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 of

the West Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

Music Department

National Gallery ofArt

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, dc

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-ninth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,820th Concert

Victor Goldberg, pianist

January 30, 2011

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)

Scherzo no. 2 in B-flat Minor, op. 31 (1837)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Sonata no. 9 in D Major, K. 311 (1777)

Allegro con spirito

Andante con espressione

Rondeau; Allegro

Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915)

Sonata no. 5 in F-sharp Major, op. 53 (1907)

INTERMISSION

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, op. 24 (1861)

The Musician

Hailed by music critics for his imaginative and original interpretations,

Russian-born Israeli pianist Victor Goldberg continues to fascinate a wide

range of audiences around the world. A prize winner in the 2008 Pro Musicis 

International Award, the Artist Recognition Award at the International

Keyboard Festival in New York, the Vladimir Horowitz International Piano

Competition, and the Arianne Katcz Piano Competition, Goldberg has performed extensively in the United States, Europe, and Asia. His recent North

American appearances include Alice Tully Hall, the BanffCentre for the

Arts in Canada, Bargemusic, Carnegie Hall, the Dame Myra Hess Memorial

Concerts in Chicago, Lincoln Center, and the ProMusicis International

Concert Series in Boston, as well as numerous recital and concerto appearances in Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, 

New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. In addition to a recital sponsored

by the Washington Performing Arts Society at the Smithsonian Institution,

Goldberg has performed at major international festivals, including the Aspen

Music Festival, Chiang Mai Music Festival in Thailand, the Festival de La

Ribagorza in Spain, the International Keyboard Festival in New York, the

International Piano Festivals in the Canary Islands, Pianofest in the Hamptons, and the Sarasota Music Festival in Florida.

As part ofhis 2010 debut tour in China and Southeast Asia, Goldberg

performed recitals in Tianjin Concert Hall and Wuhan Qintai Concert Hall

in China; Philamlife Auditorium in Manila, Philippines; the Embassy of

Israel in Yangon, Myanmar; and the Goethe Institut Auditorium in Bangkok, 

Thailand. Other international performances include the Congress Hall in Kiev,

Ukraine; Spiegelsaal Schloss in Rheinsberg, Germany; Tel Aviv Museum of

Art and Jerusalem Music Center in Israel; and Tenerife Auditorium in the

Canary Islands, as well as solo recitals in Austria and Spain.

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Deeply attached to his Jewish heritage, Goldberg also performs a number

ofbenefit concerts. He is an official representative ofthe Speakers Bureau of

the Jewish National Fund. For his achievement in music, Goldberg received

the World Congress of Russian Jewry’s Artistic Mastery Award.

Goldberg studied under Constance Keene, Jerome Lowenthal, Mark 

Shaviner, Alexander Shtarkman, and Alexander Volkov, at the Juilliard School,

the Peabody Institute ofthe Johns Hopkins University, Tel Aviv University, 

and at the Manhattan School of Music, where he was the first instrumentalist

in the school's history to be awarded the prestigious Artist Diploma in Performance. He is a recipient offull scholarships from all ofthe aforementioned

music institutions, as well as America-Israel Cultural Foundation awards.

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Program Notes

Mozart’s Piano Sonata in D Major, K. 311, was composed in Mannheim in

November 1777, while he and his mother were on a lengthy trip that would

take them to Paris the following spring. Aspects ofthe mannered Mannheim

style are evident in this sonata, particularly in its sharp dynamic contrasts.

The young composer’s powers of expression were growing, as he assimilated not only characteristics ofworks by Mannheim composers, but many

ofthe ideas of Haydn, especially in respect to his use ofsonata form. Mozart

also incorporated an orchestral style in his writing for the keyboard.

Set in three movements, the sonata begins with an Allegro distinguished

by a flourish and a cheerful melody. After a modulation to the dominant,

there is a secondary theme that resembles a keyboard solo with its scalar

melody. The calm Andante is a classical rondo featuring an elegant opening

theme fit for a vocal composition followed by sudden and wide dynamic

contrasts. The closing Rondeau is filled with youthful energy and surprises.

The most technically challenging ofthe three movements, the Rondeau

includes a cadenza passage that leads, in the manner of a concerto, to the

return ofthe rondo theme and the close ofthe movement.

Alexander Scriabin’s Piano Sonata no. 5 marks a turning point in his

compositional style from romantic to atonal. By making no attempt to have

a tonal center and containing the entire sonata in one long movement,

Scriabin reveals his own individual voice and breaks away from traditional

tonality and multi-movement sonatas. The sonata is notoriously one ofthe

most difficult pieces in the piano repertory, but is also the most frequently

performed and recorded ofthe composer’s works. Scriabin included an

epigraph to this sonata, taken from his long work The Poem ofEcstasy—not

to be confused with his Symphony no. 4 (Poem of Ecstasy), op. 54. The epigraph reads, “I summon you to life, hidden longings! You, drowned in the

dark depths ofthe creative spirit, you fearful embryos oflife, I bring you 

daring!” The piece consists offive themes that intertwine and evolve

throughout the piece: the intense, dissonant trill and glissando in the

opening; a slow, languishing introductory theme; a dance-like presto based

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on material from the introductory theme and serving as the first subject 

group; a transition marked imperioso; and a meno vivo that serves as the 

second subject group.

Brahms’ works for piano broadened his career as a composer. In his 

earliest sets ofvariations, especially those of op. 9, the melody is of primary

importance, and he clings to it while freely changing the harmony. His later 

studies of Beethoven, however, led to increased transformation ofthemes,

as he adhered to their basic phrase structure and harmonic pattern. Like

Bach in his “Goldberg” Variations and Beethoven in the “Diabelli” Variations,

in the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, op. 24, Brahms constructs

a sprawling masterwork based on a very simple idea.

Brahms may have been attracted by the utter simplicity of Handel’s

theme and the challenge it posed. The melody is the Airfrom the First Suite

in B-flat Major of Handel’s Suites de pieces de clavecin of 1733. (Handel himself

wrote a set ofvariations on this same Air.) Brahms certainly recognized the

harmonic potential suggested by the theme’s sequential structure, reharmonizing recurrent notes. At several points, he pairs the variations so that the

second of a pair “varies” the material ofthe first. British musicologist and

composer Donald Francis Tovey (1875-1940) recognized a larger grouping

in variations fourteen through eighteen, which he described as “arisfing]

one out ofthe other in a wonderful decrescendo oftone and crescendo of

Romantic beauty.” In the course ofthe twenty-five variations, Brahms revisits

some older traditions—a strict canon forms the basis of variation 6; variations 5,6, and 13 constitute the traditional ventures into the tonic minor; and 

variation 19 is a fast version of an ancient dance, the siciliana. Innovations 

that are new with Brahms include a Hungarian rhapsody (no. 13), the “music

box” variation (no. 22), and a chromatic fantasia (no. 20). The closing fugue, 

with a subject derived from the original Air, is a study in the free use of

baroque counterpoint.

Program notes by Danielle DeSwert Hahn

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Upcoming concerts at the National Gallery ofArt

National Gallery ofArt Vocal Ensemble

Gregorian chant and

music by Italian composers

February 2, 2011

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building, West Garden Court