77TH SEASON OF

CONCERTS

national gallery of art | may 5, 2019
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Poulenc Trio 

James Austin Smith, oboe 

Bryan Young, bassoon 

Irina Kaplan Lande, piano 

with guest artists Anton Lande, violin, and Kati Harrison, narrator

Celebrating The American Pre-Raphaelites: Radical Realists 

An American View: Whitman and the American Pre-Raphaelites

May 5, 2019 | 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)

Trio in E-flat Major, op. 38 (1803)

Adagio; Allegro con brio

Adagio cantabile

Tempo di menuetto

Andante con moto; Alla marcia; Presto

Tom Benjamin (b. 1940) 

Three Pieces with Whitman (2003)

Valse triste / Valse oubliée

Lament

Perpetuum mobile

Intermission

PROGRAM

Photo by Matt Dine
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THE MUSICIANS

Poulenc Trio

The Poulenc Trio is engaged in several exciting collaborations, including a new commission from the Barlow Endowment for composer Viet Cuong, scheduled to premiere in 

2020. Other recent collaborations include Trains of Thought: Animated, a mixed-media 

project featuring a beautifully hand-animated film by artists Elizabeth and Alden Phelps, 

paired with a commissioned work by Viet Cuong. Trains is also included on the trio’s 

latest album from Delos. The group’s prior album, Creation, debuted in the fourth 

place of Apple Music’s Classical A-List and garnered high praise from the American 

Record Guide for technique and expressive range. The recording also features a pairing 

with poet and Guggenheim Fellow Lia Purpura, with a reading of her poems set against 

Alfred Schnittke’s Suite in the Old Style.

Since its founding in 2003, the Poulenc Trio has performed in forty-six states in 

the United States and at music festivals throughout the world, including the Ravello 

Festival in Italy, the San Miguel de Allende Festival in Mexico, and the White Nights 

Festival in Russia, where the group toured and premiered two new works with violinist 

Hilary Hahn.

The New York Times has praised the trio for its “elegant rendition” of Piazzolla’s 

tangos. The Washington Post said the trio “does its namesake proud” in “an intriguing 

and beautifully played program” with “convincing elegance, near effortless lightness 

and grace.” A recent performance in Florida — for which the Palm Beach Post praised 

the group’s “polished loveliness,” and the Palm Beach Daily News said the “potent 

combination” of oboe, bassoon, and piano had “captured the magic of chamber 

music”— is regularly rebroadcast on American Public Media’s nationally syndicated 

radio program. The trio has garnered positive attention in recent, full-length profiles by 

Chamber Music Magazine and by the Double Reed Journal. The group has been called 

“virtuosos of classical and contemporary chamber music” in a profile for Russian television.

The Poulenc Trio has a strong commitment to commissioning, performing, and 

recording new works from living composers. Since its founding, the group has greatly 

expanded the repertoire available for the oboe, bassoon, and piano, with twenty-two 

new works written for and premiered by the group, including three triple concertos for 

trio and full orchestra. The trio has also made a commitment to explore and promote 

music that reflects its members’ African, Asian, Eastern European, and Jewish heritages. 

Recent concerts have featured works by Afro-Cuban jazz great Paquito D’Rivera, 

Mexican-American composer Carlos Medina, Russian-American composer Nataliya 

Medvedovskaya, and Russian-born Jakov Jakoulov’s Yiddish Lexicon, an exploration of 

Jewish culture.

Amy Beach (1867 – 1944)

Romance for Violin and Piano, op. 23 (1893)

Mazurka for Violin and Piano, op. 40, no. 3 (1898)

William Grant Still (1895 – 1978)

Vignettes (1962)

Winnebago Moccasin Game

Carmela

Inca Melody

Clinch Mountain

Héla Grandpere

Garde Piti Mulet Lá

André Previn (1929 – 2019)

Trio for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano (1994)

Lively

Slow

Jaunty
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In his epic treatise on art and morality, English critic John Ruskin exhorted artists to 

“Paint the leaves as they grow! If you can paint one leaf, you can paint the world!” Ruskin’s 

writings would inspire a group of American artists, the American Pre-Raphaelites, who 

took his words to heart, creating landscapes and portraits that celebrated nature in 

close-up detail. Ruskin admired the work of Walt Whitman, the groundbreaking American 

poet, born the same year as Ruskin, and who was also writing about the glories of the 

natural world, and about music.

In An American View: Whitman and the American Pre-Raphaelites, the Poulenc 

Trio explores the circles of inspiration that drove both Ruskin and Whitman, as well as 

the composers who influenced or were influenced by their work. The concert features 

composers who inspired Ruskin and the American Pre-Raphaelites, Whitman’s favorite 

work by Beethoven, and the world premiere pairing of music by Thomas Benjamin with 

Whitman’s poems in celebration of Whitman’s (and Ruskin’s) 200th anniversary year.

