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 ofthe

West Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

For the convenience of concertgoers, 

the Garden Cafe remains open for light refreshments

until 6:00 pm on Sundays.

Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, dc

ivuw.nga.gov

The Seventieth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,857th Concert

National Gallery ofArt Orchestra

Markand Thalcar, guest conductor

Charles Wetherbee, violinist

Victoria Chiang, violist

November 20, 2011

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Samuel Barber (1910-1981)

Adagiofor Strings, op. 11 (1936)

Jonathan Leshnoff (b. 1973)

Double Concertofor Violin, Viola, and Orchestra (2007)

Slow

Scherzo

Mysterious

Finale

Washington Premiere Performance

INTERMISSION

Charles Ives (1874-1954)

Symphony no. 3 (Camp Meeting)

Old Folks Gatherin’

Children’s Day

Communion

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

Three Dance Episodes from On the Town (1945)

The Musicians

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ORCHESTRA

The National Gallery of Art Orchestra was founded in 1943 and initially

consisted of approximately twenty-five players drawn from the National

Symphony Orchestra. Gradually growing in numbers, the Gallery orchestra

eventually reached the size and status of a large chamber orchestra. The

ensemble has undertaken the full range of chamber and symphonic repertoire and has frequently presented first performances ofworks by American 

composers, most notably the 1953 premiere ofCharles Ives’ Symphony no. 1

under the direction of Richard Bales; the 1990 premiere of Daniel Pinkham’s

Symphony no. 4 under George Manos; and the 2007 premiere ofJohn Musto’s

Later the Same Evening: An opera inspired byfive paintings ofEdward Hopper,

under guest conductor Glen Cortese. Other guest conductors who have

appeared with the orchestra in recent years include Bjarte Engeset, Vladimir 

Lande, George Mester, Otto-Werner Mueller, and Jose Serebrier.

MARKAND THAKAR

Music Director ofthe Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra and principal conductor ofthe Duluth Festival

Opera, Markand Thakar has earned a reputation for orchestra building and

innovative programming. A former assistant conductor ofthe New York

Philharmonic, his appearances include concerts and a national radio broadcast with that orchestra as well as concerts with the Annapolis, Ann Arbor,

Charlotte, Colorado Springs, Columbus, Florida West Coast, National, San

Antonio, and Winnipeg symphony orchestras. He has also conducted the 

Calgary, Long Island, and Ulsan (South Korea) philharmonics; and the Boston

Pro Arte, Cleveland, and National chamber orchestras as well as opera

productions with the Baltimore Opera Theater, the Teatro Lirico d’Europa,

Opera on the James, and the Duluth Festival Opera. Formerly associate

conductor ofthe Colorado Symphony Orchestra and conductor ofthe Eugene

Symphony’s “NightMusic” pops series, Thakar was music director and conductor ofthe Amadeus Chamber Orchestra in New York City, the BarnardColumbia Philharmonia, the Classical Symphony of Cincinnati, and the

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Penn’s Woods Philharmonia, and is a frequent guest conductor at the Aspen

Music Festival. He also guest conducted the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra

under the mentorship of Sergiu Celibidache. Familiar to national radio

audiences as a frequent commentator for National Public Radio’s Performance

Today, he has appeared on cbs This Morning and CNN Presents.

Markand Thakar earned a bachelor’s degree in composition and violin 

performance from the Juilliard School, a master’s degree in music theory

from Columbia University, and a doctorate in orchestral conducting from

the Cincinnati College-Conservatory. He undertook special studies in

orchestral conducting at the Curtis Institute and the Ciprian Porumbescu

Conservatory in Bucharest, Romania. He is a winner ofthe Geraldine C. and

Emory M. Ford Foundation Award, and was awarded a Fulbright fellowship

for study of orchestral conducting in Europe. Thakar writes the monthly

“Maestro’s Musings” column in Duluth Superior magazine, and is the author

of Counterpoint: Fundamentals ofMusic Making and the forthcoming Looking

for the “Harp" Quartet: An Investigation ofMusical Beauty. Thakar is codirector

of graduate conducting at the Peabody Conservatory, and lives in Baltimore

with his wife, violist Victoria Chiang, and their son, Oliver.

