Next Week at the National Gallery of Art

Suitland High School String Orchestra

Darrold Hunt, guest conductor

Music by Bach, Grieg,

Mozart, and Walker

Presented in honor of

African American History Month

February 17, 2010

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

co

For the convenience of concertgoers

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:00 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 ofArt 

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 ofArt

2,768th Concert

Ritz Chamber Players

Terrance Patterson, artistic director

Judy Dines, Jlute

Ann Hobson Pilot, harp

Kelly Hall-Tompkins, violin

Amadi Azikiwe, viola

Tahirah Whittington, cello

Terrence Wilson, piano

Presented in collaboration with

Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences and

The National Academies’ African American History Program

February 14, 2010

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Flute Quartet in D Major, K. 285

Allegro

Adagio

Rondo

Thomas Jefferson Anderson (b. 1928)

Game Play

Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)

Assobio ajato (The Jet Whistle) (1950)

Allegro non troppo

Adagio

Vivo

INTERMISSION

Antonin Dvorak

Quartet no. 2 for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello in E-flat Maj

op. 87 (1889)

Allegro con fuoco

Lento

Allegro moderato, grazioso

Finale: Allegro, ma non troppo

This concert is sponsored by Cultural Programs ofthe National Academy of

Sciences and the National Academies’ African American Fiistory Program.

The mission ofthe office ofCultural Programs ofthe National Academy

of Sciences (cpnas) is to explore the intersections of art, science, and

culture through the presentation of public exhibitions, lectures, and

other cultural programs. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a

private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society to which distinguished

scholars are elected for their achievements in research, and is dedicated 

to the furtherance ofscience and technology and to their use for the 

general welfare. Upon the authority ofthe charter granted to it by the 

Congress in 1863, the nas has a mandate to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters.
The Musicians

RITZ CHAMBER PLAYERS

As the first American chamber music ensemble comprised solely ofmusicians who span the African diaspora, the Ritz Chamber Players bring fresh

energy to the classical music genre. Since the ensemble’s triumphant

sold-out Carnegie Hall debut in 2004, it has performed for the BBC and in

the thirty-seventh annual naacp Image Awards, a program that was televised nationally in the United States. The ensemble’s stated goal is to

increase the visibility of African American composers and heighten the 

general public’s awareness ofthe contributions of African Americans to

the classical music scene.

TERRANCE PATTERSON

A native ofJacksonville, Florida, clarinetist Terrance Patterson is the artistic 

director ofRitz Chamber Players. He has performed in Amsterdam, Baltimore,

Belgrade, Brussels, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Milan, Moscow, Munich, 

New York, Paris, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., and with the symphony orchestras of Huntsville, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, and Nashville. Other

orchestras with which he has collaborated include the Florida West Coast

Orchestra and the Sphinx Symphony of Detroit. He attended the Peabody

Conservatory ofthe Johns Hopkins University where he studied with clarinetist Lorin Kitt, principal clarinetist of the National Symphony Orchestra.

JUDY DINES

A native of Washington, D.C., Judy Dines began studying the flute at age six.

She won several competitions, including first prize at the National Symphony

Young Soloists Competition and first prize at the Temple University Student

Soloist Competition. She graduated from Temple University with a bachelor’s degree in music performance and was a master’s degree candidate at

the Peabody Institute. Her principal teachers include Murray Panitz, Kazuo

Toldto, Alice Weinreb, and Robert Willoughby. Dines currently plays in the 

Houston Symphony.

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ANN HOBSON PILOT

Ann Hobson Pilot is a graduate ofthe Cleveland Institute of Music. She

became principal harpist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1980,

having previously served as assistant principal harpist ofthe bso and

principal harpist of the Boston Pops. Prior to her time in Boston, she was

the principal harpist ofthe National Symphony Orchestra. Pilot also has had 

an extensive solo career, performing with many American orchestras as well

as with orchestras in Europe, Haiti, New Zealand, and South Africa. She is

the recipient of a doctor offine arts degree from Bridgewater State College.

In 1998 and 1999 she was featured in a video documentary sponsored by

Boston’s Museum of African American History and television station wgbh

about her personal musical journey as well as her African journey to find

the roots of the harp. Pilot is on the faculties of New England Conservatory,

Boston University, the Tanglewood Music Center, and the Boston University 

Tanglewood Institute. She is a member ofthe contemporary music ensemble

Collage New Music and has also performed with the Boston Symphony

Chamber Players and at the Marlboro, Newport, and Sarasota music festivals,

among others.

KELLY HALL-TOMPKINS

Kelly Hall-Tompkins enjoys a dynamic career that spans solo, chamber, and

orchestral performance. She has appeared in recital in the Dame Myra Hess 

Series in Chicago; the Peggy and Yale Gordon Trust series in Baltimore; and, 

through a special grant from the IBM Corporation, concerts at the Peace

Center in Greenville, South Carolina. Hall-Tompkins has been a soloist with

the Dallas, Greenville, and Monmouth Symphony Orchestras as well as the 

Atlanta University Orchestra, the Gateways Festival Orchestra, Festival ofthe 

Atlantic Orchestra, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and the Philharmonic

Orchestra of Uruguay. In 1999 she won auditions held by the New Jersey

Symphony Orchestra and was subsequently appointed to the orchestra’s first

violin section. Hall-Tompkins began her violin studies at age nine. She earned

a master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music under the mentorship of Glenn Dicterow, concertmaster ofthe New York Philharmonic.

