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 after 6:30 pm 

is not permitted.

Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, dc

Mailing address

2000B South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-fourth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,554th Concert

National Gallery Orchestra

Jose Serebrier, guest conductor

Raul Jaurena, bandoneonist

Viennese New Year Concert

January 8, 2006

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission fixe
Program

Johann Strauss Jr. (1825-1899)

Overture to Die Fledermaus (The Bat), op. 297

Johann Strauss Jr.

Kaiser-Walzer (Emperor Waltz), op. 437

Johann Strauss Jr. (1825-1899) and Josef Strauss (1827-1870)

Pizzicato-Polka

Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Waltz from Spyashchaya krasavitsa (The Sleeping Beauty), op. 66 

Johann Strauss Jr.

Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka (Tittle-Tattle Polka), op. 214

INTERMISSION

Jose Serebrier (b. 1938)

Tango in Blue (2001)

United States premiere performance

Jose Serebrier

Casi un Tango (Almost a Tango) (2002)

United States premiere performance

Jacob Gade (1869-1963)

Jalousie (Jealousy) (1926)

Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992)

Oblivion

Georges Bizet (1838-1875)

Farandole from Suite Arlesienne

The Musicians

NATIONAL GALLERY ORCHESTRA

The National Gallery Orchestra was founded in 1943 and initially consisted of

approximately twenty-five players who were also members ofthe National 

Symphony. Gradually growing in numbers, it eventually reached the size and

status of a symphony orchestra. The ensemble undertakes 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’ First Symphony under the direction of Richard Bales and the

r99° premiere of Daniel Pinkham’s Fourth Symphony under George Manos.

JOSE SEREBRIER

Winner ofthe 2004 Latin Grammy Award for “best classical album,”

conductor and composer Jose Serebrier has twenty-two other Grammy

nominations to his credit. His skills as a conductor attracted the attention

of prominent conductors early in his career. From 1958 to i960 he apprenticed with Antal Dorati and the Minnesota Orchestra. In i960, at age

twenty-two, he was appointed associate conductor of Leopold Stokowski’s

American Symphony Orchestra, and he led that ensemble in his Carnegie

Hall debut in 1965 as well as numerous other concerts in his five-year

tenure. In 1968 Serebrier won the Ford Foundation American Conductors

Award. One ofthe judges on that panel, George Szell, invited Serebrier

to become composer-in-residence ofthe Cleveland Orchestra, a post he

held for two concert seasons. He went on to conduct most ofthe major

orchestras in the world, including the London Philharmonic, the London

Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Philharmonia Orchestra,

the Royal Philharmonic, and the orchestras of Berlin, Brussels, Cologne,

Helsinki, Madrid, Munich, Paris, and Sydney. One ofthe world’s most

recorded classical artists, he has more than 250 CDs to his credit. Much in

3
demand as an opera conductor, he has been on the podium for important

productions of Ernest Bloch’s Macbeth at London’s Royal Festival Hall, Jules

Massenet’s Manon at Lincoln Center, Mozart’s Don Giovanni in Paris,

Mussorgsky’s Boris Gudonov at the Sydney Opera House, and Tchaikovsky’s

lolanthe at Carnegie Hall.

Serebrier has also distinguished himself as a composer, winning awards

and commissions from Broadcast Music, Inc., the Harvard Musical Association, the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, and the National Endowment for

the Arts. His concerto for harp and orchestra, Colores magicos, was written 

for the Inter-American Music Festival and premiered in Washington in 1971.

Washington Star music critic Irving Lowens wrote at the time: “Ofthe fifteen

new works I heard during the course ofthe festival, I’d rank Colores magicos

among the best.” It became an extremely successful ballet on world-wide

tours by the Joffrey Ballet. Among Serebrier’s other published works, which

number more than a hundred, are concertos for double bass, accordion,

trombone, and violin.

Born in Uruguay of Russian and Polish parents, Serebrier had his first

orchestral composition performed when he was fifteen, by which time he 

had already organized and conducted the first youth orchestra in Uruguay.

He made his conducting debut at age eleven. His biography, written by the 

French music critic Michel Faure, was recently published by l’Harmattan in

France and Canada.

RAUL JAURENA

Raul Jaurena is a member ofthe Giora Feidman Quartet. His interpretations

on the bandoneon are a personal tribute to the influences of his native

South America and his newly adopted home, New York City, combining the

traditional roots ofthe tango and the style ofthe “tango nuevo” shaped by

Astor Piazzolla. He has appeared with the Bronx Arts Ensemble, with conductor Dennis Russell Davies, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and Yo

Yo Ma, with whom Jaurena played a tango concert in 1998.

4

Raul Jaurena was raised in Uruguay and learned to play the bandoneon

from his father. At age eight he joined a tango orchestra. As a member of

and arranger for various renowned tango ensembles in the 1960s and 1970s

in Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile, Jaurena laid the foundation for his concert

career. He eventually joined with four friends to form the New York- Buenos

Aires Connection, which developed into one ofthe leading tango quintets

in the United States. He founded the New York Tango Trio a few years later.

Jaurena’s first highly successful album with his quintet was followed by

recordings with Brazilian singer Ana Caram, Cuban jazz saxophone player

Paquito d’Rivera, and the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra.

5
Program Notes

This evening’s performance marks the fortieth presentation of a Viennese

New Year concert at the National Gallery. Richard Bales and the National 

Gallery Orchestra presented the first on January 2, 1966. The inspiration for

these gala events is the concert that takes place in the renowned Musikverein

in Vienna, a tradition that began in 1939. The musicians who play in that

historic hall enjoy an illustrious musical legacy, which includes such giants as

Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler, and the Strauss family.

Broadcast internationally on radio and television, this annual celebration has

become a world-famous event. The presence ofthe audience and its reaction

to sublime moments, favorite tunes, and musical jokes on stage are as important as the players in this festive drama.

This New Year program departs from tradition in that it includes tangos,

which are to Argentinians and Uruguayans what the waltz is to the Viennese. 

During the nineteenth century in Spain and several Latin American countries,

the term “tango” designated various types of dances, songs, and communal

festivities. Some scholars believe the word is of Castilian origin, derived from

the old Spanish verb tarter (to play an instrument). From a musical viewpoint, 

particularly as regards rhythm, there is little doubt that the tango—the foremost Argentine and Uruguayan urban popular song and dance—is related to

the Cuban contradanza and habanera. These dances spread rapidly throughout Latin America in the first half ofthe nineteenth century. In contrast to

the waltz, which is closely associated with aristocratic traditions and refined

though sometimes flirtatious demeanor, the tango is an erotically charged art

form, in which the dancers’ legs and thighs frequently make contact with 

one another’s and many steps are improvised.

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The other non-Viennese dance on this program is thefarandole, a chain

dance from southern France, particularly Provence and the region around

Arles. It is usually performed on major holidays (especially the Feast of

Corpus Christi) by a line of men and women in alternation, either holding

hands or linked by handkerchiefs or ribbons that successive dancers hold

in either hand. The chain follows a leader along a winding path, moving in

long, rapid steps and passing beneath arches formed by the raised arms of

a couple in the chain. Tradition holds that the farandole was introduced to 

the region around Marseille by the Phoenicians, who in turn had learned it

from the Greeks.

With its nostalgic return to familiar music and its international spirit,

this concert makes a delightful celebration of a milestone in time, and it is

offered as a heartfelt wish, expressed in music, for a happy, prosperous, and

peaceful new year.