To commemorate the recent passing of André Previn, the program includes a full 

performance of Previn’s Trio for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano.

Trio in E-flat Major, op. 38

Beethoven’s Trio in E-flat Major, op. 38, is an arrangement of the opus 20 Septet (1799/

1800), which was scored for clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and bass. Set 

in six movements, it can be considered a serenade in the sense of its style and grace. 

Generally regarded as the greatest of Beethoven’s early chamber works, this was not 

the only transcription of it (though it was the only transcription Beethoven made himself). 

This trio arrangement was published in 1805, but the date of its composition is not 

certain. However, since the Septet was published in 1802 and became instantly popular, 

it is likely that Beethoven fashioned the Trio in E-flat Major from it in about 1803. 

Beethoven made this trio arrangement for Dr. Johann Schmidt, his new physician and 

also a good violinist. Dr. Schmidt’s daughter was a talented pianist, and father and 

daughter, along with a cellist friend, often played this music in Vienna, probably at 

private gatherings or at concerts in their home. Beethoven gave exclusive rights to the 

score to Dr. Schmidt for one year.

Beethoven’s Septet is one of the final works Walt Whitman is known to have 

heard in performance. Whitman was an avid and enthusiastic concertgoer, considered 

himself a music critic of sorts, and as a journalist, wrote countless notes and reviews 

about pieces he heard and enjoyed. Towards the end of his life, and after a long illness, 

Whitman attended a concert at the opera house in Philadelphia, where according to 

PROGRAM NOTES

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The Poulenc Trio launched a pioneering concert series called Music at the Museum, 

in which musical performances are paired with museum exhibitions, with special appearances from guest artists and curators. As part of the series, the trio has collaborated 

with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum 

and the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Hermitage State Museum in Russia. Guest 

artist collaborators have included violinist Hilary Hahn, the Thibaud Trio of Berlin, soprano 

Hyunah Yu, and clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Anthony McGill, and David Shifrin.

The trio is deeply engaged in musical and educational outreach programs, including 

Pizza and Poulenc, an informal performance and residency program for younger 

audiences around the United States. The trio regularly conducts master classes, with 

recent engagements at Ohio University, San Francisco State University, Florida State 

University, and the University of Colima in Mexico.

Anton Lande

Hailed as “a brilliant young violinist” and praised for his “upfront emotionalism of the 

Russian tradition,” Anton Lande is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University and the 

Peabody Conservatory, where he majored in both violin performance and economics. 

Lande began his violin education at age six and studied with the renowned Victor 

Danchenko, a pupil of David Oistrakh and a former professor at the Curtis Institute.

An alumnus of the Tanglewood Institute Quartet Program, Lande has performed 

at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Institution, and 

the Walters Art Museum, as well as in the Flagler Museum Series in Palm Beach, 

Florida, and the Saint Croix Candlelight Music Series in the Virgin Islands. Most recently, 

Lande obtained his master’s degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Kati Harrison

Weekend host and operations director for Maryland’s WBJC classical music station, 

Kati Harrison came full circle when she moved to Baltimore nineteen years ago. Born 

in Torreón Coahuila, Mexico, she lived on her father’s ranches in the states of Durango 

and Veracruz until she was fifteen. Moving back and forth between the ranches, 

Harrison was homeschooled from Baltimore’s online Calvert School. Little did she 

know that years later she would be working at WBJC Radio. Harrison holds a degree in 

theater and communications from Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi, where she 

studied acting, singing, film, and communications. Her radio career began as the 

mid-day classical music host at KEDT-FM in Corpus Christi, Texas. From there she 

became the afternoon drive-time classical music host at KBAQ-FM in Phoenix, Arizona. 

Harrison lives in Baltimore with her husband, Jonathan Palevsky, and their four cats.
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New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, he was particularly moved by a performance of 

Beethoven’s Septet. About that performance, Whitman wrote, “this music is the one 

art form more pure than poetry.”

Three Pieces with Whitman

Three Pieces with Whitman, originally composed by Tom Benjamin for the Poulenc 

Trio in 2003, is one of the earliest commissioned works for the trio. Today’s performance is a new pairing that combines Benjamin’s music, a study in shifting contrasts 

and moods, with poems by Whitman and read by Kati Harrison.

