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-sixth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,652nd Concert

I / , b s 5 - c-fc-v t (

New York Chamber Soloists

Jennifer Grim, flute

Melvin Kaplan, oboe

Allen Blustine, clarinet

Curtis Macomber, violin

Ynez Lynch, viola and narration

Adam Grabois, cello

Elizabeth Metcalfe, piano and harpsichord

January 6, 2008

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)

Concerto in G Minorfor Flute, Oboe, Violin, Viola, Cello, and Harpsichord

Allegro ma cantabile 

Largo

Allegro molto

Elliot Carter (b. 1908)

Esprit rude/Esprit doux (1985)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Piano Quartet in E-fat Major, K. 493 (1786)

Allegro

Larghetto

Allegretto

INTERMISSION

Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)

Caprice on Danish and Russian Airs, op. 79 (1887)

Gerald Fried (b. 1928)

The Chess Game

For narrator, flute, oboe, violin, cello, and piano 

Inspired by Alice in Wonderland

The Musicians

Acclaimed as an outstanding ensemble of distinguished virtuosi, performing

widely diverse repertoire in creatively programmed concerts, the New York

Chamber Soloists have maintained a unique niche in the chamber music

world for five decades. This twelve-member ensemble ofstrings, winds, and 

keyboard can increase to as many as twenty with the addition of guest artists, 

giving it the flexibility to offer many works that are seldom heard due to the 

unusual instrumental combinations for which they were written.

With more than 250 works in their repertoire, the Chamber Soloists

have made a valuable contribution to the musical life ofthis country, and

have helped to expand the audience for chamber music. Their programming

innovations have included Bach’s complete Brandenburg Concerti in a single 

concert; an American classics program; the complete Mozart horn concerti;

song cycles, cantatas, and operas from Monteverdi to Aitken; and “Paris in

the ‘20s.”

They have added substantially to the catalog oftwentieth-century chamber works, with compositions written for them by Mario Davidovsky, Ezra

Laderman, Mel Powell, Gunther Schuller, and twenty-one other contemporary composers. Most recently, the group has commissioned a new work for

children, Ferdinand the Bull, from noted American composer Hugh Aitken.

The ensemble has compiled an impressive record ofrepeat engagements in North America and abroad, including eleven European tours, six

Latin American tours, and numerous tours ofthe Far East and South Pacific.

In New York City, the Chamber Soloists have appeared frequently at the 

Metropolitan Museum of Art and Lincoln Center. In addition to the National

Gallery, the Chamber Soloists have performed locally at the John F. Kennedy

Center for the Performing Arts, the Library of Congress, and the National

Academy of Sciences. They are frequent guests at major universities across

the country and at the Caramoor, Mostly Mozart, Sun Valley, and Vermont 

Mozart festivals.

3
Program Notes

Even in an age of prolific composers, Antonio Vivaldi’s musical outpouring

is astonishing, especially considering that a good deal ofit has been lost. His 

known output includes some five hundred concerti, more than fifty operas,

and seventy sonatas as well as numerous arias, sacred and secular cantatas,

and sinfonias. As a pioneer of orchestral music, his expressive lyricism and

dramatic content distinguished him from his predecessors, and he was 

gready admired throughout Europe during his lifetime.

Vivaldi’s operatic and religious works display his mastery ofthose forms,

but the composer is best remembered for his instrumental concerti, the 

majority ofwhich were composed for the academy orchestra at the Pieta, a

school for orphaned girls where he taught music. In his concerti for solo

instruments, Vivaldi introduced the musical device ofplacing the soloist and

the orchestra in contrast with each other, creating a dialogue that is essentially 

developmental, with progressive dramatic interest provided by an increment

of arpeggios, swift scales, and tremoli in the solo part. One ofhis most successful instrumental combinations was the double concerto for flute, oboe, strings,

and harpsichord, and he wrote at least eight such works. Like many baroque

composers, Vivaldi borrowed from himself; the slow movement (Largo) also

appears in a double concerto for oboe, violin, and orchestra.

New York City native Elliot Carter is acknowledged as one ofthe United

States’ most important composers, educators, and writers on music. In his

illustrious career he has been awarded grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Institute ofArts and Letters (ofwhich he has been a member

since 1971), and prizes such as the Prix de Rome and the Sibelius Award. His 

second and third string quartets were each awarded a Pulitzer Prize, and he

has been granted honorary doctorate degrees from Harvard, Princeton, and

Yale universities. In 1977 Carter’s critical writings were published under the

title The Writings ofElliot Carter: an American Composer Looks at Music.

