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 ofthe 

West Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

For the convenience of concertgoers, 

the Garden Cafe remains open for light refreshments

until 6:00 pm on Sundays.

Music Department

National Gallery ofArt

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

unvw.nga.gov

The Sixty-ninth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,824th Concert

Marcus Thompson, viola

Judith Gordon, piano

Presented in honor ofAfrican-American History Month

February 13, 2011

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Performed without intermission

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Sonata in G Major, bwv 1027 (1720)

Adagio

Allegro ma non tanto

Andante

Allegro moderato

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

Marchenbilder, op. 113 (1851)

Nicht schnell

Lebhaft

Rasch

Langsam, mit melancholischem Ausdruck

James Lee ill (b. 1975)

Sonatafor Viola and Piano (2010)

Tranquillo

Cantabile espressivo

Giocoso

Gheorghe Enescu (1881-1955)

Concertpiece (1906)

The Musicians

MARCUS THOMPSON

Since his highly acclaimed New York recital debut in the Young Concert

Artists series, violist Marcus Thompson has enjoyed a long and remarkable

career and has been hailed for his authentic style, facility, and embellishments.

He has appeared as soloist with the Boston Pops, the Chicago Sinfonietta, 

the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles 

Chamber Orchestra, and the National Symphony Orchestra. As a recitalist, 

he has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Herbst Theater in San Francisco, the

Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, the Metropolitan Museum ofArt, and

Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis. He performs regularly at chamber music

festivals in Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Seatde, and Sitka, and as a guest ofthe

Audubon, Cleveland, Emerson, and Vermeer Quartets. In a recent concert, he

performed the complete Bach Sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord at

Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to mark the thirtieth anniversary

ofhis Boston debut recital. A long-standing member ofthe Boston Chamber

Music Society, Thompson was appointed its artistic director in 2008.

Thompson has been heard frequently in broadcasts of cbs Sunday

Morning, National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, Live From Lincoln Center, and

American Public Media’s Peformance Today. He has also recorded Frank

Martin’s Sonata da chiesa for viola d’amore and string orchestra—named by

Stereo Review as “Recording of Special Merit,” concertos by Paul Hindemith

and Anthony Newman, and Ernest Bloch’s Suitefor Viola and Orchestra.

Thompson’s repertoire includes numerous works created for him as

a result of commission grants from the National Endowment for the Arts

and other organizations. His performance ofthe United States premiere of

Gyorgy Ligeti’s loop for solo viola received praise from the composer and

critics alike. Thompson has played premieres ofworks by William Thomas

McKinley and Roger Bourland with the New Music Ensemble of Pittsburgh

and Bridge ofLight by noted jazz pianist and composer Keith Jarrett with the

Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. His appearance with the Anchorage Symphony

featured Joseph Jongen’s rarely heard Suitefor Orchestra and Viola.

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Bora and raised in the South Bronx, Thompson studied both viola and

viola d’amore at The Juilliard School with Walter Trampler, earning that

institution’s first doctoral degree in viola performance. Currently making

his home just outside Boston, he serves on the viola faculty at New England

Conservatory of Music and as professor ofmusic at the Massachusetts

Institute ofTechnology, where he holds the first Robert R. Taylor Chair.

Marcus Thompson appears at the National Gallery by arrangement with

Joanne Rile Artist Management ofJenkintown, Pennsylvania.

JUDITH GORDON

Pianist Judith Gordon gave her New York recital debut at the Metropolitan

Museum ofArt's Introductions series. She has been heard as soloist with the

Boston Pops, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Civic Symphony of

Boston, and the ProArte Chamber Orchestra. Her colleagues in recital and

chamber music performances have included violinists Rose Mary Harbison

and Andrew Kohji Taylor; violists James Dunham, Cynthia Phelps, and Marcus 

Thompson; cellists Andres Diaz, Yo-Yo Ma, and Rhonda Rider; vocalists

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, James Maddalena, and Lisa Saffer; the Borromeo

and Lydian String Quartets; and members ofthe Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Gordon has been featured in concerts and on recordings with Essential Music,

Boston Musica Viva, and Collage New Music, and has participated in the

Charlottesville, Rockport, Santa Fe, Spoleto, and Token Creek music festivals.

A graduate ofthe New England Conservatory ofMusic, in 1996 Judith Gordon

was named classical musician ofthe year by The Boston Globe.

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Program Notes

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonata in G Major, bwv 1027, was the first ofthree

that he wrote for viola da gamba and harpsichord. He later transcribed the

work for two flutes and basso continuo (bwv 1039). It features three imitative 

voices, braided together as a trio sonata, the most common form of chamber

music ofthe late baroque era. The transcription for the modern viola (or viola

di braccio) and piano preserves the same three lines, assigning two ofthem

to the piano. Bach’s genius is amply demonstrated in this sonata, as he

combines beautiful melodies and motifs interchangeably in high, medium,

and low registers and presents them in contrapuntal variations such as

inversion, augmentation, and diminution.

Originally written for viola and piano, Robert Schumann’s Marchenbilder

(Fairytale Pictures) are among a number ofpoetic miniatures for various

solo instruments and piano that he composed between 1849 and 1851 as

Hausmusik—music intended to be played at home. Common to these pieces

is the sense ofliterary narrative, the passing ofbriefideas between instrument and piano in dialogue, and the building oftexture from layers of color.

Each ofthe four Marchenbilder evokes a different scene or mood, but they

are unified by their close key relationships— D minor, F major, D minor,

D major. The faster movements are placed between the two slower movements, allowing the set to open and close in repose.

Commissioned by Marcus Thompson, James Lee’s Sonatafor Viola and

Piano was completed in 2010. The first movement is loosely based on the

thirteenth chapter ofthe Book ofRevelation, in which two beasts arise, one

from the sea and the other from the land. The viola opens with a rising

figure that is also integrated within the fabric ofthe piano writing. The

music conveys the aggressive nature ofthe two beasts. The second movement (Cantabile espressivo) is an emotionally charged retrospective ofthe first

movement, in which the melodic material continues to develop until it

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modulates to the key ofC-sharp minor. The last movement (Giocoso) is a

rhapsodic rondo. Marked by intense rhythmic activity in both instruments,

this movement surges forward in perpetual motion to its conclusion.

Gheorghe Enescu composed his Concertpiece in 1906 for use in competition at the Paris Conservatory, where he served on the jury. Bom in Romania 

and a life-long champion of Romanian folk traditions, Enescu was hailed as

an extraordinarily gifted performer on the violin and piano at an early age. He

was known to have had a far-ranging repertoire and expertise in the musical

canon from the music ofBach to that ofhis own time. Among his many

students were violinists Yehudi Menuhin and Arthur Grumiaux.

Program notes based on material provided by Joanne Rile Artists Management

and James Lee in.

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Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

William Chapman Nyaho, pianist

Music ofthe African Diaspora

Presented in honor ofAfrican-American History Month

February 16, 2011

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

East Building Auditorium

Vivaldi Project

Music by Vivaldi and other Venetian composers

Presented in honor of Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals

February 20, 2011

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court