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-seventh Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,698th Concert

Alessandra Marc, soprano

With the National Gallery Chamber Orchestra

Stephen Ackert and Dingwall Fleary, guest conductors

Danielle DeSwert and Lawrence P. Schreiber, pianists

Presented in honor of Oceans, Rivers, and Skies:

Ansel Adams, Robert Adams, and Alfred Stieglitz

December 21, 2008

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Alfred Stieglitz, Music—A Sequence ofTen Cloud Photographs, No. X, 1922,

gelatin silver print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred Stieglitz 

Collection, © National Gallery of Art.

Program

Ernest Bloch (1880-1959)

Concerto Grosso no. lfor String Orchestra with Piano Obbligato (1925)

Prelude

Dirge

Pastorale and Rustic Dances

Fugue

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Hore, Israel (Hear ye, Israel)

From Elijah (1846)

INTERMISSION

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Schafe konnen sicher weiden (Sheep May Safely Graze and Pasture)

From Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd

(The Lively Hunt Is My Only Pleasure)

bwv 208 (1713)

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

He Shall Feed His Flock

How Beautiful Are the Feet ofHim

From Messiah (1741)

Archangelo Corelli (1653-1713)

Concerto Grosso no. 8 in G Minor, op. 6, no. 8

Vivace; grave 

Allegro

Adagio; allegro
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Ave Maria (1825)

Adolphe Adam (1803-1856)

O Holy Night (Cantique de Noel) (1851)

Carols for audience, soprano, piano, and orchestra

(The audience remains seated for the carols, the texts ofwhich appear

on the next page.)

Arr. Lawrence P. Schreiber 

Amazing Grace

O LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM

(All): O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie;

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.

Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light;

The hopes and dreams of all the years are met in thee tonight.

(Soprano): How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is giv’n;

So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heav’n.

No ear may hear his coming, but in this world ofsin,

Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.

(All): O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;

Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.

We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell:

O come to us, abide with us, our Lord, Emmanuel.

SILENT NIGHT

(All): Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright

Round yon virgin mother and child.

Holy infant, so tender and mild,

Sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.

(Soprano): Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht, alles schlaft; einsam wacht

Nur das traute, hochheilige Paar. Holder Knabe mit lockigem Haar,

Schlafin himmlischer Ruh’, schlafin himmlischer Ruh’.

(All): Silent night, holy night; Son of God, love’s pure light 

Radiant beams from thy holy face with the dawn ofredeeming grace.

Jesus, Lord at thy birth, Jesus, Lord at thy birth.
JOY TO THE WORLD

(All): Joy to the world, the Lord is come.

Let earth receive her king.

Let ev’ry heart prepare him room

And heav’n and nature sing.

(Soprano): Joy to the world, the Savior reigns!

Let all their songs employ;

While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains repeat the sounding joy.

(All): He rules the world with truth and grace

And makes the nations prove

The glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love.

6

The Musicians

ALESSANDRA MARC

“Une etoile est nee (A Star Is Bom),” headlined Le Figaro on the occasion of

Alessandra Marc’s Paris debut in 1992. The New Yorker praised Marc as having,

“an instrument ofunsurpassed beauty and impact and perhaps the richest,

fullest, most beautiful big soprano voice around.” Such accolades have been

and continue to be a staple in the career ofthis outstanding American soprano.

A frequent guest ofthe world’s leading opera houses and orchestras, she

collaborates with the most eminent conductors of our time, including Daniel 

Barenboim, Sir Colin Davis, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Christoph Eschenbach,

Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, Gerard Schwarz, and Sir Georg

Solti. Marc collaborated most frequently with the late Giuseppe Sinopoli, and

she was called upon to sing at his funeral mass in Rome in April 2001. Her

Metropolitan Opera debut saw her in the title role ofAida, which she has also

sung at the Lyric Opera ofChicago, the San Francisco Opera, and the Vienna

State Opera. Of Marc’s 2004 Metropolitan Opera performance as Turandot,

the New York Times reported that “she displayed burnished tones and enormous volume, especially in climactic phrases that soar above the orchestra

and chorus.” She repeated the role in 2005 and 2006 in Lisbon, Barcelona, 

Florence, and Tokyo.

