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 of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

Mailing address

200ob South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-fifth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

“Sixty-five, but not retiring”

National Gallery of Art

2,591st Concert

Amanda Pitt, soprano

David Owen Norris, pianist

Presented in honor of

Constable's Great Landscapes: The Six-Foot Paintings

November 5, 2006

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

Admissionfree
Program

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

Silent Noon

Roger Quilter (1877-1953)

The Jolly Miller

C. Armstrong Gibbs (1889-1960)

The Fields Are Full

Five Eyes

Peter Warlock (1894-1930)

Three Hilaire Belloc Songs

Ha’nacker Mill

The Night

My Own Country

Roger Quilter

Three Songs ofWilliam Blake, op. 20 

Dream Valley

The Wild Flower’s Song

Daybreak

INTERMISSION

Roger Quilter

Three Piecesfor Piano, op. 16

Dance in the Twilight

Summer Evening

At a Country Fair

William Walton (1902-1983)

A Songfor the Lord Mayor’s Table

The Lord Mayor’s Table

Glide Gently

Holy Thursday

The Contrast

Rhyme
The Musicians

AMANDA PITT

Amanda Pitt has proven her versatility with a wide repertoire, from opera

to contemporary music. She has performed at many ofthe major London

venues and European festivals, giving several world premieres. Among

the prominent musicians with whom she has worked are George Benjamin, Jonathan Harvey, Oliver Knussen, Colin Matthews, Andras Schiff, and

James Wood. She has been a featured soloist in concerts ofthe Bampton

Classical Opera, the London Sinfonietta, the New Music Players, Sinfonia 21, and the Stowe Opera. Her solo recordings include music by Nadia 

Boulanger and Leos Janacek on the Hyperion label, Ruth Crawford Seeger 

on Deutsche Grammophon, and folksong arrangements and duets of Roger

Quilter on Naxos. Pitt has participated in bbc Radio 3 broadcasts of performances ofworks including Alexander Goehr’s Psalm 4 and Brian Ferneyhough’s On Stellar Magnitudes. She regularly performs with David Owen

Norris, and they recently gave a recital using Clara Schumann’s piano at

the Royal National College of Music’s Schumann and Brahms Fest in Manchester. She is a founding member ofThe Works, an ensemble that has

toured Buxton, Dorset, Edinburgh, Kent, and Oslo with the comic opera

Two Murders and a Marriage.

DAVID OWEN NORRIS

David Owen Norris left Oxford University with a first and a composition scholarship to study in London and Paris. He has served as a repetiteur at the Royal

Opera House, a harpist at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the artistic director offestivals in Cardiff and Petworth, the chairman ofthe Steans Institute

for Young Artists in Chicago, and a professor ofmusic at Gresham College in

London. He is frequently heard as a radio broadcaster, presenting numerous

programs in series, including The Works, But I Know What I Like, and All the

Rage. He also presented the drive-time show In Tune for several years.

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In 1991, after an extensive career as a pianist for such artists as Larry Adler,

Dame Janet Baker, Ernst Kovacic, and Jean-Pierre Rampal, Norris was selected 

by the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival to be the first Gilmore Artist,

a singular honor. His subsequent international solo career has included performances with the Academy ofAncient Music, the Chicago and Detroit Symphony Orchestras, the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston, the Philharmonia

Orchestra, and several ofthe BBC’s orchestras, including three appearances at

the Proms. He frequently performs on early pianos and has given solo recitals 

throughout Australia, central and western Europe, and North America. He

is a professor at the Royal College of Music and head ofkeyboard studies at

the University of Southampton.

David Owen Norris and Amanda Pitt appear at the National Gallery by

arrangement with Hunstein Artist Services of New York City.

The Exhibition

English artist John Constable (1776-1837) regarded the six-foot-long landscapes that he began to paint in 1818-1819 as his most serious and significant

achievements. In creating such large-scale works, Constable found he needed

an intermediate stage between small oil studies and the final painting, and he

chose to work out the diverse elements ofthe large compositions on a full-size

canvas. The oil sketches he made in preparation for the final paintings are 

remarkable works in their own right. Some ofConstable’s greatest and most

famous paintings are in the exhibition, including The Hay Wain (1820-1821),

View on the Stour near Dedham (1822), The Leaping Horse (1825), and Hadleigh

Castle (1829). The catalyst for the exhibition was the recent cleaning ofthe oil

sketch for the first six-foot painting, The White Horse, which Constable exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1819. The cleaning ofthis sketch, which is in the

National Gallery’s collection, has revealed nothing less than a lost masterpiece

under layers of disfiguring nineteenth-century repaint.

The exhibition will remain on view in the East Building, Upper Level

and Mezzanine, through December 31, 2006.

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Program Notes

For this concert in honor of Constable’s Great Landscapes: The Six-Foot Paintings, Amanda Pitt and David Owen Norris have included settings for solo

voice of poems by William Blake and William Wordsworth, both older contemporaries ofConstable’s. They have also included what might be described

as “landscape songs,” with two themes present in paintings in the exhibition: 

water meadows, such as those in Constable’s views of Salisbury Cathedral; 

and mills, such as Flatford Mill. In addition, there are settings for voice and

piano ofnature poetry written by Blake during his stays in Hampstead, a

favorite retreat of Blake, Constable, and many other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists and writers. William Walton’s song-cycle A Songfor the

Lord Mayor’s Table includes two poems about the Thames (an essential feature

ofthe sketches for The Opening ofWaterloo Bridge) and some amusing comparisons between the town and country so lovingly presented by Constable.

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Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

Suspicious Cheese Lords

Music for men’s voices by Dufay, Binchois, Josquin,

and other Flemish Renaissance composers

Presented in honor of

Prayers and Portraits: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych

November 12, 2006

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court