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

Alberto Giacometti, Walking Man 11, i960, bronze,

National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Enid A. Haupt

The Sixty-seventh Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell

and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,685th Concert

Gilles Vonsattel, pianist

Presented in connection with

“Spotlight Switzerland”

October 12, 2008

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Toccata in C Minor, bwv 911

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Sonata in C Minor, D. 958 (1828)

Allegro

Adagio

Menuetto and Trio: Allegro 

Allegro

INTERMISSION

Nico Muhly (b. 1981)

Booklet

Washington Premiere Performance

Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-1975)

Sonatina canonica (1942-1943)

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

Apres une lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi sonata

From Annees de pelerinage, Book 11 (Italy) (1849)

This concert is made possible in part by funds provided by the Swiss

Arts Council Pro Helvetia; the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung of

Munich, Germany; Nespresso; and the Embassy of Switzerland.

The Musician

A laureate ofthe Cleveland and Dublin piano competitions, Swiss-born

pianist Gilles Vonsattel is a 2008 recipient of an Avery Fisher career grant,

and was the top prizewinner at the 2006 Geneva International Music

Competition. In 2002 he won the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation’s

International Piano Competition and made his Lincoln Center debut at 

Alice Tully Hall. He has appeared as soloist with the Boston Pops, the

Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, the Naples (Florida) Philharmonic

Orchestra, the National Symphony of Ireland, the Orchestre de Chambre

de Geneve, and the Utah Symphony Orchestra.

In addition to two recitals at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Vonsattel

has performed in Atlanta’s Spivey Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Cleveland’s Severance Hall, Geneva’s Victoria Hall, Paris’ Musee d’Orsay, San 

Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, Tokyo’s Opera City Hall, and Zurich’s Tonhalle. 

Among the festivals at which he has appeared are the Chopin Festival in

Warsaw, Poland, the Davos Festival in Davos, Switzerland, and La Roque 

d’Antheron in Provence, France. A member ofthe Chamber Music Society

of Lincoln Center, Vonsattel has collaborated with renowned chamber

musicians Kim Kashkashian, Ida Kavafian, Cho-Liang Lin, Yo-Yo Ma, Paul 

Neubauer, and David Shifrin.

In October 2007 Vonsattel’s recording of Liszt solo works and

Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 1 with l’Orchestre de Chambre de Geneve

was released on the Pan Classics label to critical acclaim. After studying

with pianist David Deveau in Boston, Vonsattel received a bachelor of arts

degree in political science and economics from Columbia University and a

master ofmusic degree from the Juilliard School of Music, where he studied

with Jerome Lowenthal. Gilles Vonsattel appears at the National Gallery 

by arrangement with John Gingrich Management, Inc., of New York City.

3
The Program

This recital and the concert by Festival Strings Lucerne on October 19 are 

the culmination of a series of events that began on October 8, when a new

film biography, Alberto Giacometti, Eyes on the Horizon, was shown at the

Gallery. The series continued with films by Swiss filmmakers about artists

and performers who were bom in Switzerland or made that country their

home—concert pianist Martha Argerich; architects Jacques Herzog and

Pierre DeMeuron, who designed Beijing’s Olympic stadium; Giacometti; and

conceptual artist Roman Signer. This spotlight on Switzerland at the National 

Gallery is poised between the closing ofthe internationally renowned film 

and music festivals in Locarno, Lucerne, Montreux, and Willisau, and the

anticipated January 2009 opening of a Gallery exhibition ofworks by Swissborn photographer Robert Frank: Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans.

Composed between 1705 and 1714, Johann Sebastian Bach’s seven keyboard toccatas, bwv 910-916, date from his earliest period of composition.

Written after the young Bach traveled to Liibeck to hear Dietrich Buxtehude 

(1637-1707), the greatest organist ofthe time, these works were clearly influenced by the master’s stylusfantasticus, a free and unrestrained compositional

technique. Though the term “toccata” was initially assigned to music written

for the lute, by Bach’s time it was also applied to keyboard pieces requiring

some amount offacility on the part ofthe performer, including arpeggios, runs,

and flourishes. Bach was free in this genre to use his creativity and legendary 

improvisational skills with great success. The C Minor Toccata begins with a

brilliant prelude, followed by an adagio that leads into the first fugue. After a

short interlude, a second fugal subject is introduced, which continues to the

end, where chordal embellishments tie the piece together.

