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.

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

Mailing address

2000B South Club Drive

Landover, MD 20785

www.nga.gov

cover: Edwin Dickinson, South Wellfleet Inn,

c. 1950-1960, Collection of Deborah and Ed Shein

The Sixty-eighth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,787th Concert

National Gallery ofArt Piano Trio

Luke Wedge, violin

Benjamin R. Wensel, cello

Danielle DeSwert Hahn, piano

Presented in honor of

American Modernism: The Shein Collection

May 16, 2010

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Charles Ives (1874-1954)

Piano Trio (1904/1911)

Moderato

TSIAJ

Moderato con moto

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

Vitebsk (Study on a Jewish Theme) (1928-1929)

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

Triofor Violin, Cello, and Piano (1937)

Adagio non troppo; piu mosso; allegro vivace

Tempo di marcia

Largo; allegro vivo e molto ritmico

This concert is the second in a series of chamber music

concerts made possible by support from The Gottesman Fund

in memory of Milton M. Gottesman.

The Musicians

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART PIANO TRIO

Founded in 2008, the National Gallery ofArt Piano Trio has been featured on 

several ofthe Gallery’s Sunday concerts. In October 2009 the Trio performed

a program ofworks by Belgian composers in honor ofthe exhibition The

Darker Side ofLight: Arts ofPrivacy, 1850-igoo. The concert was repeated by

special invitation at the residence ofthe Belgian ambassador.

LUKE WEDGE

Luke Wedge received a master ofmusic degree in violin performance from

Northwestern University and a bachelor of arts degree in English literature

from the University of Kansas. His principal instructors included David

Perry, Gerardo Ribeiro, and Ben Sayevich. Wedge has made solo and recital

appearances in Chicago, Illinois; Lawrence, Kansas; and Washington, DC.

He is an experienced orchestral musician and has been engaged by the

National Gallery ofArt Orchestra, the National Symphony, and the Ravinia

Festival, among others. A member ofthe United States Air Force Strings,

he is also a member ofthe Covington String Quartet.

BENJAMIN R. WENSEL

Benjamin R. Wensel holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and

the Eastman School of Music. He has performed in seminars and master

classes for members ofthe Cleveland, Guameri, Juilliard, Miami, and Ying

quartets; studied chamber music with Peter Salaff and members ofthe Audubon and Cavani Quartets; and participated in solo master classes with Clemens

Michael Hagen, Steven Isserlis, and Michel Strauss. Wensel has performed

with the National Symphony Orchestra, the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra,

the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra

as well as with many local ensembles. A founding member ofthe Tarab Cello

Ensemble, he performed in the premieres ofmore than twenty new works 

written by established and emerging American composers, and participated in

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the ensemble’s residencies at Princeton University, Stetson University, and

the University of South Florida. He taught chamber music and maintained a

studio at the Hochstein School of Music in Rochester, New York, where he was

the cellist ofthe Hochstein String Quartet. Currently a member ofthe faculty

at the Washington Conservatory, Wensel maintains a private studio in Arlington, Virginia, and plays with the newly formed Messiaen Quartet as well as the

National Gallery ofArt Piano Trio. He can be heard on recordings released on

the Bridge, Harmonia Mundi, and Summit record labels.

DANIELLE DESWERT HAHN

Brussels-born pianist Danielle DeSwert Hahn is a freelance collaborative

pianist and coach and the music program specialist at the National Gallery 

ofArt. She has worked as a pianist and coach with the Ash Lawn Highland

Opera Festival, Chautauqua Opera, Indianapolis Opera, Kentucky Opera,

the New Orleans Opera Association, Portland (Oregon) Opera, the San 

Francisco Opera Center, Sarasota Opera, and the Washington National

Opera. From 2004 to 2006 she was the principal repetiteur with the Baltimore Opera Company and Washington Concert Opera. Much in demand

as a collaborative pianist, she performs regularly in instrumental and voice

recitals, including performances at the Arts Club ofWashington, the Jewish

Community Center of Greater Washington, the Kennedy Center, the Mexican Institute ofCulture, the National Gallery, the Russian Embassy, and the

White House. She is principal pianist with the Inscape Chamber Music 

Project. The recipient of a master ofmusic degree from the University of

Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she studied with Martin Katz, and a bachelor

ofmusic degree from the University ofCalifornia, Santa Barbara, Hahn also 

studied with Warren Jones and Anne Epperson at the Music Academy of

the West and was an apprentice coach with the Washington Opera, working

with Placido Domingo.

