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The Seventy-first Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,955th Concert

Michael Arnowitt, pianist

Presented in honor of

Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, 1909-2929:

When Art Danced with Music

June 16, 2013

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

“1913”

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Preludes, Book 2 (1913)

Brouillards (Mists): Modere

Les Fees sont d’exquises danseuses (Fairies Are Exquisite Dancers)

Ondine: Scherzando

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

Sonata no. 2 in B-flat Minor (1913)

Allegro agitato

Erik Satie (1866-1925)

Embryons desseches (Dessicated Embryos) (1913)

of a Holothurian (Sea Cucumber)

of an Edriophthalma (Crustacean)

of a Podophthalma (Gastropod with Protruding Eyes)

Jeffrey Chappell, narrator

Leo Ornstein (1893-2002)

Suicide in an Airplane (1918-1919)

INTERMISSION

Charles Ives (1874-1954)

Sonata no. 2 (“Concord, Massachusetts, 1840-1860”) (1911-1915)

The Alcotts

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

“The Adoration ofthe Earth” from The Rite ofSpring (1913)

Transcribed for piano solo by Michael Arnowitt 

Adoration ofthe Earth

Introduction

Augurs of Spring

Ritual ofAbduction 

Spring Rounds

Ritual ofthe Rival Tribes

Procession ofthe Sage: The Sage

Dance of the Earth

This concert is sponsored in part by the Billy Rose Foundation
The Musician

MICHAEL ARNOWITT

Known for the beauty, clarity, and elegance of his musical ideas, Michael 

Arnowitt is one ofthe most creative and imaginative pianists performing

today. Frequently praised for his abilities to coax new articulations and

colors from the piano and construct innovative and thought-provoking

programs, Arnowitt connects naturally with audiences of all ages. In 2004,

Arnowitt’s life and music became the subject of Beyond Eighty-Eight Keys,

an award-winning documentary by Susan Bettmann. The him has been

broadcast twice on public television and has been shown at him festivals 

and venues including the Rode Pomp, an arts center in Ghent, Belgium

and the Anthology, a theater in New York City’s East Village.

In 1989 Arnowitt began his presentation ofthe complete Beethoven piano

sonatas, matching his age as he performs the various sonatas with Beethoven’s

age as he composed them. The eight concerts in the project, spaced out over

26 years, thereby become a study in the psychology of aging and development.

He has performed these “Beethoven and Arnowitt” concerts throughout the

United States and in Canada and Germany, where the Rheinische Post of

Diisseldorfwrote, “he played with a striking virtuosity and deeply felt passion.”

He has performed as piano soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the

Kiev Chamber Orchestra under Roman Kofman, and the Savannah Symphony 

Orchestra, among others.

Arnowitt’s spoken commentary illuminates the music by drawing connections between the various works on the program. He enjoys researching the

social, political, religious, or artistic contexts of a piece ofmusic and sharing

insights and anecdotes that reveal relationships between the compositions and

the world in which they were created. Bom in Boston, Massachusetts, Arnowitt 

has lived in Montpelier, Vermont since 1983.

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Program Notes

Universally acknowledged as the most innovative dance company ofthe

twentieth century, the Ballets Russes propelled the performing arts to new

heights through groundbreaking collaborations among artists, composers,

choreographers, dancers, and fashion designers. Founded by Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev (1872-1929) in Paris in 1909, the company combined

Russian and Western traditions with a healthy dose of modernism, thrilling

and shocking audiences with its powerful fusion of choreography, music,

and design. Showcasing more than 130 original costumes, set designs,

paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings, photographs, and posters, the

National Gallery ofArt exhibition Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes also 

incorporates film clips in a theatrical, multimedia installation. The exhibition remains on view in the East Building until September 2, 2013.

Diaghilev’s success depended primarily on his ability to identify and

bring together the most creative artists of his day. Recognizing the vitality

of contemporary art, he called upon Leon Bakst, Natalia Goncharova, Pablo

Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Giorgio de Chirico, among others, to create

dynamic set designs and exquisitely decorated costumes that shared a

unified aesthetic. They in turn brought the most important artistic developments ofthe early twentieth century—including futurism, cubism, and

surrealism—to the ballet stage. Diaghilev also featured dancers noted for 

their technical brio, making the company a breeding ground for choreographic innovation: Mikhail Fokine, Vaslav Nijinsky, Leonide Massine,

Bronislava Nijinska, and George Balanchine all dramatically expanded the

vocabulary ofmovement. In addition to the composers featured on tonight’s

program, the Ballet Russes premiered significant works by Manuel da Falla,

Darius Milhaud, and Serge Prokofiev.

