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 20785

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-seventh Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,696th Concert

Till Fellner, pianist

December 7, 2008

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Sonata no. 16 in G Major, op. 31, no. 1 (1801-1802)

Allegro vivace

Adagio grazioso

Rondo: Allegretto; presto

Sonata no. 17 in D Minor, op. 31, no. 2 (“Tempest”) (1801-1802) 

Largo; allegro

Adagio 

Allegretto

INTERMISSION

Sonata no. 18 in E-flat Major, op. 31, no. 3 (1801-1802)

Allegro

Scherzo: Allegretto vivace

Menuetto: Moderato e grazioso

Presto con fuoco

Sonata no. 28 in A Major, op. 101 (1816)

Etwas lebhaft, und mit der innigsten Empfindung

Lebhaft; marschmaEig

Langsam und sehnsuchtsvoll

Geschwind, doch nicht zu sehr und mit Entschlossenheit

This concert and the subsequent concerts in Till Fellner’s Beethoven

sonata cycle have been made possible by a generous grantfrom the

Billy Rose Foundation.

The Musician

Bom in Vienna, Austria, Till Fellner began his piano studies with Helene

Sedo-Stadler and went on to study with Alfred Brendel, Meira Farkas, Oleg

Maisenberg, and Claus-Christian Schuster. In 1993 Fellner gained worldwide recognition by winning first prize at the prestigious Clara Haskil International Competition. Since then he has performed with many ofthe world’s

most famous orchestras and appeared in major concert halls and at important

festivals in Europe, Japan, and the United States. For his National Gallery debut

in February 2007, Fellner played sonatas by Beethoven and Schubert and the

three-part inventions ofJohann Sebastian Bach. That concert was named by

critic Charles Downey as one ofthe season’s ten best in Washington.

Fellner has worked with many leading conductors, including Claudio 

Abbado, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Heinz Holliger, Marek Janowski, Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Neville

Marriner, Kent Nagano, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Leonard Slatkin, Claudius

Traunfellner, Franz Welser-Mdst, and Hans Zender. Fellner plays regularly in

a trio with Lisa Batiashvili and Adrian Brendel and appears in Lieder recitals 

with Mark Padmore. Fellner has just completed a series ofperformances and

recordings of all ofthe Beethoven piano concertos with Kent Nagano and the

Montreal Symphony. The latest release among his numerous CD recordings

is J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, on the ecm Records label. With 

this concert, Till Fellner launches a project in which he will play all thirty-two

Beethoven piano sonatas in Washington in a cycle that will span seven concerts. He will also play the complete cycle in London, New York, Paris, Tokyo,

and Vienna. The cycle in Washington is sponsored jointly by the Embassy 

ofAustria, the Embassy Series, and the National Gallery, and continues on 

Saturday, March 8, 2009, with a recital at the Austrian Embassy in which

Fellner will play the sonatas ofopus 2 and opus 57.

Till Fellner appears at the National Gallery by arrangement with

Kuenstlermanagement Till Doench, ofVienna, Austria.

3
Program Notes

The custom of playing Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas in a consecutive

series of concerts began with the great German pianist Artur Schnabel,

who played them on seven successive Sundays in 1927 in Berlin to mark

the centenary of Beethoven’s death. Since then, other eminent pianists have

played Beethoven sonata cycles, although none in the concentrated time

span in which Schnabel presented his cycle. Alfred Brendel, for example,

used the 48-week span ofthe 1982-1983 concert season to present his

seven-concert Beethoven cycle.

Each ofthe pianists who has taken on this enormous task has had a

unique approach to the order in which the sonatas are presented. Schnabel

alternated sonatas ofvarying periods and moods. Andras Schiffplayed the

sonatas in chronological order in a cycle he presented between 2006 and 2008,

desiring to show the logical development and evolution ofBeethoven’s creativity. Till Fellner plans to present sonatas that Beethoven published together

(for example, op. 31, nos. 1, 2, and 3) in a single concert, insofar as possible.

Memorizing and performing these thirty-two sonatas is the pianistic

equivalent of climbing Mount Everest or running a marathon race. They

encompass the entire period of Beethoven’s compositional career, and range

from sunny youthful works to the intense anguish of his troubled later years. 

Using the periods of composition that are commonly applied by musicologists to Beethoven’s works —early (before 1801), middle (1802-1816), and

late (1816-1827)—one finds fifteen sonatas in the first period, twelve in the

second, and five in the third.