Alessandra Marc’s discography is equally impressive. Delos Records 

issued her first aria recital recording, American Diva, and her many releases

include four on the Teldec label: Schoenberg’s Erwartung, Berg’s Altenberg

Lieder and Lulu Suite, with Sinopoli and the Dresden Staatskapelle, and

the final scene of Richard Strauss’ Salome with the North German Radio

Orchestra. This evening’s concert marks Alessandra Marc’s fifth appearance

at the National Gallery. Her debut recital at the Gallery occurred in January

1991, and her second appearance came just two months later, when she

stepped in at the last minute for the ailing Arleen Auger to sing Richard

Strauss’ Four Last Songs with the National Gallery Orchestra under George

7
Manos. The concert was a critically acclaimed triumph and a fitting observation ofthe 50th anniversary ofthe founding ofthe Gallery and its 2,000th

Sunday concert, both ofwhich came together on March 17,1991.

Maestra Marc recently announced the opening ofher teaching studio.

More information about the studio and more recent developments in her

career is available at www.Alessandramarc.com.

Alessandra Marc’s heritage makes it doubly fitting that she sings this

program on the eve of Hanukkah, in which notice is made ofthe relationship between two great Americans ofJewish descent, Ernest Bloch and

Alfred Stieglitz. She is the daughter of Marek Borczuk, a Polish Jew from 

Lodz, who was a young boy when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. Fleeing

to the east, Marek and his family ended up in a labor camp in Siberia. At the

end ofthe war, he was allowed to immigrate to America, where his family

name was changed on Ellis Island to Borden. Within a year, he was drafted 

into the United States Army and stationed at an outpost in Berlin, where 

he served as a translator. He married a German woman, Edith Hiller, and 

returned to the United States at the end of his tour of duty with her and 

their infant daughter, Alessandra. The family’s intense interest in music

was passed on to Alessandra, who proved to have an exceptional singing

voice and the talent to develop a stellar opera and recital career.

STEPHEN ACKERT

Stephen Ackert has been head ofthe music department at the National

Gallery since 2004. In this capacity, he plans and presents the weekly

concerts for the public and presents lectures and lecture-recitals on subjects 

that bring together the visual arts and music. He is also an adjunct teacher 

of organ at Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria, Virginia.

A graduate of Oberlin College, Northwestern University, and the University

of Wisconsin, Ackert studied organ and harpsichord as a Fulbright scholar

in Frankfurt, Germany, where his teachers were Helmut Walcha and Maria

Jaeger-Jung. Ackert has performed organ and harpsichord recitals and 

presented lecture-recitals in many ofWashington, DC’s premier venues,

including the Austrian and German Embassies, the Kennedy Center, the

National Cathedral, and the National Shrine ofthe Immaculate Conception.

In 1999 he was a featured performer in the renowned “Thuringer Orgelsommer” recital series, playing on six historic instruments in Thuringia,

and in 2007 he returned to Germany for his eighth recital tour of historic 

concert halls and churches in that country. Ackert has served three Washington area churches as organist and director of music: St. Margaret’s Episcopal

Church (Washington, DC), The Falls Church (Falls Church, Virginia), and

The United Church (formerly Concordia Church, Washington’s first Germanlanguage congregation). At the United Church, he founded a series ofBach

concerts that continued for thirteen years, included more than forty concerts,

and developed a loyal following ofBach enthusiasts.

DINGWALL FLEARY

Dingwall Fleary is the conductor ofThe McLean Symphony Orchestra, a

post he has held since the orchestra’s inception in 1972. Highly regarded

for his musicianship, he has distinguished himself as a conductor, pianist, 

harpsichordist, organist, and chamber musician. He has performed extensively throughout the greater Washington, DC, area.

A native of St. Louis, he is a graduate ofthe University of Kansas,

Lawrence, and the School of Music at Northwestern University in Evanston,

Illinois. Prior to moving to Northern Virginia in 1969, he taught music at

Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Fleary is respected for the ease

and natural ability with which he is able to lead choral ensembles of all sizes.

