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

Mailing address

2000b South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-eighth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,757th Concert

Sharon Isbin, guitarist

December 27, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

PERFORMED WITHOUT INTERMISSION

Enrique Granados (1867-1916)

Spanish Dance no. 5

Francisco Tarrega (1852-1909)

Recuerdos de la Alhambra

Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909)

Asturias

Transcribed by Andres Segovia

Leo Brouwer (b. 1939)

The Black Decameron (1981)

Lovers Fleeing through the Valley ofthe Echos 

The Harp ofthe Warrior

The Maiden in Love

John Duarte (b. 1919)

Joan Baez Suite, op. 144 (2002)

Fantasia: Once I Had a Sweetheart; Rambler Gambler

Barbara Allen

House ofthe Rising Sun

The Lily ofthe West

The Unquiet Grave

Silkie

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Finale: Rake and Rambling Boy; Wildwood Flower;

The Trees They Do Grow High

Tarrega

Capricho arabe

Regino Sainz de la Maza (1896-1981)

Zapateado

Antonio Lauro (1917-1986)

Waltz no. 3

Seis por derecho

Agustin Barrios Mangore (1885-1944)

Waltz, op. 8, no. 4
The Musician

Acclaimed for her extraordinary lyricism, technique, and versatility,

Grammy® Award winner Sharon Isbin has been hailed by Guitar Player

magazine as “Best Classical Guitarist.” She has played to sold-out audiences 

in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Boston’s Symphony Hall, London’s Barbican and Wigmore Halls, Madrid’s Teatro Real, Munich’s Herkulessaal, New

York’s Carnegie and Avery Fisher Halls, Paris’ Chatelet, Vienna’s Musikverein, and Washington, D.C.’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing

Arts. She has served as artistic director and soloist offestivals she created for

Carnegie Hall and New York’s 92nd Street Y and for the acclaimed national

radio series Guitarjam. A frequent guest on National Public Radio’s and 

Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, she has been profiled on CBS

Sunday and A&E Television and was a featured guest on Showtime Television’s hit series The L Word. On September 11, 2002, Isbin performed at

Ground Zero for the internationally televised memorial to the victims of

September 11, 2001. In November 2009 she performed a concert at the 

White House by invitation of the President and Mrs. Obama. She is the 

featured soloist in the soundtrack of Martin Scorsese’s Academy Award

winning film, The Departed. She has been profiled in periodicals from People

to File, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, as well as on the 

cover of more than forty magazines.

From classical music to crossover and jazz-fusion, Isbin has produced 

more than twenty-five recordings. Recently signed to sony Masterworks as

an exclusive recording artist, she produced her first CD for SONY, Journey to

the New World, in collaboration with Joan Baez and Mark O’Connor. Her

earlier album, Dreams ofa World, earned her a Grammy award in 2001,

making her the first classical guitarist to receive the award in twenty-eight

years. She won grammys again in 2002 and 2005, and in 2006 a glaad

award nomination for her recording with the New York Philharmonic of

Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez and concerti by Manuel Ponce and

Heitor Villa-Lobos. This was the Philharmonic’s first recording with a guitar 

soloist in twenty-six years.

4

Isbin has expanded the guitar repertoire with some ofthe finest new

works ofthe twentieth and twenty-first centuries. John Corigliano, Lukas

Foss, and Joseph Schwantner have written concertos for her, as have Leo

Brouwer, David Diamond, Ned Rorem, and Joan Tower.

Isbin began her studies at age nine in Italy, and later studied with

Andres Segovia, Oscar Ghiglia, and Rosalyn Tureck. She received bachelor 

and master of arts degrees from Yale University and directs guitar departments at the Aspen Music Festival and The Juilliard School. The author of

The Classical Guitar Answer Book, Sharon Isbin appears at the National

Gallery by arrangement with Columbia Artists Management, Inc., of New

York City.

5
Program Notes

Born July 27,1867 in Lerida, Spain, Enrique Granados received both piano 

and composition lessons at a young age. In 1887 he went to Paris to study 

piano with Charles de Beriot. In 1916 President Woodrow Wilson heard

Granados’ Goyescas at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and requested

that the composer give a recital at the White House before returning to Spain.

In order to accommodate the president’s request, Granados changed his

travel plans and returned to Europe via England. The British ship on which 

he sailed was torpedoed by a German submarine. In the subsequent confusion, Granados jumped from a lifeboat to save his wife, and both drowned.