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Program Notes

Though the modernist movement in music did not take hold among

composers in the United States until the 1920s, Charles Ives was already

composing music that could be classified as modernist as the twentieth

century turned, albeit in relative obscurity. It was not until a decade after

his death in 1954 that his music was taken seriously. His wife, Harmony

Twitchell Ives (1876-1979), described the Piano Trio in lieu of a program

note in a letter dated April 22,1948:

“... there was a copy ofthe program notes—but we can’t find

them... the Trio was, in a general way, a kind ofreflection or impression of his college days on the Campus now 50 years ago. The 1st

movement recalled a rather short but serious talk, to those on the

Yale fence, by an old professor of Philosophy—the 2nd, the games

and antics by the Students on the Campus, on a Holiday afternoon,

and some ofthe tunes and songs ofthose days were partly suggested

in this movement, sometimes in a rough way. The last movement

was partly a remembrance of a Sunday service on the campus—

Dwight Hall—which ended near the ‘Rock ofAges.’ It was composed

mostly in 1904, but fully completed in 1911. Mr. Ives doesn’t think 

it was ever played in a public concert—but it was in a private concert

some 30 years ago. He isn’t quite sure about the TSIAJ over the

second movement—he thinks it hardly anything but a poor joke...”

Her last comment refers to the letters in the title ofthe second movement,

which are an acronym for “This Scherzo Is a Joke.”

Listeners who instantly recognize Aaron Copland’s open, tuneful, and

distinctly American style in works such as Billy the Kid, Appalachian Spring,

and Rodeo are surprised to hear a completely different sound in Vitebsk

(Study on a Jewish Theme), one ofhis early and more unusual compositions.

Vitebsk is the name of a Russian village that was home to the playwright

Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport (1863-1920), whose pen name was S. Ansky.

In 1914 he authored the play, The Dybbuk. Though Copland borrowed from

American folk tunes regularly in his compositions, he rarely used Jewish

themes, and never returned to the practice after completing Vitebsk in 1929.

5
A particularly unusual feature ofthis work, especially for Copland, is

the use of quarter tones in the cello and violin. His evocation ofthe shofar, 

the ceremonial ram’s horn blown in Jewish services, is one aspect oflife in

the “shtetl” (village) that he hoped to convey. The stark, strident chords in

the piano as well as the frenetic scalar passages featured in the development,

further portray the difficult lives ofthe inhabitants ofthe region known as

“White Russia.”

Like the Ives piano trio, Leonard Bernstein’s Triofor Violin, Cello, and

Piano dates from the composer’s days at college—in this case Harvard— 

where he studied piano with Heinrich Gebhard and composition with Walter

Piston. In September 1936 Bernstein was in Maine. As one ofhis fellow

students, Mildred Spiegel, recalls, “He borrowed the farmer’s truck and drove

to the Emerson House at York Harbor where I was playing with my trio. I was

delightfully surprised.” Apparendy, the visit gave Bernstein the inspiration to

begin writing a trio, and he completed it in 1937 at age nineteen.

The first movement opens with a sad melody that is played first by the solo

cello, then by the two strings in a semi-canonic restatement, and finally by the

piano. The melody is transformed in various ways until the tempo quickens

and the mood becomes more emphatic. The movement ends with a slow

restatement ofthe opening melody, which begins in a unison fortissimo but

gradually becomes a whisper. A jazzy feel permeates the second movement,

a set ofvariations on a theme characterized by “blue” notes. The third movement, Largo; allegro vivo e molto ritmico, opens with the strings playing solemnly,

but quickly moves into a faster tempo. Flashes ofmelody from the first and

second movements return: syncopations and pizzicati play a role in the

development ofthe theme. After a dramatic cello solo, Bernstein closes the

work with an emphatic coda punctuated by a joyful glissando on the piano.

Program notes on Ives and Copland by Danielle DeSwert Hahn, music program

specialist, National Gallery ofArt

Program notes on Bernstein by Stephen Ackert, head ofthe music department,

National Gallery ofArt

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Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

National Gallery ofArt Chamber Players

Kathleen Trahan, soprano and alto recorders

Alicia Kosaclc, Baroqueflute

Stephen Ackert, harpsichord

Music by Bull, Luyton, Scheidt, and

other seventeenth-century composers

Presented in honor of

Hendrick Avercamp: The Little Ice Age

May 19, 2010

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Teiber String Trio

Music by Johann Sebastian Bach

May 23, 2010

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court