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-eighth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,759th Concert

Astrid Walschot-Stapp, harpist

Karen Johnson, flutist

January 10, 2010

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Performed without intermission

Alfredo Rolando Ortiz (b. 1946)

A Light in the Sea

Fran^ois-Joseph Naderman (1781-1835)

Sonatina no. 6 in D Minor from Sept sonates progressives

Prelude

Allegro disperato

Rondoletto

Marcel Tournier (1879-1951)

Offrande

Dieudonne-Felix Godefroid (1818-1897)

Etude de concert in E-flat Minor, op. 193

Philip Glass (1937)

Metamorphosis 2

Ortiz

Si quedara sin Ti

Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992)

Cafe lc,jo

Piet Kingma (1926-1994)

Tableaux vivants

Arlequin

Trapezistes

Danse de corde

Jeux des jongleurs

The Musicians

ASTRID WAISCHOT-STAPP

Born in Maastricht, Holland, Astrid Walschot-Stapp began studying the harp

at age nine. At the Maastricht Conservatory, she earned the Docerend Musicus

(teaching degree) and the Uitvoerend Musicus (soloist diploma) summa cum

laude. Following her studies in Holland, Walschot-Stapp received the vsb

Bank Scholarship and the Prince Bernhard Fund prize. She was invited to

study with Susan McDonald at Indiana University where she received the

performer diploma. Walschot-Stapp has been active in popularizing pieces 

by contemporary composers. In 2008 she recorded a CD featuring selected

works by composer Meg Robinson, and currendy is awaiting the completion

of a concerto that is being composed for her by Dutch composer Jean Sevriens.

As a chamber musician, Walschot-Stapp has played numerous recitals

in Europe and North America with such groups as Duo Liutaio, the Kennedy 

Center Chamber Players, The Left Bank Concert Society, the Orlando String

Quartet, and Skya. In addition to radio and television performances, she has

been active as a soloist and as an orchestral musician. She has performed

in the United States with the Baltimore Opera, the National Gallery ofArt

Orchestra, the National Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Symphony

Orchestra, and the Washington Opera. In Europe she has appeared with

the Limburg Symphony (The Netherlands) and the Opera Royal de Wallonie 

(Belgium). She was featured in the Baltimore Symphony’s Summerfest

chamber music program and in its newly established “concertlab.” In March 

2003 Walschot-Stapp was selected by maestro Yuri Temirkanov to be the

acting principal harpist ofthe Baltimore Symphony during his tenure.

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KAREN JOHNSON

Karen Johnson is a colorful and virtuosic stylist ofboth solo and chamber

repertoire for the flute. She has served as principal flutist ofthe Washington

Bach Consort for twelve years and is the coprincipal flutist of die Chesapeake 

Orchestra. She has performed throughout the United States and Mexico with 

the Bach Aria Group, the Takacs String Quartet, and Stevie Wonder. She has

also performed with the Bethlehem Bach Festival, the Glimmerglass Chamber

Music Festival, and the Shelter Island Music Festival. Her recent recital venues

include the French, Icelandic, and Romanian embassies in Washington and

the National Gallery ofArt. She also appears regularly at the John F. Kennedy

Center for the Performing Arts and the Washington National Cathedral.

Johnson has commissioned and premiered new works by William Albright 

and Jeffrey Mumford, on whose CD, thefocus ofblue light, she is featured. She

has won numerous competitions and awards, including a solo recitalist grant

from the Maryland State Arts Council. She is currently working on a flute and

piano CD, From the Americas, with pianist Carlos Rodriguez. Highlights ofthe 

2009-2010 season include world premieres ofsay i am you for soprano, flute,

and piano by Thomas Benjamin and Formas del viento for flute and percussion

by Alejendro Vinao.

Johnson is on the faculties ofthe Levine School of Music, the Northern

California Flute Camp in Carmel, and Saint Mary’s College of Maryland. She is

also an active participant in the “Bach to School” music outreach program in

the District ofColumbia. A dedicated student ofyoga and meditation, Johnson

has developed “Performing with Heart,” a course that allows students to

explore ways of creating more joyful performing experiences.

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Program Notes

An internationally acclaimed soloist on the arpa paraguaya (Paraguayan

harp), Alfredo Rolando Ortiz is a composer, author, educator and recording

artist. Born in Cuba, he and his family immigrated to Venezuela when he

was eleven years old. At fifteen he began studying the Venezuelan folk harp

with his school friend Fernando Guerrero. A year later he became a pupil of

Alberto Romero on the Paraguayan harp. Just two years after his first harp

lesson, he began medical studies in Medellin, Colombia, while also performing professionally. He supported his medical studies with his performing,

and also recorded his first album during this period. Five years later he

moved to the United States to continue his studies in music therapy. For

eight years—from the time ofhis graduation from medical school until his

wife became pregnant—he balanced his medical work with his musical

career. However, in order to have time for his growing family, he decided to

dedicate his life to them and to his first love, the harp. He played the harp in

the delivery room during the birth ofhis second daughter, and he considers

this his “most important concert.” Both A Light in the Sea and Si quedara sin

Ti were written for his wife.