Granados’ Danzas espaholas (Spanish Dances) is a collection of twelve

dances, originally written for the piano, that fuse elements of Spanish 

nationalism and romantic piano technique. Dance no. 5, the most famous

ofthe set, evokes the guitar through the piquant nature ofits melody and 

the picking and strumming effects in the bass, making it a prime candidate 

for an effective transcription for performance on the guitar.

The Spanish composer and guitarist Francisco Tarrega paved the way for

the rebirth ofthe guitar as an instmment to be heard in the concert hall. He

earned his living by teaching music theory and giving recitals, and by 1877

was hailed as the “Sarasate ofthe guitar.” His career began with a brilliant

concert at the Alhambra Palace in Granada, and Recuerdos de la Alhambra

(Recollections ofAlhambra), a tremolo study, calls to mind the fountains in

the thirteenth-century Moorish gardens in that famous place.

Isaac Albeniz was born in Camprodon, Spain. His exuberant talent as

a pianist was obvious from early childhood—he gave his first concert when

he was four years old. At age six he studied in Paris with Antoine Francois

Marmontel (1816-1898). Albeniz’ piano recitals were eagerly awaited and 

some newspapers called him the “Spanish Rubenstein.” As the result of

a petition from Claude Debussy, Gabriel Faure, and other distinguished

French composers, the French government made Albeniz a member of

the Legion of Honor days before his death at the age offorty-eight.

6

In Asturias, Albeniz sings of his beautiful native land, its scenery, and its

changing moods. Subtitled “Leyenda” (Legend), the piece comes from his 

Suite espagnole for piano and is the composer’s tribute to the Asturias region 

of northwest Spain.

Composer Leo Brouwer wrote The Black Decameron (El decameron negro)

for Sharon Isbin in 1981, and her recording ofthe work can be heard on emi/

Virgin Classic’s Latin Romances: Road to the Sun. The work is made up of

three ballads inspired by love stories from Africa, which were collected by

the German anthropologist Leon Frobenius in the nineteenth century. Colorful Afro-Cuban rhythmic and melodic elements as well as rich programmatic

imagery imbue this evocative music.

In the first ballad, “Lovers Fleeing through the Valley ofthe Echoes,” the 

foreboding opening dramatizes a warrior who has been banished from his 

tribe because he loves to play the harp. As he and his lover flee, the music

evokes the hastening gallop of horses. The opening passage returns briefly,

followed by an evocation oftender and nostalgic remembrance. With the 

return offast triplets, the lovers resume their journey as they ride furiously 

through the Valley ofthe Echoes. The echo effect is produced by a continuous alternation betweenforte and piano.

In “The Harp ofthe Warrior,” the banished soldier is summoned by his 

tribe to return and save them from defeat by an invading army. Energetic

rhythmic motives depict the warrior’s victorious strength, while slow, harplike interludes evoke his artistic sensibility. Written in rondo form, the third

ballad, “The Maiden in Love,” contrasts the gende sensuality of a young 

maiden with episodes ofvibrant, passionate energy.

Written by John Duarte for Sharon Isbin in 2002, the Joan Baez Suite

was commissioned by funds provided by Rose Augustine and the Augustine 

Foundation. It is dedicated to the memory ofJody Nordlof. The following

notes are in the composer’s own words.

“I am old enough to have known and admired Joan Baez’s work from the 

earliest years of her career. In writing this Suite it would, however, have been 

misguided to attempt to arrange the selected songs in the same style and 

format as hers. My settings represent my own reactions to the spirit and 

texts ofthe songs.

7
“The opening Fantasia brings together three songs: ‘Once I Had a

Sweetheart’ is a song offrustrated love, with five-bar phrases. ‘Rambler

Gambler’ is an American adaptation of an English lyric song, sung by a man

who doesn’t care what others think about his attitude to life. He has also

experienced a love affair that ended unhappily. The English ballad ‘Barbara

Allen’ records the death of a young man whose love for its eponym was not

returned; filled with remorse, she dies on the next day.

‘“The House ofthe Rising Sun’ is the lament of a girl (in its original form

she was a miner’s daughter) who served in a brothel ofthat name. The lyrics

were ‘soft-pedaled’ in the version made popular in the 1960s. I have based

my version ofthe tune on that ofthe American blues singer, the late Josh

White, whom I knew.

“Frustrated love rears its head again in ‘The Lily ofthe West,’ the song of

a man who stabbed to death his rival for the affection of Flora—the lily of

the west—and remained cheerfully unrepentant to the end.