4

Franz Schubert’s last three piano sonatas were written in the summer of

1828, when he had reached his maturity as a composer and was finally beginning to gain public recognition for his compositions. Ironically, it was also the

year of his untimely death at age thirty-one. The pieces from the last years of

Schubert’s life are profoundly private, and explore the depths ofsadness as well

as heights ofsublime joy. The trilogy offinal piano sonatas is ranked with his

song cycle Winterreise, his Mass in E-flat Major, D. 950, and his String Quintet in

C Major, D. 956, as one ofhis greatest achievements.

The first ofthese sonatas, the Sonata in C Minor, D. 958, opens with a

direct reference to Beethoven’s Thirty-two Variations in C Minor. Schubert was 

a great admirer ofBeethoven, who had died in 1827. The dark and haunting

theme dominates the feeling ofthe movement, though the second theme is

a lyrical cantabile in a major key, which brings in a lighter atmosphere. The

coda brings the two themes together and ends the movement in a contemplative mood, which carries over into the beginning ofthe second movement.

Here Schubert plays with two contrasting themes again, but with a different

balance, a clear ababa form. The scherzo continues with restlessness, defined

by sudden shifts in rhythm and stops and starts. In the galloping, tarantellalike finale, Schubert again brings in minor and major key changes. The 

theme, a potentially lyrical melody, remains locked in the somber embrace

ofthe driving rhythmic force and the predominat minor key.

Luigi Dallapiccola was born in Istria, an ethnically Italian region ofthe

Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1904. As a child during World War 1, he

experienced prejudice when his family was deported to Austria. Though his

musical studies were put on hold, he was exposed to other types ofmusic.

When he returned to Istria, he continued his compositional studies, later

becoming fascinated with the Second Viennese School. Again subjected

to persecution in World War 11, as his wife was Jewish, Dallapiccola often

gravitated to the theme ofliberty in his works.
Despite being first and foremost a pianist, Dallapiccola did not write

much music for his instrument, concentrating mostly on opera and other 

vocal works. His first solo work, Sonata canonica, is a delightful piece, neoclassical in style, and based on Paganinis Caprices. The four contrasting

movements incorporate various contrapuntal techniques employed by the

serialist composers.

Born in Vermont in 1981 and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, Nico

Muhly graduated from Columbia University in 2003 with a degree in 

English Literature. In 2004 he received a master ofmusic degree from the 

Juilliard School, where he studied composition under Christopher Rouse

and John Corigliano. Muhly’s orchestral works have been premiered by

the American Symphony Orchestra, the Boston University Tanglewood

Institute Orchestra, the Boston Pops, the Chicago Symphony, and the 

Juilliard Orchestra. In 2005 the Clare College, Cambridge, Choir broadcast 

Muhly’s Evensong Canticles live on BBC3, and New York’s Saint Thomas 

Church commissioned and performed his Bright Mass with Canons. With

designer and illustrator Maira Kalman, Muhly created a cantata on Strunk

and White’s The Elements ofStyle that was premiered in the New York Public

Library. Described by the New York Times as “finely wrought,” the cantata 

earned a place on New York magazine’s list ofthe year’s best events of 2005.

Muhly’s film credits include his scores for Choking Man (2006) and Joshua

(2007), and he has worked extensively with Philip Glass as editor, keyboardist, and conductor for numerous film and stage projects. Recently, Muhly

conducted excerpts from Einstein on the Beach for a new ballet by choreographer Benjamin Millepied at the Opera de Paris. In October 2007 American 

Ballet Theatre commissioned and premiered Muhly and Millepied’s collaboration From Here on Out, and in October 2008 the Paris Opera Ballet will

premiere their newest work, Triade.

6

The works in Franz Liszt’s second book ofAnnees de pelerinage (Years of

Pilgrimage) were based on his travels in Italy. Ofparticular influence were

the writings, paintings, and sculpture ofthe Renaissance. Apres une lecture

du Dante (After Reading Dante) was influenced by Dante’s Divine Comedy,

although the title was taken from a Victor Hugo poem ofthe same name.

Fierce in texture, color, and technical difficulty for the performer, the sonatalike fantasy describes Dante’s journey through the inferno using two

contrasting themes. The opening sequence oftritones, reputed to be “the 

Devil’s interval,” and the following first theme represent the descent into the 

inferno and the suffering ofthe tormented souls there. The second theme,

chorale-like and melodic, prevails triumphantly in the end, witnessing that

Liszt, like Dante, saw hell as a place from which rescue is possible and life

as a divine drama with a happy ending.

Program notes by Danielle DeSwert

Next week at the National Gallery ofArt

Michele Campanella, pianist

Sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti

Presented in honor of Pompeii and the Roman Villa

October 15, 2008

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

East Building Auditorium