The three sonatas ofopus 31, composed in 1801 and 1802, are considered

the first pieces ofBeethoven’s middle period. It was during this time that

he began to move away from the classical form and to experiment with the

mechanical and tonal improvements to the instmment that were being

introduced by Conrad Graf (1782-1851), John Broadwood (1732-1812), and the

other piano builders whose work Beethoven encountered. The sonatas of

his middle period take liberties with the sonata form and present sonorities

that serve the composer’s imagination rather than fulfilling the expectations

4

ofmusical convention. The three sonatas ofopus 31 make an effective triptych, since the first and third are relaxed in temperament and the second, in

D minor, is darkly dramatic. Beethoven’s most famous pupil, Carl Czemy

(1791-1857), characterized the first movement ofthe G Major Sonata, op. 31,

no. 1, as “full of energy, capricious, and wittily vivacious.” The second movement, Adagio grazioso, is replete with trills and coloratura passages and is

reminiscent ofsimilar keyboard wrorks by one ofBeethoven’s teachers, Antonio

Salieri (1750-1825). The third movement is a leisurely rondo, marked at its

outset allegretto, which finishes with a fast-paced coda, marked presto.

The Sonata in D Minor, op. 31, no. 2, bears a nickname (“Tempest”)

that comes from an account by another Beethoven pupil, Anton Schindler

(i795-i864). When Schindler asked his teacher what thoughts lay behind

this unusual sonata, Beethoven reportedly replied, “Read The Tempest.” The

connection between the music and Shakespeare’s play, ifthere really is one,

is difficult to fathom, but the nickname remains with the work for posterity.

The mysterious opening Largo yields to an urgent Allegro that is marked by

frequent changes in tempo and dynamics. The second movement, Adagio,

follows the sonata-allegro form, but Beethoven omits the development,

returning quickly to the opening musical ideas as the movement ends. The

final movement (Allegixtto), also uses sonata-allegro form, but extends both

the development and the coda beyond their expected length. Despite its 

lilting rhythm, it retains a somber character to the end, trailing offinto

silence as the sonata ends.

Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838), another pupil of Beethoven, also served as

his secretary and copyist. In his memoirs, Ries recounts that Beethoven

asked him to play the Sonata in E-Jlat Major, op. 31, no. 3, from a proofthat

had been returned to the composer by the Swiss publisher Nageli. As Ries

finished the first movement (Allegro), Beethoven reportedly jumped from his

chair and shouted, “Where the devil did you find that?” Apparently, someone on the publisher’s staffhad added four bars at the end ofthe movement,

not satisfied with Beethoven’s manuscript (or perhaps unable to decipher it).

Needless to say, Beethoven insisted on a correction before the work could

be published.

5
For the final sonata in this concert, Till Fellner turns to the profound

works of Beethoven’s late period for the Sonata in A Major, op. 101. It is

dedicated to Baroness Dorothea von Ertmann (1781-1849), a capable amateur pianist who studied briefly with Beethoven and championed public

performances ofhis sonatas. By the time she made his acquaintance in 1809, 

he was too deafto perform in public, so the performances were undertaken

by Ertmann and other pupils and former pupils who lived in Vienna. The

A Major Sonata begins in a quiet, lyrical mood. The second movement

(Lebhaft; marschmajlig) introduces a contrasting vitality, maintained by the

persistent dotted rhythm. In the final movement, the composer turns again

to the sonata-allegro form, which he transforms by the use of a grand fugue

as the development.

Program notes by Sorab Modi

6

The Sixty-seventh Season ofConcerts

at the National Gallery ofArt

December 2008-January 2009

All concerts in the West Building, West Garden Court*

DECEMBER

14 New York Opera Society and

Soloists from Norway

Norwegian Christmas Festival

Concert

21 Alessandra Marc, soprano

With the National Gallery 

Chamber Orchestra;

Stephen Ackert and Dingwall

Fleary, guest conductors;

Danielle DeSwert and

Lon Schreiber, pianists.

Music by Ernest Bloch and

other composers. Presented

in honor of Oceans, Rivers,

and Skies: Ansel Adams, Robert

Adams, and Alfred Stieglitz

28 National Gallery Orchestra

Manfred Knoop, guest conductor

New Year Concert

JANUARY

4 National Gallery String Quartet

with Menahem Pressler, pianist

Music by Mozart and Schumann

11 Ma’alot Wind Quintet

Music by Barber, Ligeti,

Mendelssohn, and Piazzolla. 

Presented in conjunction with

the Mendelssohn on the Mall

anniversary celebration

Preceded at 6:00 pm by a preconcert

talk by Christopher With on

Mendelssohn’s drawings

(West Building Lecture Hall)

18 National Gallery Orchestra

Kenneth Slowik, guest conductor

Music by Mendelssohn and Schubert.

Presented in conjunction with

Mendelssohn on the Mall

25 Fine Arts Quartet

String Quartets by Mendelssohn

Presented in conjunction with

Mendelssohn on the Mall

* unless otherwise indicated