‘“The unquiet grave’ is an English folk song oflove, death, and grief,

sung by a girl whose loved one has died. In its final appearance in this

arrangement I have counterpointed it with the melody of‘Dido’s Lament’,

from Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Dido, deserted by her lover Aeneas,

sings ‘When I am laid in earth, remember me.’

“‘Silkie’ refers to the legendary ‘sealfolk’ (silkies) said to exist in the 

waters around the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland. They were

believed to be able to shed their skins and pass as human beings in order to

find human partners. The tune is by Dr. James Waters, a one-time professor 

at Columbia University. I have chosen to present it in the form of a simple

set oftheme and variations.

“The opening bars of Pete Seeger’s ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’

bear an uncanny but doubtless coincidental resemblance to an accompanimental figure in Franz Schubert’s song ‘Trockne Bliimen’ (dried flowers).

In my arrangement the opening and connecting passages are based on the 

melody of Schubert’s song at the point at which this figure appears. Pete

Seeger’s ‘flowers’ are those who did not return from Vietnam, so the final

bleak statement of the tune is interrupted by ‘Taps,’ the bugle call used at

American military funerals.

“The Finale, like the opening Fantasia, introduces more than one tune:

‘Rake and Rambling Boy’ is an English broadside ballad, recounted by the

perpetrator of numerous crimes —some of them robbery from members of

the aristocracy—for which he was finally hung on the gallows. With ‘Wildwood Flower’ we are back to the lamentations of a girl (the eponymous 

‘flower’) on the departure of her lover. The ballad has long been well known 

in the southern mountains but its origin remains unknown. ‘The trees they

do grow high’ is an English ballad about a boy married offto a young

woman who waits impatiently for him to grow into adulthood (thus the 

analogy in the ever-rising accompaniment). At fifteen he becomes a father,

but the joy is short-lived as he meets his death in battle within the year.”

Known primarily as a performer, Regino Sainz de la Maza was also a

teacher of guitar and composer ofmusic for the instrument. He was the 

guitarist for whom Joaquin Rodrigo wrote his famous Concierto de Aranjuez,

which Sainz de la Maza premiered in 1940. Much of de la Maza’s music has 

become part ofthe standard repertoire for the guitar. Its style is heavily

influenced by Castilian and Andalusian folksong.

Bom in Bolivar, Venezuela, Antonio Lauro began composing at age

eight and soon after became the official guitarist of Caracas Broadcasting.

He studied with Vicente Sojo and Raid Borges, and toured South America

performing in vocal-instrumental trios. Considered a “South-American 

Gershwin,” he wrote and arranged hundreds of works for guitar, piano,

chorus and orchestra. His spirited dances express the rich, exuberant energy

of his native Venezuelan folk culture. Waltz no. 3 is dedicated to Lauro’s

daughter Natalia. Seis por derecho (Six [steps] to the right) is a stunningly

virtuoso joropo (Venezuelan social dance) replete with many varieties of

rhythmic counterpoint. Although Agustin Barrios is known today almost 

solely to devotees ofthe guitar, he was one ofthe most colorful musicians of

his age. He ranked as one ofthe prime Latin American guitarists in the early

twentieth century and was one ofthe instrument’s modern pioneers. His

spirit was ebullient and bohemian. “I am a brother to those medieval

9
troubadours,” he once wrote, “who in their glories and despairs suffered 

such romantic madness.” Barrios identified with the Indian culture of

Paraguay, from which he was partly descended. He adopted the name

Mangore, after a legendary Guarani chief, and sometimes performed in 

full Indian costume.

Barrios’ compositions, over a hundred in number and all for the guitar,

evoke three influences: the music of Bach and Chopin, whom he revered,

and Latin American folk music. The influence of Chopin can be heard in

the Waltz, op. 8, no. 4, with its arcing melodic line and the running figuration ofits principal theme.

Program notes by Sharon Isbin

Upcoming Concerts at the National Gallery ofArt

National Gallery of Art Orchestra

Jose Serebrier, guest conductor

Carole Farley, soprano

New Year Concert

Music by Bizet, Ginastera, Montsalvage, and Serebrier,

and traditional Viennese favorites

January 3, 2010

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Astrid Walschot-Stapp, harpist

Karen Johnson, flutist

Music by Glass, Godefroid, Kingma, Ortiz, Piazzolla,

and other composers

January 10, 2010

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court