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AMADI AZIKIWE

Violist Amadi Azikiwe has been heard in recital in major cities throughout

the United States, including Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, New York, and Washington, D.C., where he was invited to play at the

United States Supreme Court. In recent seasons, Azikiwe has appeared

with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at Alice Tully Hall,

the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Kennedy Center, and the

Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. He was featured in

the “Discovery” recital series in La Jolla, California, and as a guest artist at

the 1993 International Viola Congress in Evanston, Illinois. He has collaborated with such artists as Felix Galimir, Nobulco Imai, Awadagin Pratt, Andras

Schiff, David Soyer, and Mitsuko Uchida. His performances have been

broadcast on National Public Radio’s Performance Today, St. Paul Sunday,

and on wnyc in New York. A member ofthe faculties ofthe James Madison

University and The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Azikiwe is

also director of program development for the Gateways Music Festival in

Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

TAHIRAH WHITTINGTON

A native of Houston, Texas, cellist Tahirah Whittington has performed for 

audiences in Chile, France, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the United States. She 

has appeared as soloist with the Ann Arbor Symphony, as a result ofwinning first prize at the 1999 Sphinx Competition, and with the National Symphony Orchestra. An avid chamber musician, Whittington is a member of

the acclaimed Core Ensemble (piano, cello, percussion), which tours with

an actor and performs chamber music theater. Whittington received her

master ofmusic degree in cello performance from The Juilliard School 

under the tutelage of Joel Krosnick and her bachelor ofmusic degree at

the New England Conservatory as a student of Laurence Lesser.

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TERRENCE WILSON

Since his professional debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra, American

pianist Terrence Wilson has established a reputation as a gifted young

instrumentalist. He has appeared as concerto soloist with the symphony

orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, and

Saint Louis as well as with the Colorado Symphony and the Minnesota

Orchestra. He has also made highly acclaimed recital debuts at the 92nd

Street y, the Kennedy Center, and the Louvre Museum. In 1998 Wilson was

awarded the Avery Fisher Career Grant and in May 2001 he graduated from

the Juilliard School, where he received the Sony es Award for Musical Excellence and the William Petschek Award.

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Program Notes

During his stay in Mannheim early in 1778, Mozart met amateur flutist 

Willem Britten de Jong, whom he described as “a gentleman ofmeans and

a lover of all the sciences.” De Jong had heard of the twenty-one-year-old

composer’s extraordinary talent for composition from a mutual friend—

Johann Baptist Wendling, the flutist with the Mannheim orchestra—and he 

commissioned Mozart to write three concertos and at least three quartets

with strings for his instrument. Since he was—as always—short ofmoney,

Mozart accepted the proposal to help finance the concert tour he was then

making through Germany and France in search of a permanent position.

The next leg of the journey was to lead from Mannheim to Paris, and the

commission for the flute pieces would help to pay the bills.

Although Mozart professed a distaste ofwriting for solo flute, by the

time he left Mannheim he had managed to finish three ofthe quartets (K. 285,

285a, and 285b) and two ofthe concertos—the second one is actually a transposition ofthe Oboe Concerto in C Major, K. 314, from the previous year. He

settled with De Jong for just less than half of the original fee, and let it go at

that. Despite his disparagement ofthe instrument, Mozart’s compositions

for flute occupy one ofthe most delightful niches of his incomparable

musical legacy. Composer and arranger Rudolf Gerber characterized them

as combining “the perfect image ofthe spirit and feeling ofthe rococo age

with German sentiment.”

The Flute Quartet in D Major (K. 285) opens with a crystalline sonataform movement which the flute initiates with the presentation of the dashing principal melody. By the time the music arrives at the second theme—

a rising scalar configuration in triplet rhythms—it is clear that Mozart has

endowed the flute with concerto-like prominence in this movement. In the 

central development section, however, it relinquishes its leadership in favor

ofsome more democratic motivic discussion with its companions. The

Adagio, in the expressive key of B minor, is a nocturnal cantilena for the flute

couched upon a delicate cushion of plucked string sonorities. In his biography ofthe composer, Alfred Einstein wrote that this movement, suffused

with “the sweetest melancholy, [is] perhaps the most beautiful accompanied

flute solo that has even been written.” This irresistible quartet closes with a

buoyant rondo enlivened by frequent dialogues ofthe flute and the first violin.

Thomas Jefferson Anderson was born August 17,1928 in Coatesville,

Pennsylvania and received degrees from West Virginia State College, Penn

State University, and a Ph.D. in composition from the University of Iowa.

He also holds several honorary degrees. After serving as chairman ofthe 

department ofmusic at Tufts University for eight years, Anderson was named

Austin Fletcher Professor of Music and, in 1990, Austin Fletcher Professor

of Music Emeritus.