Tom Benjamin was born in Bennington, Vermont, in 1940. He received his degrees 

from Bard College, Brandeis, Harvard, and Eastman, studying composition with Carlos 

Surinach, Ernst Krenek, Arthur Berger, and Bernard Rogers. Benjamin has composed 

works for all media, including concertos for violin, piano, and viola, orchestral pieces, 

oratorios, cantatas, five operas, many song cycles, and a great deal of chamber and choral 

music. More than fifty of his chamber, choral, and keyboard works have been published.

Benjamin is the author of two books on counterpoint (Schirmer Books), and 

coauthor of three music theory texts (Wadsworth). He has won prizes in a wide 

variety of international composition contests and has received numerous grants, 

awards, and commissions, including from the National Endowment for the Arts, ASCAP, 

Meet-the-Composer, the National Music Theater Network, and the Barlow Foundation. 

He is a fellow of the MacDowell Colony, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the Virginia 

Center. Active as a performer and choral conductor, Benjamin taught for many years at 

the National Music Camp (Interlochen), at the University of Houston School of Music, 

and has recently retired from teaching theory and composition at the Peabody 

Conservatory, where he also served for some years as chair of the music theory 

department.

Romance for Violin and Piano and Mazurka for Violin and Piano

Amy Marcy Cheney Beach was an American composer and pianist and the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her “Gaelic” Symphony, which 

the Boston Symphony Orchestra premiered in 1896, was the first symphony composed 

and published by an American woman. She was one of the first American composers 

to succeed without the benefit of European training, and one of the most respected 

and acclaimed American composers of her era. As a pianist performing in the United 

States and in Germany, she was acclaimed for her concerts that featured her own music.

Beach also wrote for journals, newspapers, and other publications on musical 

topics, such as “To the Girl Who Wants to Compose,” and “Emotion Versus Intellect in 

Music.” She gave advice in person and in print to young musicians and composers — 

especially female composers. In 1915, she wrote Music’s Ten Commandments as Given 

for Young Composers, which expressed many of her self-teaching principles.

Beach composed her Romance for Violin and Piano, op. 23, to commemorate the 

opening of the Women’s Musical Congress, held in Chicago, July 5 – 7, 1893. She both 

dedicated and premiered the work with violinist Maud Powell, a prominent musician in 

her own right, who had helped organize the event. Powell spoke before the assembly 

of 1,500 attendees on “Women and the Violin,” encouraging young girls and women to 

study the violin seriously despite the professional barriers facing them.

Beach’s Romance utilizes a romantic idiom that was fashionable among her American 

colleagues at the time, including Arthur Foote (1853 – 1937), George Chadwick (1854 – 

1931), Edward MacDowell (1860 – 1908), and Horatio Parker (1863 – 1919). Many of these 

musicians trained in Germany and show the influence of Brahms and Joachim Raaf 

(1822 – 1882), who taught some young American composers. While that influence has 

often been criticized for being too “Germanic,” the music of Foote, Chadwick, and Beach 

show the flowering of a new and truly American character — pioneering precursors to 

the music of Charles Ives and Aaron Copland.

In a letter dated December 6, 1893, Powell thanked Beach for the “dainty, artistic 

edition” of the “charming Romanza,” which she had received the day before and continued to perform that season. She wrote: “Our meeting in Chicago and the pleasure 

of playing together made a most delightful episode in my summer’s experience. I trust 

it soon may be repeated.”

Following their “delightful” visit in the spring of 1898, Beach sent Powell manuscript copies of her latest violin pieces, which included the opus 40, “Mazurka.” (The 

full work was titled Three Compositions for Violin and Piano, op. 40, “La captive,” 

“Berceuse,” “Mazurka.”) Powell first performed the “Mazurka” for a New England Society 

concert in Brooklyn, New York, on May 8, 1898.

Vignettes

William Grant Still was a gifted conductor and composer, and the first African American 

to have major productions of both a symphony (Afro-American Symphony, 1931) 

and an opera (Troubled Island, 1949). In 1936, Still became the first African American to 

conduct a noted American orchestra when he led the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the 

Hollywood Bowl.

Still was born in 1895. In 1911, he enrolled in Wilberforce University in Ohio, where 

he began to study medicine. He left the college before graduating and turned his 

attention to music, studying composition at Ohio’s Oberlin Conservatory of Music. 

He also spent time learning from George Whitefield Chadwick at the New England 

Conservatory of Music in Boston; later, he was instructed by Edgar Varèse. 

Still gained practical experience arranging band music for Paul Whiteman, W. C. 