Fran^ois-Joseph Naderman, the son of a harp maker and music publisher, was the most celebrated harp teacher and player of his day in Paris. 

His father, Jean-Henri (1735-1799) built many single-action harps together

with his friend J.B. Krumpholtz (1742-1790). Following the deaths of

Krumpholtz and later his father, Fran^ois-Joseph and his brother Henri

took over the family harp-making business. Naderman managed to achieve 

favor and position with Napoleon, and after the restoration of the French

monarchy in 1815, he was appointed harpist ofthe Chappelle et Chambre du

Roi. In 1825 he was appointed as the first harp professor at the Ecole Royale

Conservatoire de Paris, where he worked until his death. The Seven Sonatas

formed the second part of his Ecole de la harpe, published in Paris around

1832. They are cited on the front cover ofthe earliest available publication as

5
being adapted for teaching at the conservatory of music. As one plays and 

listens to these sonatas today, one can envision Naderman sitting alongside 

his own students, correcting, encouraging, and inspiring them.

Marcel Tournier is among the relatively few important composers who

were also virtuoso harpists. Not surprisingly, his output is dominated by

the harp, though he did compose choral and stage works, as well as other

instrumental compositions, including chamber and piano pieces. Tournier’s

music is largely impressionistic, although his melodies were often tinged 

by a romantic spirit. While there are a fair number of concert performances

and recordings of his works, Tournier’s music has generally remained

outside the standard repertoire. However, many recordings of his music

have been issued in the past decade, some of which include his OJfrande.

Tournier was born in Paris on January 5,1879, into a musical family, consisting offour brothers and two sisters. His father was a lutenist and encouraged his sons to play stringed instruments. At age sixteen Marcel exhibited

unusual talent and enrolled at the Paris Conservatory to study the harp.

His teachers included Alphonse Hasselmans and Raphael Martenot.

Dieudonne-Felix Godefroid was a Belgian harpist who composed for

his instrument and for the piano. Godefroid was born at Namur, where his

father failed in a theater venture and moved the family to Boulogne-sur-Mer,

where he opened a music school. In 1832 Godefroid entered the Conservatoire de Paris to take a harp course. Impressed with the pedal harp perfected 

by Sebastien Erard, Godefroid elected to pursue a concert career. In 1839

he began a brilliant solo tour through Europe and the Levant. In 1847

Godefroid settled in Paris where he made his debut. Besides his pieces for

harp and for piano, on which he was also a virtuoso performer, Godefroid

composed masses and two operas, La Harpe d’or and La Fille de Saul. The

Etude de concert is one of his most popular concert etudes.

Philip Glass wrote, “Franz Kafka is one ofthe seminal minds ofmodernist writing and has proven to be a steadily appealing author for modern

audiences.” In 1988 Glass found inspiration in Kafka’s writings when he 

composed incidental music for concurrent theatrical adaptations of Metamorphosis in Brazil and the Netherlands, and again in 2000, with a chamber

6

opera based on Kafka’s short story “In the Penal Colony.” The 1916 short

story “Metamorphosis” tells the harrowing tale of Gregor Samsa, who

awakens one morning to find that he has been inexplicably transformed into 

a giant insect. For his Metamorphosis 2, Glass drew two movements (ill and 

iv) from an eponymous piano suite, and added to them three movements

(1, 11 and v) from the soundtrack he composed for director Errol Morris’

1988 dramatized documentary The Thin Blue Line, which reenacts the crime

scene and investigation of a police officer’s murder in Dallas.

Argentine composer, bandleader, and bandoneon player Astor Piazzolla

and his family immigrated to New York in 1924. He returned to Paris in the 

1950s to study with Nadia Boulanger. Piazzolla’s distinctive brand oftango,

later called nuevo tango, includes fugue, extreme chromaticism, dissonance, 

and elements ofjazz. Nuevo tango was initially condemned by the old guard

oftango composers and bandleaders. Cafe 1930 comes from Piazzolla’s

Histoire du Tango (1988).

Piet Kingma was bom 1926 in Holland. An oboist, conductor, and

composer, and a composition student of Hendrik Andriessen, he wrote a

fair amount of chamber music. Tableaux vivants, which Kingma composed 

for his daughter, a professional harpist, is an unpublished work, which 

the composer made available to Astrid Walschot-Stapp in manuscript.

Program notes by Astrid Walschot-Stapp

Next Week at the National Gallery of Art

ARTEK

With the National Gallery ofArt Vocal Ensemble and Piffaro

Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers of1610

January 17, 2010

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court