In program notes for a concert of Anderson’s music honoring the 100th 

year ofTufts University’s music department, musicologist and composer

Mark DeVoto wrote: “T. J. Anderson, as all the world knows him, has spent a

long and distinguished career composing music reflecting a global awareness ofhuman experience in the twentieth century, synthesizing Eastern 

and Western classical traditions with the Black experience in America. His

works reveal inspiration from a variety of classical styles ranging from

Purcell to Alban Berg, and techniques and forms ranging from the serially

rigorous to the freely improvisatory, all arrayed in a stylistic panorama that

is wholly his own.”

Game Play for flute, viola, cello, and harp was commissioned by Eleanor 

Eisenmenger and had its first performance in 2002 at the Saint Francis

Auditorium in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at which Ann Hobson Pilot was the 

harpist. The work is based on children’s game songs and makes reference

to musical gestures that feature the instruments in a quartet.

Heitor Villa-Lobos, deemed by many to be Brazil’s greatest composer, 

had little formal training. He learned the cello from his father and earned

a living as a young man playing in popular bands, from which he derived 

much of his musical background. From his earliest years, Villa-Lobos was

enthralled with the indigenous songs and dances of his native land, and

he made several trips into the Brazilian interior to study native music and

ceremonies. Beginning with his earliest works, written around 1910, his 

music shows the influence ofthe melodies, rhythms, and sonorities that he

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discovered. He began to compose prolifically, and, though often ridiculed for

his daring new style by other Brazilian musicians, he attracted the attention

of pianist Artur Rubinstein, who helped him to obtain a Brazilian government grant in 1923. This enabled him to spend several years in Paris, where 

his international reputation was established. Upon his permanent return to

Rio de Janeiro in 1930, Villa-Lobos became an important figure in public 

musical education, urging the cultivation of Brazilian songs and dances in

the schools. He made his first visit to the United States in 1944, and spent

the remaining years ofhis life traveling in America and Europe to conduct 

and promote his own works and those of other Brazilian composers.

Assobio ajato (The Jet Whistle) for flute and cello, is one of a number of

chamber and solo works from Villa-Lobos’ later years in which he explores

the areas of virtuosity and extended techniques for traditional instruments.

The piece is in a classical three-movement form (fast-slow-fast) and exhibits

the tuneful influence of Brazilian popular and folk music that was the inspirational and stylistic engine that drove all ofVilla-Lobos’ output. The work

takes its curious title from an effect presented at the very end, when the 

flutist blows air directly into the instrument to produce a rushing, whistling 

sound reminiscent of a jet engine. Commercial jet travel was not yet available in the 1950s, when Villa-Lobos was annually making trips to France and 

the United States. Perhaps this piece is a musical sign of his eager longing 

for a quicker, more modern way of air transportation.

By the time that Dvorak composed his Piano Quartet no. 2 in E-fiat Major

in 1889, he was nearing the age offifty and had risen from his humble

and nearly impoverished beginnings to become one of the most respected 

musicians in his native Bohemia and throughout Europe and America. In

that same year, he was invited to become professor of composition at the

Prague Conservatory; his opera The Jacobin enjoyed great success at its premiere in Prague; an orchestral concert he conducted in Dresden received

splendid acclaim; Emperor Franz Josef ofAustria awarded him the distinguished Iron Cross; and he received an honorary doctorate from Cambridge 

University. Dvorak composed his Second Piano Quartet at his country home

in Vysoka during the summer of 1889, in a briefinterval between receiving

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the last two aforementioned honors. Just two months later, his boundlessly 

lyrical Symphony no. 8 was also completed.

The quartet’s first movement follows a freely conceived sonata form.

To launch the work, the unison strings present the bold main theme, which 

immediately elicits a capricious response from the piano. Following a grand

restatement ofthe opening theme and a transition based on a jaunty rhythmic motive, the viola introduces the arching subsidiary subject. The development is announced by a recall ofthe theme that began the movement. A

varied recapitulation ofthe earlier materials rounds out the movement. The

Lento is unusual in its structure, consisting offive distinct thematic entities

played twice. The cello presents the first melody, a peaceful, lyrical phrase.

The delicate second motive, given in a leisurely, unruffled manner by the 

violin, creates an even more beatific mood. A sense of agitation is injected 

into the music by the animated third theme, entrusted to the piano, and it

rises to a peak ofintensity with the stormy fourth strain, which is played by

the entire ensemble. Calm is restored by the piano’s closing melody. This

thematic succession is repeated with only minor changes before the movement is brought to a quiet and touching end. The third movement, the 

scherzo, contrasts waltz-like outer sections with a central trio reminiscent

of a fiery Middle Eastern dance. The Finale, like the opening Allegro, follows

a fully realized sonata form in which an energetic main theme (which stubbornly maintains its unsettled minor tonality for much ofthe movement) is

contrasted with a lyrically inspired second subject, first allotted to the cello.

A rousing coda of almost symphonic breadth closes this handsome work of

Dvorak’s maturity.

Program notes by Dr. Richard E. Rodda. Used by permission.

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