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 ofArt

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-ninth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,843rd Concert

Joel Fan, pianist

June 5, 2011

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Ernesto Nazareth (1863-1934)

Tango for Piano: Vem ca, branquinha (1907)

Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)

Choros no. 5, for piano, A. 207 (“Alma brasileira”) (1925)

Margaret Bonds (1913-1972)

Troubled Water (1967)

Dia Succari (b. 1938)

La nuit du destin

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Sonata no. ji in A-jlat Major, op. 110 (1822)

Moderato cantabile, molto espressivo

Allegro molto; coda 

Adagio ma non troppo; fuga

INTERMISSION

Aleksandr Scriabin (1872-1915)

Sonata no. 5, op. 53 (1907)

Arnold Schonberg (1874-1951)

Three Piano Pieces, op. 11 (1909)

Massig

Massig

Bewegt

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)

Piano Sonata no. 2 in B-flat Minor, op. 35 (“Funeral March”) (1837-1839)

Grave; doppio movimento

Scherzo

Marche funebre: Lento

Finale: Presto

The Musician

Acclaimed as a “versatile and sensitive” pianist by the Washington Post and “a

technical wonder” by the Los Angeles Times, Joel Fan began his performing

career with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at age eleven, as a winner of

the Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concert Auditions. He has since appeared

in recital with the Albany Symphony, Greater Bridgeport Symphony, Marion

Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Pueblo Symphony, and Rhode Island

Philharmonic orchestras, as well as Santa Fe Pro Musica. Internationally, Fan

has collaborated as soloist with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra,

the New Symphony Orchestra of Bulgaria, the London Sinfonietta, and the

Singapore Symphony Orchestra, under conductors Alan Gilbert, Gustav Meier,

David Alan Miller, Larry Rachleff, David Robertson, and David Zinman.

Joel Fan’s eclectic solo repertoire spans traditional piano classics, newly

commissioned works, and his own piano transcriptions and cadenzas. His

commitment to music of our time has led to the world premiere performance of Leon Kirchner’s Sonata no. j (“The Forbidden”) in 2006, and a

2007 performance of Daron Aric Hagen’s Concertofor Left Hand (“Seven

Last Words”) with the Waukesha (Wisconsin) Symphony Orchestra.

Fan’s debut solo recording, World Keys, was released in 2006 on the

Reference Recordings label. A prizewinner in several international competitions, including the D’Angelo Young Artists International Competition

in the United States and the Busoni International Piano Competition in

Italy, he was named a Presidential Scholar by the National Foundation for 

Advancement in the Arts.

Fan is a member ofYo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, with which he has

appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Kennedy 

Center, and Symphony Center in Chicago. A native New Yorker, Fan received 

a bachelor of arts degree from Harvard University, where his teachers included

composer Leon Kirchner. He also holds a master ofmusic degree in piano

performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music, where he was a student

of Leon Fleisher. A Steinway artist, Joel Fan appears at the National Gallery by

arrangement with Barrett Vantage Artists (www.barrettvantage.com).

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Program Notes

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, composer Ernesto Julio de Nazareth was 

raised in a family with modest means and began his piano studies with his

mother. In spite ofbeing largely self-taught—his mother died when he was 

ten years old—Ernesto wrote a piece that was deemed worthy of publication

at age fourteen. He eventually became the most popular Brazilian composer

of his time, and had a profound influence on the future ofboth classical

and popular music in Brazil. Vem ca, branquinha (Come Here, Little White

Woman) is a colloquial expression of endearment.

In the next generation, Heitor Villa-Lobos succeeded de Nazareth as

Brazil’s most popular composer. After studying European classical music

throughout his youth, Villa-Lobos spent part ofhis later years learning native 

Brazilian musical styles from local popular musicians in Rio de Janiero. He 

developed a skill for improvisation in the style of choros, Brazilian renditions

ofthe polka and other European dances usually performed on wind instruments and percussion. “Alma brasileira” (Brazilian Soul) is the subtitle he

gave to the fifth piece in his Choros series, a quiet, highly expressive piano

piece in which a slow, yearning melody expands over a syncopated ostinato

figure in the bass.

Born in Chicago, pianist and composer Margaret Allison Richardson

Bonds was twenty years old in 1933 when she became the first black American

to solo with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She wrote music for orchestra,

choral music, and arrangements of black American spirituals, some ofwhich

were sung by the legendary soprano Leontyne Price. In Troubled Water, Bonds 

uses material from the spiritual “Wade in the Water.” Often used as a form

ofsecret communication among slaves, spirituals have a powerful emotional

history. In describing this work, the poet Maya Angelou writes: “This beautifully crafted work states the refrain and verse ofthe spiritual in various guises.

