Elegie gives evidence of Chopin’s influence, while the Humoresque is

redolent of the music of Rachmaninoff’s compatriot, Pyotr Ilyich

Tchaikovsky.

Schumann’s inspired and significant Symphonic Etudes in the

Form of Variations was written when he was only twenty-four years old.

The pianistic writing of these etudes requires technique of a superior

order. They run the gamut from capricious and alluring, through

clamorous and demonic, to highly poetic and sensuous. On this program,

Anne Koscielny plays the twelve variations Schumann included in his

original publication of the work.

There are five additional variations that Schumann wrote at the

same time but did not include initially. These were added after his death

by Johannes Brahms, who edited the work and published it in 1873 in a

supplementary volume of his Complete Works ofSchumann.

Program notes by Elmer Booze

The use of cameras or recording equipment during

the performance is not allowed. Please he sure that cell

phones, pagers, and other electronic devices are turned off.

For the convenience ofconcertgoers

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:30 p.m.

The Sixty-second Season of

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and

F. LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

2488th Concert

ANNE KOSCIELNY, pianist

Sunday Evening, 7 March 2004

Seven O’clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission free
Program

Joseph Haydn

(1732-1809)

Frederic Chopin

(1810-1849)

Sergei Rachmaninoff

(1873-1943)

Sonata in A Major, Hob. XVI/26

(1773)

Allegro moderato

Minuetto al rovescio

Finale: Presto

Waltz in F Major

Op. 34, No. 3 (1838)

Nocturne in D-flat Major

Op. 27, No. 2 (1835)

Polonaise in F-sharp Minor

Op. 44(1840-1841)

Elegie in E-flat Major

from Morceaux defantaisie, Op. 3 (1892)

Humoresque in G Major

from Morceaux de salon, Op. 10

(1893-1894, rev. 1940)

Etude tableau in D Major 

Op. 39, No. 9(1916-1917)

Intermission

Robert Schumann

(1810-1856)

Symphonic Etudes in the Form of Variations

Op. 13 (1834-1837)

The Musician

A native of Florida, Anne Koscielny began piano studies at age six. She

has performed in solo recitals since she was ten years old and has

appeared with many orchestras and chamber music ensembles throughout

the United States, Central America, Europe, and Asia. Her London

debut in 1972 was received with great critical success. The Daily

Telegraph noted Koscielny’s “fire and feeling...outstanding

interpretations...power and control. This was a remarkable debut.” The

winner of many awards and prizes, including first prizes in the

Kosciuszko Chopin Competition in New York City and the National

Guild of Piano Teachers Recording Competition, Koscielny received the

bachelor of music degree with distinction and a performer’s certificate 

from the Eastman School of Music. She received scholarships from the

Manhattan School of Music, where she earned the master of music

degree, and from the Fulbright Foundation for two years of study in

Vienna, Austria.

Anne Koscielny’s reputation as a master pianist has been firmly

established by her four previous performances at the National Gallery

(1963, 1986, 1991, and 1995) and by numerous concerts for the

Washington Performing Arts Society and the Phillips Collection. As a

convention artist for many state music teachers’ associations, she has

played and lectured in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, and

Georgia. Other concerts, master classes, lectures, and workshops have

taken her to more than seventy-five college and university campuses.

Koscielny has adjudicated several competitions, including the Fulbright

Screening Committee in New York City, the Gina Bachauer

Competition, the Maryland International Piano Competition, and the

Young Keyboard Artists’ Association. In May 2002 she traveled to

China, where she gave recitals, lectures, and master classes in Shenyang,

Yantei, and Xiamin, and several other cities.

Koscielny has held professorships of music at the Hartt School of

Music in Hartford, Connecticut, the University of Maryland at College

Park, and the Eastman School of Music, where she was a visiting

professor during the spring term of 2002. She and her husband, pianist
and teacher Raymond Hanson, now live in Massachusetts, where she

remains active as a recitalist, orchestral soloist, chamber musician, and

lecturer.