In Esprit rude/Esprit doux, Carter whimsically makes use of arcane and

eclectic sources for his musical inspiration. Composed in 1985 in honor of

the sixtieth birthday ofthe celebrated conductor and composer Pierre

4

Boulez, the work uses the German and French note names for which there

are pitch equivalents. Carter extracted a musical motto based on his French

colleague’s last name, as follows: B (B-flat in German), (O, no equivalent),

U (ut or c), L (la or a in French), E, Z, (no equivalent). The motto therefore

consists ofthe pitches b-flat—c—a—e; the piece begins and ends with this

musical theme, shared cooperatively between the flute and the clarinet.

The non-musical inspiration does not stop there. Carter goes a step

further, translating “sixtieth birthday’’ into Greek. The two words, transliterated as “hexekostan ekos” both begin with the Greek letter “epsilon.” They

are, however, pronounced differently, the first with an H sound, the other

with an E sound. The title, Esprit rude/Esprit doux, which the composer

translates as “rough breathing/ smooth breathing” refers to the “rough”

pronunciation ofthe first word, and the “smooth” pronunciation ofthe

second one. Accordingly, the impulses ofroughness and smoothness find

their way into the construction ofthe music: jerky, active rhythmic lines

(“rough breathing”) alternate or are juxtaposed with gently flowing legato

line (“smooth breathing”).

The dark, dramatic opening phrase of Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E-flat

Major, K. 493, is scant preparation for the several delightful motifs that the

composer introduces to round out the first subject. The second theme,

stated by the piano after two powerful chords, has a single melodic strain

that subsequently dominates the development section, appearing about

twenty times in various keys, instrumental combinations, dynamics, and

musical meanings. The final coda features a tight, fugal reworking ofthe

familiar second-theme motto. The second movement (Larghetto) is distinguished by immediate echoes of almost every phrase—sometimes in exact

repetition, sometimes elaborated or modified in some way. The overall 

feeling is wistful and tender, but with strong hints of great inner tension.

The final movement (Allegretto) has a memorable opening theme that

Mozart biographer Alfred Einstein (1880-1952) enthusiastically called “the

purest, most childlike and godlike melody ever sung.” The movement is

structured in a combined rondo and sonata form with the first theme

followed by a second rather militant theme that soon relaxes into a more

5
lyrical mood, as Mozart brings in additional motifs. After a briefsection 

featuring virtuosic runs for the piano that can be considered the development, the second and first themes return, and the work concludes with a

short coda.

Camille Saint-Saens began studying piano at age two-and-a-half and was

composing by age five. Eight years later he entered the Paris Conservatory,

and at twenty-two was organist at one ofthe great churches of Paris, La

Madeleine, where his playing won the admiration of Franz Liszt, Anton 

Rubenstein, and Clara Schumann, among many others. He toured widely as

both a pianist and a conductor and his compositions were extremely popular,

winning numerous important prizes in his own lifetime. Saint-Saens wrote

many pieces for winds and piano, among them the Caprice on Danish and

Russian Airs. In typical French fashion, it employs all the colors available

from the four instruments involved in a delicious flight offancy.

Emmy Award-winner and Oscar-nominee Gerald Fried is a prolific

composer and a respected performer. Over a forty-year career in films and

television, he composed the musical scores for Gilligan’s Island, Roots, Star

Trek, and The Manfrom u.n.c.l.e. as well as for Stanley Kubrick’s first five

films, for which he both composed and conducted the music. Since his 

retirement from film composition in the early 1990s, Fried has focused on 

music for the theater, and is currently working on a full-length music theater

piece, Momingtime Train. He has also composed four symphonies and three

operas, most recently Rock ofAngels. His music is distinguished by unusual

string and brass and the inclusion ofrarely-used instruments, such as the 

harpsichord. Fried’s The Chess Game is the first ofthree works commissioned by the New York Chamber Soloists and the Argosy Foundation to be

performed with spoken excerpts from Lewis Carroll’s (1832-1898) Alice’s

Adventures in Wonderland. It was premiered at the Vermont Mozart Festival

in 2006.

Notes on Carter, Fried, Saint-Saens, and Vivaldi provided by the

New York Chamber Soloists

6

Next Week at the National Gallery

Vilnius String Quartet

Music by Beethoven, Brahms, and Narbutaite

January 13, 2008

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court