As a pianist, he has had the distinction ofserving as accompanist to many

performers, including operatic personalities Robert McFerrin and Grace

Bumbry and song stylists Beverly Cosham and Nancy Wilson. He created 

and performs as pianist and narrator in a production titled The Measure of

a Man: The Life ofPaul Robeson—History through Words and Music. First

presented at the National Archives in 1987, the program has been heard in

schools, universities, and various other venues throughout the country.

9
He has appeared as a guest conductor with the principal orchestras of

Baltimore, Buffalo, Forth Worth, St. Louis, and many regional, collegiate, 

and community groups. He has participated in the Salzburg and Vienna

Mozart Festivals in Austria, and during the summer of 2006 was a guest

conductor and organist with the Finger Lakes Choral Festival in upstate

New York.

Fleary has received awards from the American Society ofComposers,

Authors and Publishers (ascap), the McLean Citizen’s Association, and the

Northern Virginia chapter ofthe National Urban League, and was the first

recipient ofthe McLean Community Center Arts Award. In May 2006 the

Virginia General Assembly and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors

recognized him for his musical leadership in Northern Virginia and for his

ten years ofservice as conductor ofthe Reston Community Orchestra, a

position he holds concurrently with that ofThe McLean Symphony. He is

also the director ofmusic and organist at the Emmanuel Lutheran Church,

in Bethesda, Maryland.

DANIELLE DESWERT

Brussels-born pianist Danielle DeSwert is a freelance collaborative pianist and

coach and the music program specialist at the National Gallery ofArt. She

has worked as a pianist and coach with the Ash Lawn Highland Opera Festival,

Chautauqua Opera, Indianapolis Opera, Kentucky Opera, the New Orleans

Opera Association, Portland (Oregon) Opera, Sarasota Opera, and the Washington National Opera. She was the rehearsal and performance pianist on two

Western Opera Theater tours, formerly part ofthe San Francisco Opera Center.

In the fall of 2003, DeSwert did all musical preparation for a world premiere

opera presented by the New Orleans Opera Association. She worked closely

with composer Thea Musgrave, who wrote the opera to commemorate the

bi-centennial ofthe Louisiana Purchase. From 2004 to 2006 she was the

principal repetiteur with the Baltimore Opera Company and Washington

Concert Opera.

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She performs regularly in chamber music and voice recitals, including

performances at the Arts Club ofWashington, the Jewish Community

Center of Greater Washington, the Kennedy Center, the Mexican Institute of

Culture, the National Gallery, the Russian Embassy, and the White House.

She is principal pianist with the Inscape Chamber Music Project and a

member ofthe National Gallery’s resident piano trio. She holds a master

ofmusic degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she

studied with Martin Katz, and a bachelor ofmusic degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She also studied with Warren Jones and

Anne Epperson at the Music Academy of the West and was an apprentice

coach with the Washington Opera, working with Placido Domingo.

LAWRENCE P. SCHRIEBER

Organist, choirmaster, composer, recitalist, and teacher Lawrence P. Schreiber

is a graduate ofthe School of Sacred Music of Union Theological Seminary in

New York City. He served as minister ofmusic ofthe National City Christian

Church in Washington, dc, from 1960-2000. In his tenure he oversaw the

installation of a renowned organ ofmore than 7,000 pipes—the city’s only

instrument with a five-manual console—and presented scores ofrecitalists

from around the world.

In 1973 Schreiber’s choir and Leontyne Price sang for the televised state

funeral of President Lyndon Johnson at the National City Christian Church.

In October 2000, Schreiber was invited to serve in “interim” minister of

music at First Baptist Church ofthe City ofWashington, dc, where he

continues to serve.

Since 2000, Schreiber has performed recitals in numerous venues,

including the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt

Lake City, the National City Christian Church, where he is the organist

emeritus, and Saint Thomas Church in New York City. In “semi-retirement”

Schreiber is an active composer, an avid world traveler, and an addicted

crossword enthusiast.

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Program Notes

An important exhibition ofblack-and-white landscape photographs, Oceans,

Rivers, and Skies: Ansel Adams, Robert Adams, and Alfred Stieglitz, is currently

on view in the ground floor galleries ofthe West Building. It includes Stieglitz’s Music: A Sequence ofTen Cloud Photographs, which was last seen in its

entirety in 1923. When Stieglitz mounted the exhibition that year, he arranged

the photographs by theme, variation, and recapitulation, as in a symphonic

score. A year earlier, he showed the photographs to his friend Ernest Bloch,

and reported later that, upon seeing them, the composer exclaimed: “Music!

