74TH SEASON 

OF CONCERTS

NOVEMBER 1, 2015 • NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
PROGRAM

3:30 • West Building, West Garden Court

Inscape

Richard Scerbo, conductor

Nina Young (b. 1984)

Vestigia Flammae

Edmund Finnis (b. 1984)

in situ

I. (after Perotin)

II. (after Locke)

III. (after Josquin des Prez)

IV. (after Brumel)

V. (after Rameau)

Joseph Hallman (b. 1979)

imagined landscapes: Six Lovecraftian elsewheres

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

Intermission

Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915)

Piano Sonata no. g, the Black Mass*

(transcribed by David Plylar)

Henryk Gorecki (1933 - 2010)

Kleines Requiem fur eine Polka, op. 66

I. Tranquillo

II. Allegro impetuoso

III. Allegro

IV. Adagio cantabile

‘World premiere performance of the transcription

2 • National Gallery of Art

The Musicians

Inscape

Founded in 2004 by artistic director Richard Scerbo, Inscape is pushing the boundaries of

classical music in riveting performances that reach across genres and generations, and also

transcend the confines of the traditional concert experience.

With its flexible roster and unique brand of programming, this Grammy-nominated

group of high-energy master musicians has quickly established itself as one of the premier

performing ensembles in the Washington, DC, region and beyond. Inscape has worked with

emerging American composers and has a commitment to presenting concerts featuring the 

music of our times. Since its inception, the group has commissioned and premiered over

twenty new works. Its members regularly perform with the National, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Virginia, Richmond, and Delaware symphonies and the Washington Opera Orchestra;

they are members of the premiere Washington service bands. Inscape's roots can be traced

to the University of Maryland School of Music, when Scerbo and other music students

collaborated at the Clarice Smith Center as the Philharmonia Ensemble.

Inscape regularly performs as the ensemble-in-residence at the Episcopal Church of 

the Redeemer in Bethesda, Maryland, as well as at the National Gallery of Art, Strathmore

Music Center, Kennedy Center, and other local and national venues.

Elise Blake, violin

Sarah D'Angelo, violin

Megan Yanik, viola

Carrie Bean Stute, cello

Ali Cook, bass

Cara Fleck, harp

Timothy McReynolds, piano

Susanna Loewy, flute

Evan Ross Solomon, clarinet and bass clarinet

Jeremy Eig, clarinet and E-flat clarinet

Bethany Slater, oboe and English horn

Benjamin Greanya, bassoon

Brandon Almagro, trumpet

James Anderson, trombone

Laura Brisson, horn

Eric Plewinski, percussion

74th Season * 3
Richard Scerbo

In 2004, artistic director Richard Scerbo founded Inscape with the intent of introducing

audiences to diverse chamber and ensemble repertoires. Under Scerbo's leadership, Inscape

has commissioned and premiered numerous new works, including, in 2012, a performance of

Dominick Argento's opera A Water Bird Talk, as part of a month-long festival celebrating the 

composer's music at the University of Maryland. In 2013, Scerbo led Inscape in the National 

Gallery of Art's program that highlighted Ballets Russes music, including Igor Stravinsky's

Renard and Manual de Falla's El corregidor y la molinera.

In 2000, Scerbo cofounded his first orchestra, the Philharmonia Ensemble, while

studying at the University of Maryland. As music director, he led the orchestra in a series of

diverse and exciting programs that included collaborations with such artists as pianist Rita

Sloan, soprano Carmen Balthrop, and the Prism Brass Quintet. In 2003, he made his operatic

debut conducting Dominick Argento's A Water Bird Talk with the Philharmonia Ensemble and

G. F. Handel's Xerxes with the Maryland Opera Studio. That same year he conducted Igor

Stravinsky's L'Histoire du soldat in a fully staged production at the Clarice Smith Performing 

Arts Center.