CHARLES WETHERBEE

Violinist Charles Wetherbee has performed as a soloist and chamber musician

throughout the world, including Asia, Canada, Europe, Mexico, the Middle 

East, and the United States. He has appeared at the Aspen Music Festival,

the Garth Newell Center, the Hidden Valley Festival, the Mid-America Music

Festival, the Nouvelle Academie International d’Ete, the Olympic Music

Festival, the Roycroft Chamber Festival, and at Strings in the Mountains

in Steamboat, Colorado. He made his debut with the Buffalo Philharmonic

Orchestra under Symon Bychkov, and since then has performed with the

Alexandria, National, and Virginia Symphonies, the Concerto Soloists of

Philadelphia, the Minnesota Symphonia, the National Gallery ofArt Orchestra,

the National Repertory Orchestra, the Orchestra Nacional de Mexico, and

the Symphony Orchestra ofthe Curtis Institute, among others. In 1988 he

toured Asia with the National Repertory Orchestra as part ofthe Olympic Arts

Festival. That same year he made his debut at Carnegie Hall as a participant

4

in the American Music Competition. In 1990 he traveled to the Persian Gulf

to perform for the men and women ofthe armed services. Wetherbee has

been the recipient of numerous honors, including the Ashworth Artist and

the George Hardesty awards.

Invited in 2007 to play the Russian premiere ofJohn Corigliano’s Violin

Concerto with the Saint Petersburg Symphony, Wetherbee has also played 

Corigliano’s The Red Violin with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. In

November 2005, he gave the world premiere ofJonathan Leshnoffs Violin

Concerto with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra.

A graduate ofthe Curtis Institute ofMusic, Wetherbee is the first violinist 

ofthe Carpe Diem String Quartet and is the artistic director ofthe Snake 

River Chamber Players. He has recorded for Naxos, Seize the Music Records,

Weasel Records, Vienna Modern Classics, as well as the Cascade labels.

VICTORIA CHIANG

Victoria Chiang has performed as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician

across North America, Europe, and Asia. She has performed as soloist with

the Romanian State Philharmonics ofConstantsa and Tirgu Muresh, the

Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, the Acadiana Symphony and the

Baltimore Chamber Orchestra. Chiang has collaborated in chamber music

performances with the Guarneri, Talcacs, Tokyo, American and Pro Arte 

String Quartets, and has given solo performances in Carnegie Hall’s Weill

Recital Hall and at the xxv International Viola Congress. Her recording of

the viola concertos of Stamitz and Hoffmeister for the Naxos label will be 

released shortly; her recording ofsonatas for viola and piano by Shostakovich 

and Roslavets was awarded a “strong recommendation” by Fanfare magazine; and her Naxos recording ofthe Sinfonia Concertante ofIgnaz Pleyel

with David Perry, violin, and the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra was recently

designated CD Pick ofthe Week by weta-fm.

Currently a member ofthe artist/faculty ofthe Peabody Conservatory of

Music and the Aspen Music Festival, Chiang earned the master ofmusic

degree and performer’s certificate from the Eastman School of Music, and the

bachelor ofmusic degree from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

5
Program Notes

A prodigious musician from an early age, Samuel Barber began to study piano, 

organ, and voice at the Curtis Institute of Music at age fourteen. Twelve

years later, he composed his String Quartet, op. n, confiding to a friend, “I’ve

just finished the slow movement and it’s a knockout!” The Pro Arte Quartet

premiered the piece in Rome in December 1936. The following year the

Salzburg Music Festival programmed his Symphony no. 1, making Barber’s

the first American music to be heard on that prestigious stage. This performance led to Barber’s work with conductor Arturo Toscanini, who suggested that Barber compose a work for the nbc Symphony Orchestra,

Toscanini’s ensemble in New York. Barber set out to compose his Essay no. 1,

but Toscanini also requested a string orchestra arrangement ofthe slow movement, titled “Adagio,” from his String Quartet, op. 11. The Adagio in this form

became the well-known and beloved Adagiofor Strings, op. 11. Barber completed his arrangement and the Essay and awaited a response, but received

his Adagio score in the mail with no comments from Toscanini. This confused

Barber until he learned that the maestro had returned the score unmarked

because he had already memorized it. The nbc Symphony Orchestra

premiered Adagiofor Strings in a private reading on November 7,1938.

