Next week at the National Gallery of Art

Dan Zhu, violinist

Jie Chen, pianist

Music by Schubert, Schumann, Webern, and Chinese composers

June 7, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

For the convenience of concertgoers 

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:00 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-seventh Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,730th Concert

National Gallery Chamber Orchestra

Vladimir Lande, guest conductor

Stephen Ackert, harpsichord

May 31, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Concertofor Klavier and String Orchestra in F Minor, BWV 1056 (c. 1720)

Allegro moderato

Largo

Presto

Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998)

Suite in the Old Stylefor Chamber Orchestra (1972)

Pastorale: Moderate

Ballett

Menuett: Tempo di Menuetto

Fuge: Allegro

Pantomime

INTERMISSION

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Sinfoniafor String Orchestra, op. 110a (i960)

(Transcribed by Rudolf Barshai from String Quartet no. 8)

Largo

Allegro molto 

Allegretto

Largo

Largo

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Serenadefor Strings, op. 48 (1880)

Pezzo in forma di sonatina: Andante non troppo 

Walzer: Tempo di valse

Elegie: Larghetto elegiaco

Finale: Tema russo; Andante

The Musicians

NATIONAL GALLERY ORCHESTRA

The National Gallery Orchestra was founded in 1943 and initially consisted

of approximately twenty-five players drawn from the National Symphony 

Orchestra. Gradually growing in numbers, the Gallery orchestra eventually

reached the size and status of a large chamber orchestra. The ensemble has 

undertaken the full range of chamber and symphonic repertoire and has 

frequently presented first performances ofworks by American composers,

most notably the 1953 premiere ofCharles Ives’ Symphony no. 1 under the

direction of Richard Bales, the 1990 premiere of Daniel Pinkham’s Symphony

no. 4 under George Manos, and the 2007 premiere of Later the Same Evening:

An opera inspired byfive paintings ofEdward Hopper, under guest conductor

Glen Cortese. In September 2008 the orchestra completed a highly successful concert tour in North Carolina, under the direction of guest conductor

Vladimir Lande.

VLADIMIR LANDE

Vladimir Lande is music director ofthe cosmic (Chamber Orchestra of

Southern Maryland, in Concert) Orchestra, Washington Soloists Chamber

Orchestra, Maryland Conservatory Orchestra, and director ofthe Hopkins

Symphony Chamber Orchestra. He is the principal guest conductor ofthe 

St. Petersburg (Russia) Symphony Orchestra; regularly conducts the Donetsk 

Ballet Company in Europe and the United States; has conducted at the Ravello

Festival in Italy; and has guest conducted the National Gallery Orchestra

several times. Since 1996 he has been principal guest conductor ofthe Bachanalia Festival Orchestra in New York. In summer 2004 Lande was invited

to conduct the opening concert ofthe internationally renowned White

Nights Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia, including a performance in Grand 

Philharmonic Hall. In 2006 he made his conducting debut with the Baltimore Opera Orchestra, and in 2008 he conducted the Tulsa (Oklahoma)

Symphony Orchestra.
STEPHEN ACKERT

Stephen Ackert has been head ofthe music department at the National

Gallery since 2004. In this capacity, he plans and presents the weekly

concerts for the public and presents lectures and lecture-recitals on subjects 

that bring together the visual arts and music. He is also an adjunct teacher

of organ at Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria, Virginia.

A graduate of Oberlin College, Northwestern University, and the University

ofWisconsin, Ackert studied organ and harpsichord as a Fulbright scholar 

in Frankfurt, Germany, where his teachers were Helmut Walcha and Maria

Jaeger-Jung. Ackert has performed organ and harpsichord recitals and presented lecture-recitals in many ofWashington, dc’s prime venues, including 

the Austrian and German Embassies, the Kennedy Center, the National

Cathedral, and the National Shrine ofthe Immaculate Conception. In 1999

he was a featured performer in the renowned “Thiiringer Orgelsommer”

recital series, playing on six historic instruments in Thuringia, and in 2007

he returned to Germany for his eighth recital tour of historic concert halls

and churches in that country. Ackert has served three Washington area

churches as organist and director ofmusic: St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church

(Washington, dc), The Falls Church (Falls Church, Virginia), and The United

Church (formerly Concordia Church, Washington’s first German-language

congregation). At the United Church, he founded a series of Bach concerts 

that continued for thirteen years, included more than forty concerts, and 

developed a loyal following of Bach enthusiasts.

Johann Sebastian Bach frequently rearranged or transcribed works that he 

had written earlier in his life. The Concertofor Klavier (i.e. keyboard instrument) in F Minor is thought to be a transcription of a lost concerto for oboe

or violin. Originally written during Bach’s Cothen period (1717-1723), the 

concerto was likely to have been played in the Collegium Musicum concerts 

that Bach organized in the 1730s at the Cafe Zimmerman in Leipzig. Its first

and third movements are in ritornello form—the theme is presented several

times in different keys, with extended passages of new material between each

repetition ofthe theme.

