For the convenience of concertgoers

the Cafe Provencal 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

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

2,567th Concert

Eusia String Quartet

Kazuhiro Talcagi, violin

Janne Tateno, violin

Yukiko Ogura, viola

Adrien Zitoun, cello

with James Dick, pianist

Presented in Honor of Cezanne in Provence

April 9, 2006

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission fiee
Program

Guillaume Lekeu (1870-1894)

Molto adagio (1891)

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

String Quartet in G Minor, op. 10 (1893)

Anime et tres decide

Assez vif et bien rythme 

Andantino: Doucement expressif

Tres modere, en animant

INTERMISSION

Gabriel Faure (1845-1924)

Piano Quintet no. 1 in D Minor, op. 89 (1881-1905)

Molto moderato 

Adagio

Allegretto moderato

The Musicians

The Eusia String Quartet was formed in September 2000 at the behest of

Yuko Mori, a violin professor at the Chicago College of Performing Arts, who 

saw in four of her students, Kazuhiro Takagi, Janne Tateno, Yukiko Ogura, 

and Adrien Zitoun, the potential for a first-class ensemble. The name “Eusia”

is a hybrid word formed from Europe and Asia, the two continents where

the members ofthe quartet were bom and raised. The acronym for their new

home, USA, is also found in “Eusia.” Winner ofthe gold medal at the 2001

Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, the Eusia Quartet performs regularly 

in Japan and Finland and at the Round Top Festival in Round Top, Texas.

Violinist Kazuhiro Takagi is a native of Osaka, Japan, where he studied

with Pierre Dukan. He continued his studies in France and the United

States with Jean Estournet, Yuko Mori, Eduard Schmieder, and Eduard

Wulfson. A laureate ofthe Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in Brussels and the Geneva International Music Competition,

Takagi has served as concertmaster ofthe Civic Orchestra of Chicago

and the Wtirttemberg Philharmonic Orchestra in Reutlingen, Germany,

and as guest concertmaster and soloist with several orchestras in Japan.

Violinist Janne Tateno studied at the conservatory of his home city,

Helsinki, Finland, where his teachers were Sirklca Kuula-Niskanen and Olga

Parhomenko. In 1999 he came to the United States to study under Yuko

Mori at the Chicago College of Performing Arts. He is frequently invited to 

perform in Finland at the Oulunsalo Soi Festival and with the Ostrobothnian

Chamber Orchestra, the sextet Tangueros Polares, and the chamber orchestra La Tempesta, ofwhich he is the concertmaster.

Violist Yukiko Ogura was born in Nara, Japan, and began instruction

on the violin at age three. She received a bachelor of music degree from the

Kyoto City University of Arts in 1995, and in 1996 she joined the Kobe

City Chamber Orchestra. Between 1999 and 2001 she played in the Civic

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Orchestra of Chicago as principal violist and in the Saito Kinen Orchestra 

under Seiji Ozawa. In 2001 she was appointed to the viola section of

the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and continued her viola studies at the

Chicago College of Performing Arts under Li-Kuo Chang.

Cellist Adrien Zitoun, born and raised in Paris, France, studied musicology at the University of the Sorbonne and cello at the National Superior 

Conservatory of Music in Lyon, where his teacher was Yvan Chiffoleau. In

1996 he received a scholarship to attend the University of Indiana, where 

he studied with Janos Starker and Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi. A member ofthe

Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra since 2001, Zitoun is also a professor of

music at Wisconsin Lutheran College in Milwaukee.

This concert marks pianist James Dick’s fourth appearance at the

National Gallery, having played here in 1996, 1999, and 2002. He is recognized worldwide for performances that radiate intellectual insight and

emotional authenticity. His early triumphs as top prizewinner in the

Tchaikovsky, Busoni, and Leventritt International Competitions were the 

prelude to acclaimed recitals and concerto performances in the world’s

premier concert halls, including New York’s Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall,

92nd Street Y, and Town Hall; London’s Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth

Hall, and Wigmore Hall; and Paris’s Theatre du Chatelet and Salle Gaveau.

In addition to his National Gallery appearances, Dick has performed at the 

Academy of Music in Philadelphia, the Kennedy Center, and Orchestra Hall

in Chicago. Many major orchestras have presented him as soloist, including

the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, and 

The Philadelphia Orchestra. The long list of prominent conductors with 

whom Dick has worked includes Sir John Barbirolli, Sergiu Commissiona,

JoAnn Faletta, Christopher Hogwood, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, and

Eugene Ormandy. In addition to collaborating with the Eusia Quartet,

Dick has been guest soloist with the Cassatt, Cleveland, Parish, and Tokyo

String Quartets and the Dorian and Moragues Wind Quintets.

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Extremely active in England, where he studied extensively with Sir

Clifford Curzon, Dick was elected an honorary associate of London’s Royal

Academy of Music. In 1994 he received the signal honor of being named a

Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture. He was

also named Texas State Musician for 2003 and is an international sterling

patron ofthe Mu Phi Epsilon Music Fraternity.