This evening’s program presents contrasting pieces ofpiano music

written by major composers in and around the year 1913. The second decade

ofthe twentieth century witnessed an unparalleled creative explosion in

all the arts. The world situation was equally rich in change, with the end of

aristocracy, the birth of new technologies such as the automobile, the

5
airplane, and electricity, and mass social unrest over the issues of equal

rights for women and the working conditions offactory laborers. Tensions

were further heightened by a series of diplomatic and military crises that

would ultimately lead to the outbreak ofWorld War i the following year.

With the romantic era in its twilight years, new and original music was

emerging everywhere. These new musical currents included responses to

expressionist and impressionist visual art, nationalist styles using energetic

folk music elements, compositions aiming to create a mystical experience,

and what was dubbed at the time “futurist” music—pieces that foreshadowed the developments ofthe next one-hundred years.

The most sensational artistic event of 1913 was the premiere of Stravinsky’s

The Rite of Spring in Paris, which shocked the audience so intensely that the

performance was interrupted by a riot in the theater. Featured on today’s

program is the complete first half ofthe ballet “The Adoration ofthe Earth.”

The Dances ofthe Young Girls, Spring Rounds, Ritual ofthe Rival Tribes, 

and Dance ofthe Earth suggest themes ofbrutal violence and primitivism

in both dance and music that would permeate the entire decade musically. 

Stravinsky’s ad-infinitum repetition of a chord outlining two simultaneous

tonalities (E major and E-flat dominant) in the Dances ofthe Young Girls 

precludes the tone-cluster techniques used a few years later by Leo Ornstein

to depict the horror ofwarfare.

One ofthe most controversial and important figures in American music

at the time, Ornstein was a stylistic radical. One ofhis most distinctive works, 

Suicide in an Airplane, incorporates a quick-moving bass ostinato pattern

intended to capture the sensation of airplane engines in flight, as well as tone

clusters to depict the horror ofwarfare. More distant from the performance

scene was fellow American composer Charles Ives, who wrote his mature

works in relative obscurity during the same decade. The “Hawthorne” movement ofhis Concord Sonata calls for a i43A-inch wooden board to produce

certain chord clusters. “The Alcotts,” however, is a more consonant movement

filled with quotations ofthe opening theme to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

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At the opposite end ofthe spectrum, the first movement of Sergei 

Rachmaninoff’s lush, nostalgic Sonata no. 2 is the epitome oflate-period

romanticism. This tragic work begins with a dramatic downward sweep

from the middle to the bottom ofthe piano keyboard, setting the stage

for what is to come. It unfolds in sonata form, though Rachmaninoffspins

out each melodic idea so expansively that the piece begins to resemble

a rhapsody. Following a long and exhausting tour as a concert pianist,

Rachmaninoff composed this sonata while on vacation in Rome, even 

as he concurrently orchestrated his large choral-orchestral work, The

Bells. Only nine years Stravinsky’s senior, Rachmaninoffshared with his

younger contemporary an admiration for the masterworks of Nikolai 

Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908). Remaining in the romantic tradition,

Rachmaninoffdid not respond to Rimsky-Korsakov’s push toward the

threshold ofmodernity, whereas this became Stravinsky’s claim to fame.

Also rooted deeply in the romantic tradition, Claude Debussy wrote a

series ofshort, impressionistic movements in 1913. Debussy longed to be

called a symbolist rather than an impressionist, and his two books of

Preludes for piano showcase his vivid imagination for musical symbolism.

Each movement is named for an image, an object, a person, a place, or an

idea; and the title appears at the bottom right corner following each movement. This way the player is able to discern the image directly from the

music before reading the description.

Erik Satie’s Embryons desseches, also dating from 1913, indulge in musical

representation that is more whimsical, even comical. In deliberately rejecting established musical trends—and satirizing some ofthem— Satie

anticipated the surrealist movement in art. His music attracted the attention

of Serge Diaghilev when he was ready to incorporate surrealism into the

work ofthe Ballets Russes. In 1917 he invited Satie to compose the score for 

Parade, which featured revolutionary choreography by Leonide Massine

(1896-1979) and costumes by Picasso.

Program notes based on materials provided by Michael Arnowitt