movements is presented in a

fugue. Schubert is not usually thought of as a composer offugues, but by

1822, when he wrote the Wanderer Fantasy, he had already written eight 

fugues for piano and incorporated fugues into more than a dozen sacred 

choral works.

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