Dick’s love of new music has prompted his commission of works for

piano and other instruments by Claude Baker, Malcolm Hawkins, Benjamin 

Lees, Chinary Ung, and Dan Welcher. His October 1999 concert at the

National Gallery included the world premiere of The Birth of Shiva, Welcher’s

fantasy for piano solo based on his concerto Shiva’s Drum. In 1971 Dick

established the International Festival-Institute at Round Top, Texas. This

educational project, one ofthe most distinguished in the United States,

welcomes young artists looking to develop their skills in solo performance, 

chamber music, and orchestral repertoire.

Program Notes

This presentation of music composed in France between 1880 and 1905 is

intended to complement the visual impact ofthe exhibition Cezanne in

Provence, on view in the West Building until May 7. Concertgoers who visit

or revisit the exhibition while this music is still fresh in their memory

(and perhaps read some poetry of Paul Verlaine or Stephane Mallarme in

the meantime) will avail themselves of a special opportunity to experience 

the full esthetic ofthe post-impressionist period. Composer Paul Dukas

(1865-1935) expressed the sentiment of most French musicians ofthe

1890s when he said: “Impressionism, symbolism, and poetic realism

merge together... .Words, sounds, colors, and lines must all express new

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shades of meaning, new feelings.” The term “symbolism” is most appropriate to a discussion of what artists and musicians had in common (“postimpressionism” was not coined until 1910), which was a fascination with 

symbolist poets such as Verlaine (1844-1896) and Mallarme (1842-1898),

as well as Charles-Pierre Baudelaire (1821-1867), Edgar Allen Poe (1809-

1849), and Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891).

Belgian composer Guillaume Lekeu died in 1894, at age twenty-four,

too soon to be influenced by Debussy, whose music was the first to reflect 

the impressionist movement, in the early 1890s. (Debussy’s lyric poem

for soprano and orchestra, La damoiselle due., and his String Quartet in

G Minor had their premiere performances in 1893.) Lekeu’s movement

for string quartet, Molto adagio, is marked sempre cantante e doloroso (continuously songlike and sorrowful) and was inspired by Jesus’s words in

the Garden of Gethsamene: “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful even unto

death.” Lekeu was influenced by the French romantic school, in particular

Cesar Franck (1822-1890), and shared its reverence for both Ludwig van

Beethoven and Richard Wagner. The profoundly lyrical quality ofthe Molto

adagio demands a steady tempo and evenness oftimbre from the four 

instruments ofthe quartet.

Claude Debussy often wrote about his own work in terms ofthe visual

arts. In 1916, in response to a published comment by music and art critic

Emile Vuillermoz, Debussy wrote: “You do me a great honor by calling me

a pupil of Claude Monet.” The String Quartet in G Minor, op. 10, his only

completed work for string quartet, is one ofthe most original works in

French chamber music. It was his second work to be performed in public, 

on December 29, 1893, at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, by the Ysaye Quartet. 

Critics were baffled by what they heard, unable to analyze the music, but

fascinated by its beauty. One wrote, “[Debussy] is rotten with talent.” In his

book on impressionism, James H. Rubin writes that “impressionism had

its most successful afterlife” in Debussy’s music.

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The first movement, Anime et tres decide, reveals Debussy’s individual, 

complex rhythmic sense. The second movement has a more predictable

rhythmic pulse and reflects the composer’s love ofthe sparkling and

vivacious music of Spain. In the third movement, Andantino: Doucement

expressif, the first violin presents a languid melody. The finale, Tres modere,

en animant, proceeds as its title indicates: it begins very moderately, not

sounding at all like a final movement, but then gradually builds to an

animated burst of energy.

Gabriel Faure’s lifespan (1845-1924) corresponded to a period of

remarkable changes in musical styles. In Faure’s earliest years, Berlioz,

Chopin, and Schumann dominated music; in his prime oflife, Brahms,

Debussy, Liszt, and Wagner were the rage; and in his waning years, the

scene was radically changed once again by Bartok, Schoenberg, and

Stravinsky. Although never ranked among the pivotal composers of his

time, Faure enjoyed great respect among his peers. Aaron Copland, who

first encountered his music in Paris in the 1920s, wrote that Faure was the

French Brahms. Like Beethoven, Faure continued to compose after he 

became deaf, although this happened much later in life for him than for

Beethoven, and both composers’ late chamber music is markedly different

from anything either wrote as a young man.

Faure’s Piano Quintet no. 1 in D Minor was written over a period of

twenty-five years. He began to write it in 1881, resumed work in 1894, and 

finally finished it in 1905. The work is dedicated to the Belgian violinist 

Eugene Ysaye, whose quartet played its premiere in Brussels in 1906 with 

Faure at the piano. This was the same string quartet that had introduced

Debussy to French chamber music audiences in 1893.

Program notes by Sorab Modi.