Handy, and Artie Shaw. His notable early orchestral compositions include Darker 

America (1924) and From the Black Belt (1926). He was honored with Guggenheim 

fellowships in both 1934 and 1935.
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Many of Still’s musical creations melded jazz with more traditional orchestral 

melodies. They also incorporated his passionate interest in African music, as well as his 

societal concerns about African Americans in the United States. Much of Still’s music, 

like these Vignettes, written in 1962, explores nontraditional American music, including 

music by Native Americans. Walt Whitman was also fascinated by Native American 

culture. Considering that the genocide of the American Indians formed the backdrop 

of much of Whitman’s life, he only wrote sparingly, and sometimes conflictingly about 

Native Americans, as evident in his 1876 poem “From Far Dakota’s Cañons.” Still’s 

Vignettes explore themes and familiar refrains referencing depictions (sometimes 

Euro-centric depictions) of African, Native American, and Creole music.

Trio for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano

In memory of André Previn’s recent passing (March 2019), we present his Trio for 

Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano. In relation to the Pre-Raphaelites, Previn’s Trio references 

Aaron Copland’s searching evocation of the American plains, with open chords in the 

piano, and wind melodies tinged with hints of jazz.

André Previn was born to a Jewish family in Berlin that emigrated to the United 

States in 1939 to escape the Nazis. He became a U.S. citizen in 1943 and grew up in Los 

Angeles. An Oscar winner, Previn toured and recorded as a jazz pianist and was conductor 

of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1985 to 1989. In the United Kingdom, where he 

was knighted in 1996, Previn is particularly remembered for his performance on the 

Morecambe and Wise Show in 1971, which involved his conducting a spoof performance 

of the Grieg Piano Concerto. At a concert in Britain afterwards, Previn had to interrupt 

the concerto to allow the audience time to stop giggling as they remembered the 

sketch. It is still considered one of the funniest comedy moments of all time.

Previn composed his Trio for Piano, Oboe, and Bassoon in 1994, as a commission 

for the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Mary 

Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. Music for this combination of instruments is unusual but 

by no means unique.

French composers in particular loved the sound of woodwinds, and in some ways 

Previn’s Trio shows virtues that might be thought typically French: clarity, careful 

attention to the character of the individual instruments, and a sense of play and fun. 

Yet, if the impulse behind this music can be thought of as French, it also has an 

American accent — full of energy, jazz rhythms, and the open harmonies that have, 

since the time of Copland and Harris, distinguished American music.

The piece has three movements. The opening, marked Lively, moves from a spiky 

beginning through a flowing second theme group introduced by the bassoon and 

marked “espressivo.” The basic metric markings in this movement are 2/4 and 4/4, but 

Previn frequently interrupts this even pulse with individual measures in such subdivisions as 7/8, 5/8, 3/4, 7/16, and others. It is indeed a “lively” movement, precisely for the 

vitality of its rhythms, and a brief coda drives to an emphatic close on a unison B-flat.

In the second movement, Slow, a piano prelude leads to the entrance of the solo 

oboe; this entrance is marked “lonely,” a marking that might apply to the entire movement, where long chromatic woodwind lines wind their way above chordal accompaniment. The music rises to a climax, then falls away to conclude on its opening material, 

now varied.

The last movement, Jaunty, changes meter almost by the measure. Previn treats 

the two wind instruments as a group and sets them in contrast to the piano, which has 

extended solo passages. The leaping, opening idea reappears in many forms, including 

inversion, and near the end, the tempo speeds ahead as Previn specifies that the music 

should be played with “jazz phrasing.” These riffs alternate with brief piano interludes 

marked “simply.” Gradually the movement’s opening theme reasserts itself, and the 

Trio rushes to its blistering close, once again on a unison B-flat.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger
Upcoming Events of the SeventySeventh Season of The William Nelson 

Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin Concerts

Unless otherwise noted, concerts 

are held in the West Building, West 

Garden Court.

The Danish Clarinet Trio

In collaboration with the Embassy 

of Denmark, and celebrating the 

European Month of Culture

May 8, 12:10

The Canales Project

Hear Her Voice, Part II: 

A Mother’s Day Celebration

Featuring lullabies from around the world

May 12, 3:30

Joshua Cerdenia, composer and pianist

Enrico Lagasca, bass-baritone

In honor of Asian Pacific American 

Heritage Month

May 14, 12:00

East Building Auditorium

Hanna Bachmann, piano

Isabel Pfefferkorn, mezzo-soprano

In collaboration with the Embassy 

of Austria and the Austrian Cultural 

Forum Washington, and celebrating 

the European Month of Culture 

May 15, 12:10

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.

—

The department of music produced 

these program notes. Copyright © 2019 

Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, 

Washington

cover William Trost Richards, Path in the 

Woods (detail), 1861, Private collection. 

Photography by Eric W. Baumgartner

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