for String Orchestra] was one of the few American instrumental works in

the active repertory of Russian orchestras. When conductor [Leopold]

Stokowski [1887-1977] conducted it in Kiev, the audience would not go

home until it had been replayed as an encore.” The Adagio's mournful,

chantlike peacefulness has been offered as a solace at special events, such

as the radio announcement of President Roosevelt’s death in 1945 and

the funeral of Princess Grace of Monaco in 1982. Apart from its popular

impact, theAdagio, with its muted strings and spacious melody, was a fresh

and significant explosion on the musical horizon that helped to establish a

unique place for Samuel Barber as an American composer.

Originally for piano, Griegs’ Holberg Suite, Op. 40, was written in 1884 to

commemorate the two-hundredth anniversary ofthe Danish dramatist and

historian Ludwig Holberg’s (1684-1754) birth. The composer orchestrated

it the following year for strings. Grieg incorporates elements of baroque

music, such as the Sarabande, Gavotte, Air, and Rigaudon, with romantic

lyricism. By using these antique forms, Grieg makes a subtle reference to

the music of Holberg’s time. At the same time his melodic inventiveness

gives rise to tunes and turns of phrase that call to mind the expansive

moods and colorful rhythms of Norwegian folk music. Without citing any

folk songs directly, the composer manages to produce a work that has

an identifiable Nordic flavor, international style, and the benchmarks

of a work by Grieg.

Shostakovich’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 35, premiered in

Leningrad, with the composer as soloist, on 15 October 1933. Conductor

Leopold Stokowski introduced it in the United States on 12 December

1934 at one of his Concerts for Youth in Philadelphia, with the American

pianist Eugene List (1918-1985). While not explicitly named in the title,

the trumpet plays an important role throughout the work. Unlike much

of Shostakovich’s work, this concerto overflows with gaiety and musical 

jocularity. The piano, playing a bouquet ofscales, and the trumpet, uttering

a laconic muted call, open the concerto’s first movement {Allegro moderate/).

The second movement, a melodious valsetriste, opens with the first violins 

singing a cantilena with muted strings. The third movement {Moderato) is

only twenty-nine measures long and acts as a transitional passage that leads

to the fourth movement {Allegro con brio), a sparkling rondo with a radiant

coda that brings the concerto to an effective climax.

Program notes by Elmer Booze

Selectionsfrom concerts atthe Gallery

can be heardon the secondSunday ofeach month

at 9:00p.m. on WGMS-FM, 103.5.

The Fifty-eighth Season of

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and

F. LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

2341th Concert

NATIONAL GALLERY ORCHESTRA

GEORGE MANOS, conductor

MIA CHUNG, pianist

DAVID HAGLUND, trumpet

Sunday Evening, 7 May 2000

Seven O’clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
PROGRAM

Arcangelo Corelli

(1633-1713)

Sarabande

Gigue

Badinerie

Suite for String Orchestra

(1880)

Samuel Barber Adagio for Strings, Op. 11

(1910-1981) (1936)

Edvard Grieg Holberg Suite, Op. 40

(1843-1907) (1884)

Praeludium

Sarabande

Gavotte

Air

Rigaudon

INTERMISSION

Dmitry Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Minor

(1906-1975) Op. 35, No. 1 (1933)

Allegro moderato

Lento

Moderato

Allegro con brio

Forthe convenience ofconcertgoers

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:30p.m.

The use ofcameras orrecording equipment

during theperformance is not allowed.

Conductor, composer, and pianist George Manos has been director

of music at the National Gallery of Art and conductor of the National

Gallery Orchestra since 1985. He is also artistic director of the American

Music Festival and of the National Gallery vocal and chamber ensembles,

which he founded. Manos’ career as a performing pianist and teacher has 

included several years on the faculty ofCatholic University in Washington,

DC, where he taught piano, conducting, and chamber music. In addition,

he held the directorship of the Wilmington, Delaware, School of Music,

where he presented an annual jazz festival and clinic. Maestro Manos

founded and directed for ten years the renowned Killarney Bach Festival

in the Republic of Ireland, and was the music director of the 1992

Scandinavian Music Festival in Kolding, Denmark.

Mia Chung was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and grew up in the

Washington, DC, area. She has quickly ascended to the top rank

of American’s young pianists, earning wide praise for her incisive

interpretations in performance and on recordings. She holds a bachelor’s

degree from Harvard College, a master’s degree from Yale University,

and a doctorate from the Juilliard School of Music. Her teachers include

George Manos, Peter Serkin, Boris Berman, Raymond Hanson, and

Anne Koscielny. She was the first prize winner of the Concert Artists

Guild Competition in 1993, the same year in which she won the United

States Trust Award and the Channel Classics Prize. Chosen as an artistic

ambassador by the United States Information Agency in 1993, Chung

became the first American pianist to perform in Kazakhstan, the Kirghiz 

Republic, and the Turkmen Republic. She also toured the former Soviet

Union, Thailand, Singapore, and the South Pacific Island of Tonga. In 

1997 she was awarded an Avery Fisher career grant. Mia Chung is currently

artist-in-residence and assistant professor of music at Gordon College

in Wenham, Massachusetts. She appears at the National Gallery by

arrangement with the Concert Artists Guild of New York.

The three dance movements that make up the Suitefor String Orchestra

were selected by the Spanish violinist and conductor Enrique Fernandez

Arbos from three of Corelli’s Sonatasfor Solo Violin, Op. 5. The Sarabande

is the third movement of the Sonata in D Minor, Op. 5, No. 7; the Gigue

is the second movement of the Sonata in A Major, Op. 5, No. 9\ and the

Badinerie is the fifth movement of the Sonata in E Major, Op. 5, No. 11. In

connecting these separate pieces and arranging them for a larger ensemble,

Arbos replicated a common practice of the baroque period. However, he

exercised modern freedom in his manipulation of the endings, expanding

each one to include a coda. The title for the third movement (Badinerie) is

Arbos’ replacement for Corelli’s original title, Gavotta.

The Adagio from Samuel Barber’s String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11, so affected

the famed conductor Arturo Toscanini that he asked Barber to arrange

it for the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and he led its first orchestral

performance on 5 November 1938. The orchestral version drew great

acclaim. Repeat performances followed quickly, and the work eventually

became a favorite of audiences throughout the world. The lexicographer

and musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky (1894-1994) reported: “It [theAdagio