Program Notes

Haydn’s Sonata in A Major, Hob. XVI126, is the last of a group of six

known as the Esterhazy sonatas. Haydn dedicated them in 1773 to Prince

Nicholas Esterhazy, in whose service he was employed from 1761 to

1776. The work opens with the classical sonata-allegro format:

exposition, development, and recapitulation. The second movement 

(Menuetto al rovescio) contains an unusual feature for Haydn, a rovescio,

or palindrome. When the first theme of the movement is repeated, it is

played backwards (retrograde). The same technique is used when the

theme of the trio section is repeated. The finale (Presto) is a dazzling 

moto perpetuo of only forty seconds’ duration.

Chopin’s waltzes embody the charm and sophistication inherent

in his musical expression. They are consistent in their ABA format,

which is also common to Chopin’s mazurkas, etudes, nocturnes, and

polonaises. He apparently intended his early waltzes as music for

dancing as well as for listening. John Gillespie says of the waltzes: “In

the early waltzes, titled Vaises brillantes, Chopin reminisces about

souvenirs of a ball: resplendent costumes, sparkling illumination, and

graceful dancers. Not long after, however, Chopin stylized his waltz form

to the ‘salon’ waltz, his special creation’’ (Five Centuries of Keyboard

Music). Three Brilliant Waltzes is the collective title of Op. 34, from

which Anne Koscielny has selected the Waltz No. 3 in F Major.

Nicknamed the “Cat Waltz,” it is a virtuoso showpiece designed to

please the listener.

The loveliness of Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 27, No. 2, is consistent 

with the presumption that he wrote it as he was planning to marry his

beloved Maria Wodzinska (the union never materialized). The work

presents a seamless lyrical melody bom of a single theme. It incorporates

thirds and sixths in a manner reminiscent of a love scene from the

operatic composer Bellini, whose music Chopin adored. The American

writer on music, James Huneker (1857-1921), described this nocturne as

“a song of the sweet summer of two souls, for there is obvious meaning

in the duality of voices.”

The polonaise is a Polish processional dance in three-quarter time

and moderate tempo. According to Grove’s Dictionary of Music and

Musicians, the French name dates from the seventeenth century. In its

numerous forms, the polonaise served both peasants and courtiers.

Enormous in proportion, Chopin’s Polonaise in F-sharp Minor, Op. 44,

reaches beyond the boundaries of a peasant or ceremonial dance to

become a battle cry of defiance that remains one of music’s strongest

patriotic utterances. The work possesses an unrelenting rhythmic drive

that is reinforced with surging octaves, making it difficult to execute and

therefore infrequently heard on recital programs. Conforming to

Chopin’s preferred ABA format, the work opens with a section marked

Moderato that is merely an introductory statement for the ensuing

muscular polonaise. The stirring strains eventually give way to the B

section, a mazurka that functions as a trio. The mood at this juncture is

restive and full of yearning. The opening section (A) returns when the

introductory statement is heard in the form of repeated scale passages,

after which Chopin introduces a rambunctious coda. He cuts the form

short, however, with a blatant outcry of defiance, a singular chord that

ends the work.

If Chopin was the quintessential composer of virtuoso miniature 

piano pieces in the nineteenth century, then his twentieth-century 

counterpart would have to have been Rachmaninoff, whose Etudestableaux (Opp. 33 and 39) were a “farewell to the medium of the small

virtuoso piano pieces,” according to the French writer Heuwel Tircuit.

Within Rachmaninoff’s miniature tone-poems one finds some of his

most powerful and kaleidoscopic mood statements. Rendering them

properly and authoritatively requires a combination of peerless technique

and mental acuity found only in the elite among pianists. The Etude

tableau, Op. 39, No. 9, in D Major, is an intrepid “oriental march” that is

uncompromising in its technical and physical demands. Both the Elegie,

Op. 3, No. 1, and the Humoresque, Op. 10, No. 5, are youthful works, but

even they require a fluent technique and are not for the faint-hearted. The