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The Seventy-Third Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

3,051st Concert

Mykola Suk, pianist

with Pavel Gintov, pianist

May 10, 2015

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Made Possible by The Gottesman Fund

in memory of Milton M. Gottesman
Program

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Partita no. 1 in Bflat Major, bwv 825 (c. 1730)

Praeludium

Allemande

Corrente

Sarabande

Menuet I and 11

Gigue

PAVEL GINTOV AND MYKOLA SUK

Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870)

Melodic Counterpoint Studies on Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier,

op. 137b (c. i860)

Praeludium in C Major (on Vol. 1, no. 1, bwv 846)

Praeludium in C Minor (on Vol. 1, no. 2, bwv 847)

Praeludium in D Major (on Vol. 11, no. 5, bwv 874)

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788)

Sonatafor Keyboard in G Minor, H. 47, Wq. 65/17 (1746)

Allegro

Adagio

Allegro assai

INTERMISSION

PAVEL GINTOV AND MYKOLA SUK

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Fantasia in C Minor, K. 475 (1785)

With freely added accompaniment for a second piano by Edvard Grieg

MYKOLA SUK AND PAVEL GINTOV

Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (1735-1795)

Sonata in A Majorfor Piano Four Hands, op. 18, no. 5 (1786)

Allegretto

Tempo di minuetto

Mykola Suk and Pavel Gintov

Mozart

Sonata in A Minor, K. 310 (1778)

Allegro maestoso

Andante cantabile con espressione

Presto
The Performers

MYKOLA SUK

A reviewer for the American Record Guide wrote about pianist Mykola Suk:

“An astonishing blend ofmuscular power, poetry, and utter control, he will

prove to be one ofthe more formidable talents to have appeared in this 

country in years.” Winner ofthe First Prize and Gold Medal at the 1971

International Liszt-Bartok Competition in Budapest, Ukrainian American

Suk went on to earn praise from the European Piano Teacher’s Journal:

“surely the most towering and volcanic talent to have come out of Russia

since Anton Rubinstein,” and further recognition from the Toronto Star:

“enormous digital control... such an impressive technique was so completely

subsumed in the task of musical characterization.”

Since his first public appearance at age eight, Suk has given recitals

worldwide in the countries ofthe former Soviet Union, France, Germany,

England, Finland, Egypt, Mexico, the United States, Canada, Korea, China,

Mongolia, and Australia, including appearances at Carnegie Hall and the 

Great Hall ofthe Moscow Conservatory. Among the major orchestras 

with which Suk has appeared as concerto soloist are the Russian National

Orchestra under Mikhail Pletnev and the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn under

Roman Kofman. Other outstanding conductors with whom he has worked

are Arvid Jansons, Stefan Turchak, James DePreist, and Carl St. Clair. An

avid supporter oftwentieth- and twenty-first-century composers, he has 

commissioned and premiered works by Ukrainian composers Valentin

Silverstrov, Ivan Karabyts, and Myroslav Skoryk, among numerous others.

Suk completed his doctor ofmusical arts degree in piano performance

at the Moscow State Conservatory and served as professor of piano at the 

Kiev State and Moscow State conservatories before coming to the United

States. During his early years in this country, he served as an adjunct faculty

member at the New England Conservatory, Manhattan School of Music, and 

Columbia University, and in 2001 he took on a tenured position as head of

keyboard studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

4

PAVEL GINTOV

Described as “a poet ofthe keyboard” by Marty Lash ofthe Illinois Entertainer

and “a musical storyteller” by the Japanese publication Shikoku News, pianist

Pavel Gintov played his debut at age twelve, performing Mozart’s Piano

Concerto in D Minor, K. 466, with the Kiev Chamber Orchestra at Kiev

Philharmonic Hall. Since then he has toured throughout Europe, Asia,

Africa, and the United States, appearing at Carnegie Hall, Berliner Philharmonic, Teatro Verdi Nationale in Milan, the Great Hall of Moscow

Conservatory, and Kioi Hall in Tokyo. He has been a soloist with the Tokyo

Royal Chamber Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, 

Shizuoka Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, National

Symphony Orchestra ofthe Dominican Republic, and Manhattan Chamber

Orchestra. Among the conductors on those occasions were Victor Yampolsky,

Thomas Sanderling, Vladimir Sirenko, and Shinsaku Tsutsumi.

A native of Ukraine, Gintov won a first prize and four special prizes in

the Premiere Takamatsu International Piano Competition in Japan and

First Prize in the 2010 Bradshaw and Buono International Piano Competition. Other prizes include the Bach Prize in the Rina Sala Gallo International Piano Competition in Italy and the prize for the best performance of

Russian music in the Russian Music International Piano Competition in

San Jose, California.