The slow movement (Largo) features a melody that unfolds in ever lengthening phrases, the last ofwhich is six-and-one-halfmeasures long. It would

certainly have tested the breath control of any wind player, ifthe original version ofthis concerto was, in fact, for a wind instrument. The elaborate ornamentation, written out by the composer, represents the epitome of the art

of decorating a vocal or instrumental line, as it was practiced in the baroque 

period. The finale (Presto) is a vigorous, flowing movement in triple time.

It features a back-and-forth exchange of chords between the solo instrument

and the orchestra that is unique for Bach’s time and looks forward to Mozart

and other masters ofthe classical concerto. After whispering patiently in the 

background throughout the whole work, the orchestra is finally allowed to

take the lead with the main melody in the last eight measures.

Program Notes
Born into a Jewish family in the Soviet Union in 1934, Alfred Schnittke

began his musical education in Vienna, where his journalist father was posted,

and completed it at the Moscow Conservatory, after his family relocated

there in 1948. After teaching at the conservatory from 1962-1972, Schnittke

turned to composing music for films, and supported himself doing this for 

many years. Though he was influenced early on by composers such as

Shostakovich, he later developed “polystylistic” techniques, combining old

and new music styles. His film music bled into the concert music that he

produced, blending “serious” and “light” musical ideas. Despite constant ill

health, Schnittke was a prolific composer, writing more than seventy film

scores in thirty years. His music became widely known abroad in the 1980s, 

when Soviet musicians brought it to the West. In addition to film music, he

composed nine symphonies, several concerti grossi, piano and violin concerti, 

and many chamber works.

Composed in 1972, Schnittke’s Suite in the Old Style is a nod to composers

of the early to mid-twentieth century, such as Stravinsky, who composed

pieces in a neoclassical style, often closely modeled on baroque music. The

five movements, conceived as a whole, were borrowed from the baroque

period, but one would never mistake this work as anything but a twentiethcentury composition. Part of Schnittke’s significant contribution as a

composer ofthe post-modern era was his use of older music within the modern idiom.

Dmitri Shostakovich’s compositional style was deeply affected by the

political unrest, persecution, and suffering that he experienced personally in

World War 11 and throughout the Soviet Union’s Stalinist period. He is said 

to have written his String Quartet No. 8, op. no, in three days, shortly after

a visit to Dresden in i960, where he was shocked by the devastation that

was still evident. As he did in his Second Piano Trio, which dates from 1944,

Shostakovich used music as a way to mourn the victims and honor those

who died and were buried in unmarked graves far from those they loved.

The quartet was, in fact, initially subtitled “To the Memory ofthe Victims of

Fascism.” Full ofself-quotations from his newly famous Cello Concerto No. 1

and his suppressed opera, Lady Macbeth ofMtensk, as well as from his First,

Fifth, and Tenth Symphonies, the String Quartet No. 8 represents Shostakovich’s

view ofhimself as a victim of political tyranny.

Equally well-known is Rudolf Barshai’s transcription for string orchestra

of Shostakovich’s Quartet no. 8, marked opus 110a. Taken quite literally from

the quartet, but expanded into a larger-scale work, this arrangement does great

justice to the original, retaining the composer’s original emotional intensity.

In yet another nod to composers ofthe past, Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for

Strings was a direct homage to Mozart, who was Tchaikovsky’s most idolized

composer. The serenade, originally “night-time” music, meant to be sung

under a beloved’s window accompanied by a lute, emerged in the eighteenth

century in operas by Rossini and Mozart. Eventually the serenade evolved

into a form in its own right, being featured in works such as Mozart’s Eine

Heine Nachtmusik, Brahms’ Serenades, opp. 11 and 16, and the serenades for 

strings by Edward Elgar and Antonin Dvorak.

The first movement, a sonatina, is an intentional imitation of Mozart’s

mannerisms, though certainly more passionate than the typical classical 

sonatina. In the second movement, Tchaikovsky uses his skills to craft both

an elegant and graceful melody within the whirl of the waltz. The meditative

Elegie is the longest ofthe four movements and shows the composer’s mastery

of expressive writing. In the final section, the listener hardly misses Tchaikovsky’s typical blazing brass and crashing cymbals, because the character of

Russian music is so brilliandy conveyed through strings alone. A rare change

from his typical bombastic orchestral works, this serenade remained one of

Tchaikovsky’s favorites long after he wrote it.

The National Gallery extends its thanks to the Music Division of the Library

ofCongress for the loan ofthe Hubbard and Broekman harpsichord used in

this concert.