The broad sweeping melody is initially spiced up by complex rhythmic accompaniments and harmonized with elements ofthe blues and jazz. It is then

restated in a more languid tempo, beautifully embellished in the gospel 

tradition ofpiano performance.”

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A native ofAleppo, Syria, Dia Succari finds inspiration from the native

rhythms and traditional folk themes of his homeland and its neighboring

countries in the Middle East. Ofspecial interest to Succari are the santour

(similar to the hammered dulcimer) and muqam, a system ofmodal music

that is based in Persian and Arabian tradition. Succari’s La nuit du destin

(The Night of Destiny) refers to a night of prayer and spiritual illumination.

It combines traditional Western compositional style—notes and rhythms

specifically notated—with interior sections where the pianist has the liberty

to improvise in a style called taksim. In these sections, the pianist imitates

the santour in the soft ripple produced by his left hand and the plucked

intensity ofthe ud, a Persian lute, in the louder staccatos.

One ofhis most personal compositions, the Sonata in A-Jlat Major, op.

110, is the only work Beethoven completed in 1821. Though it is sometimes

overshadowed by other late sonatas— including op. 106 (“Hammerklavier”)

and the final sonata, op. 111—it is equally as impressive and awe-inspiring.

Beethoven was ill while he was composing this sonata, and there is a sense

ofimpending doom—perhaps a reflection of his own mortality—throughout the piece. In spite ofits sober undertone, or perhaps because it spoke to

a prevalent mood in German society at the time, the sonata was greeted with

much success after its first public performance in 1824. The German music

magazine Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung reported: “It is a work in every

respect wholly excellent, extremely melodious throughout, and rich in

harmonic beauties.”

Aleksandr Scriabin’s Piano Sonata no. 5 marks a turning point in his

compositional style from romantic to atonal. By making no attempt to have

a tonal center and containing the entire sonata in one long movement,

Scriabin breaks away from traditional tonality and multi-movement sonatas.

One ofthe most difficult pieces in the piano repertory, this work is nevertheless the most frequently performed and recorded ofthe composer’s sonatas.

Scriabin included an epigraph in the score, taken from his long poetic work

The Poem ofEcstasy—not to be confused with his Symphony no. 4 (“Poem

of Ecstasy”), op. 54. The epigraph reads: “I summon you to life, hidden

longings! You, drowned in the dark depths ofthe creative spirit, you fearful

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embryos oflife, I bring you daring!” The piece consists offive themes that

intertwine and evolve throughout the piece: the intense, dissonant trill and

glissando in the opening; a slow, languishing introductory theme; a dancelike presto based on material from the opening theme and serving as the first

subject group; a transition marked imperioso; and a meno vivo that serves as

the second subject group.

Arnold Schonberg’s Three Piano Pieces, op. n, is considered by musicologists to be his earliest consistently atonal opus and a landmark of great 

historical and musical significance. The radical and sudden departure from

what he produced prior to this opus also coincided with some turbulent

events in Schonberg’s personal and professional life—his Second String

Quartet (1908) had been received unfavorably, and his wife, Mathilde, had 

left him to marry the painter Richard Gerstl. Though remnants oflate

romanticism can be heard in the piano pieces, Schonberg was expressing 

deep convictions about the future ofmusic.

Chopin composed his Piano Sonata no. 2 in B-flat Minor, op. 35 (“Funeral 

March”) during a sojourn in 1839 at Nohant near Chateauroux in France,

although the funeral march that eventually became the third movement had

been composed two years earlier. The sonata was the target ofmuch criticism when it was first heard, since it was not considered a cohesive sonata 

in the classical sense. Schumann was the first to remark that Chopin “had

assembled four ofhis maddest children together under the same roof.” In

recent years musicologists have found previously overlooked qualities that

in fact bind the work together. Despite its unorthodox treatment ofthe form, 

in the end, this sonata is a painstakingly crafted composition that highlights

the crowning jewels ofChopin’s genius—his gift for keyboard writing and

beautiful melodies.

Program notes by Danielle DeSwert Hahn

Notes on Dia Succari by Joel Fan

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Final Concert ofthe Season at the National Gallery ofArt

Texas Children’s Choir

Thomas Hardaway, director

Anne-Marieke Evers, mezzo-soprano

Seventeenth-century music from the Netherlands

Presented in honor of Gabriel Metsu, 1629-1667

June 12, 2011

Sunday, 6:30 pm 

East Building Auditorium

Concerts resume on September 18, 2011