A graduate of the University of Maryland, Scerbo studied conducting with James

Ross and bassoon with Daniel Matsukawa, Sue Heineman, and Linda Harwell. He has

attended conducting programs in Austria and the Czech Republic, working with the

International Festival Orchestra, in Kromeriz, and the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic. He

has also been guided in his studies by classes with Leonard Slatkin, Heinz Fricke, Gustav 

Meier, and Johannes Schlaefli in Zurich.

In addition to his work with Inscape, Scerbo is the associate artistic director and

general manager of the National Orchestral Institute, a training program for orchestra 

musicians on the threshold of their professional careers. He serves concurrently as assistant 

director for artistic planning and operations at the University of Maryland School of Music.

Program Notes

Vestigia Flammae

In Virgil's Aeneid, Book IV, Dido — long in grief over her husband's death — is awakened 

suddenly by the visiting Trojan hero, Aeneas, who proclaims, "Agnosco veteris vestigia

flammae" ("I recognize the traces of an ancient fire”).

Vestigia Flammae is not explicitly narrative in nature; like other recent works, it deals

with the central concepts of lost memories, vestigial emotions, and melancholy for the

passage of time. In contrast to those other works, a strain of optimism characterizes this

piece: here, renewal is the driving force — the idea of recollecting, reexperiencing, and

rekindling traces of old fires. This piece searches, through ritual and repetition, for remnants of vanished memories and forgotten music. The mind has difficulty remembering —

fragmented fossils are pieced together —much is lost and gained in the process. Ultimately

an entirely new experience emerges, fraught with nostalgia, complexity, optimism, and

simplicity. It's a new beginning. Program Notes by Nina Young

4 • National Gallery of Art

in situ

in situ is inspired in part by the mirror sculptures of the late American artist, John McCracken. 

These reflective pillars alter our perception of the landscapes they inhabit in fascinating ways,

each one simultaneously merging into its surrounding while mirroring back on itself, creating

angular incisions of spaces and uncanny perspectives on otherwise familiar scenes.

Each of the five parts of in situ takes a preexisting piece of music and treats it as a

kind of landscape, into which analogous distorting mirrors are placed. Fragments of the 

original pieces are spliced, freely reassembled, recomposed, dwelt upon, as if being folded

into new shapes or reflected back on themselves. The attitude towards the source material

is never one of irony or subversion, but instead comes out of a deep fondness, a desire to

live and move around for a while in these musical spaces. Program Notes by Edmund Finnis

imagined landscapes

imagined landscapes brings my experience of reading the works of H. P. Lovecraft to life.

I wanted to experiment setting scenes in which the stories of Lovecraft might unfold.

There are six scenes, and each is completely different than the other. The work calls on

the musician to sing, chant, whisper, shout, stamp the feet, and use other non-musical

techniques to create a creepy tableau of ominous possibilities. It was written for Inscape

and will be on their upcoming recording debut with Sono Luminos. It is scored for flute,

clarinet, bassoon, harp, two violins, viola, and cello. Program Notes by Joseph Hallman

Black Mass

Alexander Scriabin is one of music's celebrated synesthetes, but the visual connections

between color and sound are not easily translatable to an audience. A musical means of 

communicating color of a different sort —and one perhaps more practical and accessible —

was through the art of orchestration. Scriabin, like Debussy, is widely admired for his piano 

writing; also like Debussy, his timbral sophistication yielded idiosyncratic and effective

orchestral works. The care with which the composer developed sound relationships in an

orchestra are also evident in his piano writing —the piano is not a monochromatic instrument, and Scriabin's compositional choices in the piano works were often wedded to an

orchestrational conception of the piano's range of color.