An avid chamber music performer, Gintov was awarded the prize for

the best collaborative pianist in the International Paganini Moscow Violin

Competition. He regularly performs with his sister, violinist Iryna Gintova.

Recipient ofthe Grant ofthe Shevchenko Scientific Society in New York,

the Scriabin Foundation Scholarship, the Mieczyslaw Munz Foundation

Scholarship, and the Scholarship ofthe President of Ukraine, Pavel Gintov

graduated with honors from the Moscow State Conservatory and is currently 

a doctoral candidate at the Manhattan School of Music, where he studies 

with Nina Svetlanova.

5
Program Notes

Johann Sebastian Bach included six partitas in the first part of his ClavierUbung (Keyboard Practice), a three-part compendium ofworks that he 

published as his legacy to the world of keyboard music. The first partita

combines emotional directness, structural clarity, and elegance. The 

Praeludium provides an “invitation to the dance” for the five baroque

dances that follow. The virtuosic Gigue requires the performer to cross 

hands repeatedly and aim for bass notes far out ofthe right hand’s normal

range—a special challenge when the movement is played on a harpsichord, where the keys are significantly smaller than those of a piano.

Ignaz Moscheles believed, along with many composers of his time, that

music was continually progressing, with each new style an improvement

over past techniques. These composers felt justified in embellishing the

works of Bach and other eighteenth-century composers, expanding both the 

texture and the harmony of earlier works to take advantage ofthe increased

range and power ofthe piano and the symphony orchestra, neither ofwhich 

had existed in Bach’s time. Scored for piano duet, Moscheles’s Melodic

Counterpoint Studies assign a prelude from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier to

one pianist, while the other pianist provides new material to go with it.

The second and arguably most successful son ofJohann Sebastian Bach,

Carl Philipp Emanuel enjoyed unqualified admiration and recognition as a

teacher and keyboard composer, thanks in no small measure to his employment, from the time he was in his mid-twenties until his mid-fifties, in the

court of Frederick n of Prussia, who maintained one ofthe most sophisticated court orchestras in Europe. Hired initially as a harpsichordist, Bach

eventually advanced to the position of Kapellmeister, with full responsibility 

for the orchestra and its repertoire. A prolific composer, he continued to

produce solo works for his instrument throughout his career. He is credited 

with leading the transition from the high baroque contrapuntal style, in

which he was trained by his father, to the simpler “galant” style that prevailed throughout the second half ofthe eighteenth century in Europe.

6

The Mozart family deserves credit for popularizing the piano duet genre 

through the tours of Europe’s important palaces and concert venues that

Leopold Mozart organized for his prodigious children, Wolfgang and Nannerl.

Evidently unaware that the genre already had existed in England for more

than one hundred years, Leopold wrote in a letter in 1765: “In London, little

Wolfgang wrote his first piece for four hands. No one has ever written a

four-hand sonata before.” Mozart wrote the Fantasia in C Minor, K. 475 as a

piano solo; the arrangement for two pianos four hands comes from Edvard

Grieg (1843-1907). By Grieg’s time, ownership of a piano and taking piano

lessons had become an integral part ofmiddle-class life in Europe, and 

arrangements of older music for piano four hands were in high demand.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s fifth surviving son, Johann Christoph Friedrich,

never achieved his older brother’s fame as a composer, but he did enjoy

modest success as a composer, performer, and teacher in the city of Biickeburg, Germany, where he served from 1750 to 1795 as court harpsichordist

and composer to Count Wilhelm of Schaumburg-Lippe (1724-1777) and his

successors. The count placed him in charge of his fifteen-piece court 

orchestra, for which Bach wrote some thirty symphonies, fifteen concertos,

and numerous cantatas. The librettos run the gamut from Italian love

stories, which were the favorites ofhis patron, to an intriguing work titled

Die Amerikanerin (The American Woman, 1773), based on Lied eines Mohren

(Song of a Moor), a poem by Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg (1737-1823).

After moving to Vienna in 1781, Mozart began performing his own

compositions at his concerts, among them the A Minor Sonata, K. 310,

which is one ofthe composer’s most spectacular works in this idiom. It

follows a tradition offiery keyboard writing that Mozart had encountered

during his last sojourn in Paris (1777-1778). The tripartite Andante cantabile, with its agitated outburst at the center ofthe movement, is without

expressive precedent. It may be a reflection ofthe emotionally turbulent

events that occurred during Mozart’s time in Paris, including increasing

conflicts with his father and the death of his mother.

Program Notes by Stephen Ackert, Senior Music Program Advisor,

National Gallery ofArt