Marked “Molto adagio: espressivo cantando” (very slowly: expressively

singing), the piece begins with a sustained B-flat in the violins that spins out

into three- and four-note scalar groupings. A homophonic string texture

develops into two-, three-, four-, and eventually five-part polyphony as the

intensity increases. Stepwise scales and occasional large leaps undulate and

build to an emotional climax, followed by a powerful silence and a fading

reprise ofthe piece’s opening. Aaron Copland said ofAdagio’s success, “the

sense of continuity, the steadiness ofthe flow, the satisfaction ofthe arch

that it creates from beginning to end are all very gratifying and make you 

believe the sincerity he obviously put into it.”

Born in New Jersey, Jonathan Leshnoffis quickly gaining an international

reputation as one ofAmerica’s most gifted young composers, with performances ofhis work in major festivals and concert halls throughout the world.

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Performances of his chamber music by the Da Capo Chamber Players and

the Smithsonian Institution’s Twenty-First Century Consort were praised

by critics and audiences alike. Recent engagements include the premiere of

his flute concerto, written for Philadelphia Orchestra principal flutist, Jeffrey

Khaner, under the direction of Robert Spano; Starburst, a new orchestral

work premiered by Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony; and a dance

suite written for and premiered by Gil Shaham. Leshnoffis currently the

composer-in-residence with the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra.

Leshnoffs Double Concertofor Violin, Viola, and Orchestra, commissioned

by a consortium including the Curtis Institute Orchestra, Duluth Symphony, 

iris Chamber Orchestra, National Gallery ofArt Orchestra, and Mr. Jeremiah

German, consists offour movements that are varied in mood and musical

idiom. The first movement (Slow) is pensive and brooding; a unifying motive 

that is threaded throughout the concerto is introduced by the solo viola at its

initial entrance and then taken up by the violin. The Scherzo, energetic and

syncopated, is structured around a returning refrain separated by contrasting

episodes: A-B-A-B-A; the viola motive from the first movement is superimposed upon the final “A” section. The third movement, Mysterious, is a

descendant ofthe haunting and sometimes unsettling “night music” that

Bela Bartolc often favored for his slow movements. Like several of Bartolc’s

pieces, this one follows an “arch form,” starting softly and then rising to an

expressive high point with a songful strain at its center (which contains the

viola motive) before receding into its closing measures. The Finale is virtuosic

and rambunctious, and completes the formal cycle ofthe concerto not just

by recalling the viola motive but also by returning the music that closed the

opening movement at the end, there given a somber character but here

transformed into a positive and uplifting finish for the work.

Charles Ives received a conventional musical upbringing from his father, 

George Ives. Aside from a disciplined regimen oftraditional exercises in

harmony and counterpoint, however, the elder Ives inspired a taste for the

unconventional by introducing his son to polytonal fugues, bitonal song

accompaniment, and complex rhythmic embellishment. As a result, Charles

grew into a composer with a firm knowledge and appreciation for classical

7
technique and a unique vision for the future ofmusic. When his friends

criticized his work, they wondered how a man with a taste for such music

could also appreciate “Brahms and ‘good’ music.” Ives, completely secure in

his musical identity, believed that “this is as much as to say: ‘Ifyou look out

ofthis window and enjoy the mountains, how can you possibly look out this

window and enjoy the ocean?”’ Symphony no. j: The Camp Meeting exemplifies this dichotomy, as Ives described the work as a “crossway between the

older ways and the newer ways.”

From 1898 to 1902 Ives was the organist at the First Presbyterian Church

in Bloomfield, New Jersey. Between 1901 and 1904 he wrote the movements

of The Camp Meeting as expansions and orchestrations ofthree of his church

organ pieces. Camp meetings were Protestant gatherings in large, usually

rural areas without traditional church communities, where people would

assemble from miles around and camp out over a period of a few days to hear

sermons from traveling preachers. Much ofthe melodic material throughout the Third Symphony derives from various church hymns, a technique not

unfamiliar to Ives. At this time he began to compose more freely, but he never

felt comfortable basing his music on his religious roots until he began the

Fourth Symphony in 1910. He considered his Third Symphony “boiled down”

from his organ improvisations when he scored it, although he found the

third movement, the one likely too complex to have been improvised, “fuller

and more freely made.”