Black Mass exemplifies Scriabin's late works; it is compactly cast in a single movement and bathed in mystery. The starkness of much of the main material contrasts significantly with the richness of its development. The majesty of Scriabin's composition certainly

requires no alteration, yet I hope that this orchestration offers a new way to engage with the

music and at the same time shares some of the ecstatic and profound experiences that a

pianist enjoys when performing the sonata with the intimate communicative possibilities of 

a chamber ensemble. Program Notes by David Plylar

74th Season • 5
Kleines Requiem fur eine Polka

With the ascendance of his Symphony no. 3 onto the best-seller charts, Henryk Gorecki

became world famous. Kleines Requiem fur eine Polka was composed in 1993, the year of the 

composer's sixtieth birthday. Aside from his Concerto-Cantata for solo flute and orchestra, it

was his only instrumental composition in more than a decade for an ensemble larger than 

string quartet. The title has led to much speculation. "Polka" is of course a dance, which does

make an appearance in the piece, but the word also refers to "a Polish woman." Gorecki never

spoke of the title's meaning, but it is easy to imagine a personal element behind this poignant, 

powerful piece.

The first of the four movements opens with tubular bells and piano, softly tolling a

plaintive, modal phrase. After a number of repetition-variations, the piano shifts to a gentle

ostinato, joined by the violin. This is intercut with a contrasting passage, a simple melody

harmonized with biting dissonances in parallel. The high point is reached with an extended 

statement of this material. The movement closes with a return to the opening bells/piano.

The second movement is fast and rhythmic, yet bleak in character. The music 

winds itself up on a short, chromatic motive. The repetitions often shift meter, throwing

the rhythmic flow off balance. A modally contrasting motive is deployed, and it is this

influence that becomes most prominent. The fuller ensemble, including brass, at last

gives way to the piano alone, relaxing the momentum of the asymmetrical rhythms.

The clarinet enters with a singing phrase before the bells take over, again, joined by the 

second chorale-like string passage.

The third movement — a delirious and frenetic polka — begins without a break. The

underlying "oom-pah" is overlaid with harsh chromaticism, although a forthright diatonic

melody is also heard. There is one interruption of silence, as if the entire dance-floor had

frozen in peril. The music then continues as before, until brusquely cut off.

A short silence leads to the final movement, a fuller treatment of the chorale music

already heard, primarily in the strings. The stately hymn eventually settles on a D-flat triad,

sustained for almost two minutes, colored by touches from the bells and piano. This final 

movement is luminous, as if the prior dark, hysterical tone has been transcended, leaving an

impression of hope and faith. The "requiem" may perhaps be understood in a generalized

sense, the music conveying a range of emotions from love to grief to anger then reconciliation.

Description by James Harley, from Allmusic.com

6 • National Gallery of Art

Upcoming events of the SeventyFourth Season of The William

Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot

Belin Concerts

David Hardy, cellist

Lisa Emenheiser, pianist

Music for cello and piano by

Britten and Rachmaninoff

November 8, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

United States Army Chorus

Songs of the Soldier: A Salute to Veterans

Veteran's Day concert

November 11, Wednesday, 12:10

West Building, West Garden Court

National Gallery of Art Wind Quintet

Music by French composers

Presented in honor of

Louise Bourgeois: No Exit.

November 15, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

National Gallery of Art

New Music Ensemble

Music by Morton Subotnick

Presented in honor of

The Serial Impulse at Gemini G.E.L.

November 22, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

General Information

Admission to the National Gallery of Art

and all of its programs is free of charge,

except as noted.

The use of cameras or recording equipment

during the performance is not allowed.

Please be sure that all portable electronic

devices are turned off.

Concerts are made possible in part

through the generosity of donors to the

National Gallery of Art through The Circle.

Reserved seating is available in recognition

of their support. Please contact the

development office at (202) 842-6450 or

circle@nga.gov for more information.

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The department of music produced this

program. Copyright © 2075 Board of Trustees,

National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Cover Heinrich von Forster, The Music Room

ofArchduchess Margarete, Princess ofSaxony,

in Schloss Ambras (detail), 1870s, National

Gallery of Art, Washington

Back cover West Building, East Garden Court,

National Gallery of Art, Gallery Archives

© Dennis Brack/Black Star