The Sixty-third Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,503rd Concert

National Gallery Orchestra

Angel Gil-Ordonez, guest conductor

Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, dc

Mailing address

2000B South Club Drive Admission free

Landover, md 20785

October 3, 2004

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm 

West Building, West Garden Court

www.nga.gov
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 concerts now begin at 6:30 pm.

Late entry or reentry after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

2,503rd Concert

October 3, 2004, 6:30 pm

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Overture in B-flat Major, D. 470 (1816)

Antonin Dvorak ([841-1904)

Serenade for Strings in E Major, Op. 22 (1875)

Moderato 

Tempo di valse

Scherzo

Larghetto 

Finale

Intermission

Dvorak

Czech Suite, Op. 39 (1879)

Preludium (Pastorale)

Polka

Minuetto

Romance

Finale (Furiant)
The Musicians

NATIONAL GALLERY ORCHESTRA

The National Gallery Orchestra was founded in 1943 and initially consisted of approximately twenty-five players who were also members ofthe

National Symphony. Gradually growing in numbers, it eventually reached

the size and status of a symphony orchestra. The ensemble undertakes

the full range of chamber and symphonic repertoire and has frequently presented first performances of works by American composers, most notably

the 1953 premiere of Charles Ives’ First Symphony under the direction

of Richard Bales.

ANGEL GIL-ORDONEZ

Angel Gil-Ordonez has attained an outstanding reputation among Spain’s

new generation of conductors as he carries on the tradition of his teacher

and mentor, Sergiu Celibadache. The Washington Post has praised his conducting, calling it “mesmerizing” and “as colorfully textured as a fauvist

painting.” Born in Madrid, Gil-Ordonez is the former associate conductor of

the National Symphony Orchestra of Spain and has conducted symphonic

music, opera, and ballet throughout Europe, the United States, and Latin

America. He has appeared with the American Composers Orchestra, Opera

Colorado, the Pacific Symphony, the Hartford Symphony, and the Brooklyn

Philharmonic at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Outside the United

States, he has been heard with the Munich Philharmonic, the Solistes de

Berne, and at the Bellas Artes National Theatre in Mexico City. In 2000 he

toured the major music festivals of Spain with the Valencia Symphony 

Orchestra in the Spanish premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass.

A specialist in the Spanish repertoire, Gil-Ordonez has recorded four 

cds devoted to Spanish composers with the Radio and Television Symphony

Orchestra of Spain, the Madrid Symphony Orchestra, the Galicia Symphony

Orchestra, and the Camara xxi Chamber Orchestra. He worked closely with 

Sergiu Celibadache for more than six years in Germany and studied with 

Pierre Boulez and Iannis Xenakis in France. Currently the music director 

ofthe Post-Classical Ensemble in Washington, d.c., Angel Gil-Ordonez also

holds the position of director of orchestral studies at Wesleyan University

in Connecticut and that of music director ofthe Wesleyan Ensemble of

the Americas.

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Program Notes

On May i, 2004, the musical world noted the centennial ofthe death of

Antonin Dvorak. No study ofthis composer’s music would be complete 

without reference to the music of Franz Schubert, which Dvorak held in

special esteem. In fact, Dvorak considered himself Schubert’s musical 

successor in the ranks of European composers. Maestro Gil-Ordonez has 

chosen to begin this concert, otherwise devoted to the works of Dvorak,

with an overture of Schubert that shows the composer at his sophisticated 

best, even though it was written in 1816, before he had reached the age of

twenty. 1816 was the year in which one of Schubert’s friends and patrons,

Josef Witteczek, began presenting concerts on a regular basis in his home, 

where Schubert had taken up temporary lodgings. A favorite medium for

performance at these events was the cantata for solo voices and small

orchestra, and Witteczek had commissioned cantatas from Schubert on

several occasions. The Overture, D. 470, is thought to be the opening movement from one ofthose cantatas, for which the rest ofthe music was either

never written or subsequently lost. The popularity ofWitteczek’s house

concerts, and the fact that he relied heavily on Schubert to provide the 

music for them, resulted in the coining of a new word in the parlance of

Viennese music lovers: Schubertiade.

Antonin Dvorak was born into a working-class family, and his life was

marked by financial struggle well into his thirties. He was thirty-three years

old when he wrote the Serenade for Strings, Op. 22. It was accepted for

publication by Bote and Bock in Berlin, but because Dvorak was still relatively unknown, the fees he received from his publishers were very small.

He still relied on private piano and voice instruction and on playing the 

organ in Saint Adalbert’s Church in Prague to make ends meet. A source

4

of aid to which he turned was a newly formed scholarship program called

the Austrian State Stipendium, established to help poor but talented

musicians and artists. One ofthe judges on the panel that reviewed compositions for this program was Johannes Brahms. Much more valuable to

Dvorak than the small stipend he received was the praise his work elicited

from the great German composer, who came to hold his younger Czech

colleague in high esteem and furthered his career in a number of ways.

Dvorak’s Czech Suite, Op. 39, shows that he learned much about writing symphonic music from Brahms, while also finding a unique voice in

the folk song and dance heritage of his homeland. He originally intended to

write a triptych from a series of his orchestral serenades, but abandoned

the idea and instead wrote five dance pieces to form a suite. The full title,

Czech Suite, was incorporated for the premiere performance, held in 1879

at the Academy ofthe Association ofCzech Journalists at the New Prague 

Theater and conducted by Adolf Cechs. The dance that inspired the final

movement, thefuriant, is a dance of Bohemian origin that alternates rapidly

between V4 and % meters. Dvorak used this dance form again in the final

movement of his Symphony No. 6 in D Major, Op. 60, and in several of his

works for solo piano.

Program notes by Stephen Ackert