Symphony no. 3 does not approach the limits of Ives’ radical tendencies,

but it does contain several oddities, including free-form chromaticism, sudden

key changes, and unconventionally constructed and approached cadences.

There is an optional part for bells in the last movement that sounds a half

step above the final chord, providing some standard Ivesian bitonality and

signifying distant, out-of-tune church bells. The piece contains what Ives

called “shadow lines,” or independent lines he omitted from early drafts out

offear that they would sound unpleasant or incorrect to performers and

audiences, but he later reinserted these lines.

8

While he was the conductor ofthe New York Philharmonic in 1910, Gustav 

Mahler requested a score of Ives’ Symphony no. 3. There is unconfirmed

evidence that Mahler led a reading ofthe piece in Munich, but the circumstances ofthis story are highly unlikely. Generally, the music sat on a shelf

until Lou Harrison conducted the official premiere on April 5,1946, in

Carnegie Chamber Music Hall. The piece garnered great critical acclaim,

including the 1947 Pulitzer Prize, and received various performances soon

after. The National Gallery ofArt Orchestra made the symphony’s first

recording under the direction of Richard Bales on August 6,1950. Bales

believed in the work, calling it “fervent, often energetic, and in large measure

contrapuntal. Harmonically the score is a rewarding study... But best of

all, the music really sounds. There is a satisfying balance between beauty

ofsonority and lack of compromise on the part ofthe composer. It could

become a favorite, but requires champions to perform it frequently.” The

piece truly had the right sound for the time ofits unveiling, as it had nothing

to do with the era’s common audience-alienating modernism, and the public

took to it more immediately than with any of Ives’ other compositions.

Leonard Bernstein wrote the score to the musical On the Town in 1944

as he rose to prominence as a symphonic conductor and composer. He had

recently conducted the premiere of his Symphony no. 1 (“Jeremiah”) in Pittsburgh, and the success of his ballet, Fancy Free, inspired him to tell the story 

ofthree sailors with a twenty-four hour shore leave in the Big Apple. Chip, 

Gabey, and Ozzie explore the city, marvel at how the locals take such a fascinating place for granted, and hope to find love around the nearest street corner.

Despite the story’s lighthearted subject matter Bernstein took quite

seriously to the task of blending jazz, classical, and popular musical idioms

to bring from his home at Carnegie Hall to a new venue: Broadway. On the

Town debuted in December 1944 to great popularity. It ran until February 1946

and opened on the silver screen in 1949, albeit with most ofthe musical

numbers replaced, starring Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, and Jules Munshin.

Bernstein extracted Three Dance Episodes as a vehicle to bring the music

more readily into the concert hall.

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The first episode, “The Great Lover,” depicts the sailors’ first impressions

ofthe metropolis and their anticipation for what awaits. Gabey falls in love

with a girl on a poster in the subway and dreams ofwinning her affection,

and Bernstein approximates these feelings with confident, jazzy flourishes.

“Lonely Town” is a lyrical and melancholy tune. Gabey watches another sailor

flirt with a girl in Central Park and laments how a bustling city can feel

desolate without somebody special to call your own. The final episode, “Times

Square, 1944,” based on the show’s hit song, “New York, New York (It’s a

helluva town),” is a gritty cityscape constructed with jagged, rough jazz harmonies and complex rhythms.

Program notes on Jonathan Leshnojfby Dr. Richard Rodda

Program notes on Barber, Bernstein, and Ives by Michael Jacko, concert aide,

National Gallery ofArt

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Next week at the National Gallery ofArt

Verdehr Trio

Music by Beethoven, Daugherty,

Menotti, and Winkler

Presented in honor of

Warhol: Headlines

November 23, 2011

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

Steven Spooner, pianist

Music by Liszt and Fairouz

November 27, 2011

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court