Music! Man, why that is music! How did you ever do that?”

A month after the meeting with Bloch, Stieglitz wrote him a thank-you

letter, dated July 1,1922: “My Dear Mr. Bloch: Have you any idea how much

it meant to me to have you feel about those photographs as you did. To have 

you see in them what you do. And to know that what you express I understand and feel is true.”

Bloch and Stiegltiz had a strong spiritual kinship. They identified with 

each other’s struggles and sense of artistic isolation in the world ofthe

machine. Bloch was obsessed with photography as a hobby, which helps

explain his enthusiasm for and understanding of Stieglitz’s Music: A Sequence

ofCloud Photographs. Bloch made more than 5,000 negatives between 1897

and 1940—self-portraits, pictures ofthe peasants he loved, the landscapes

on his many hikes in his native Switzerland, and his family and friends.

His work shows a sensitive “composer’s eye.” His collection, discovered and

printed in the 1970s by Eric Johnson, professor of art and design at Cal Poly

State University in San Luis Obispo, California, is now housed at the Center

for Creative Photography at the University ofArizona in Tucson.

Ernest Bloch began his musical studies in Geneva, Switzerland, where he

was bom. In 1918 he was invited to teach in New York at the Mannes School

of Music. Two years later, he accepted an appointment as director ofthe newly 

established Cleveland Institute of Music. In 1924 he became an American

citizen and was appointed head ofthe San Francisco Conservatory. Bloch was

highly honored during his lifetime, but after his death much ofhis music was

12

forgotten. Some music historians attribute this in part to the fact that he

enthusiastically proclaimed himself as a Jewish composer, and composing

in the context of an ethnic heritage fell out offavor in the 1960s and 1970s.

An ardent effort toward the rediscovery ofhis works began as the end ofthe

twentieth century approached, and in 2009 there will be worldwide focus 

on his music on the occasion ofthe fiftieth anniversary ofhis death.

Bloch’s Concerto Grosso no. lfor String Orchestra with Piano Obbligato

was written and premiered in 1925. The work was Bloch’s response to a neoclassical movement that sprang up in the 1920s, mostly due to the stimulus

provided by Igor Stravinsky’s (1882-1971) radical turn to neoclassical style

with his Les Noces (1923) and Pulcinella Suite (1922). Bloch does not, in fact,

copy the classical format ofthe concerto grosso—passing musical material

back and forth between a large orchestra (called the ripieno) and a smaller

ensemble (the concertino). Rather, he scores it for an orchestra ofstrings

alone, with an obbligato part for the piano, which, with a stretch ofthe

imagination, could be considered the concertino. In fact, the piano mostly

doubles the strings, adding some occasional creative embellishments.

Cast in four movements, the piece has an air oflate romanticism, while

at the same time evoking Jewish folk tunes and harmonies. The first movement, Prelude, is the shortest. Its strong rhythms and powerful chords are 

reminiscent ofsome ofthe music composed for epic biblical films. The

strings introduce the second movement, Dirge, which, in a subtle way, uses

thematic material from the first movement. The third movement, Pastorale

and Rustic Dances, begins with a peaceful strain stated by a solo viola, and

continues with a sequence of colorful dances that appear to have an English

flavor, but which Bloch insisted were based on Swiss folk tunes. The final

section, the spirited Fugue, builds on the theme by introducing it in the

lower strings and dividing each string section into two or three groups as

the theme is reiterated. The fugue is baroque in structure, but, because of

the modem approach taken by the composer, it rises to a level of excitement

that is more typical ofromantic or contemporary music.

Notes on Stieglitz and Bloch by Eric Johnson

Notes on Bloch: Concerto no. 1 by Dingwall Fleary

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The Sixty-seventh Season ofConcerts

at the National Gallery ofArt

December 2008-January 2009

All concerts in the West Building, West Garden Court*

DECEMBER JANUARY

28 National Gallery Orchestra 4 National Gallery String Quartet

Manfred Knoop, guest conductor with Menahem Pressler, pianist

New Year Concert Music by Mozart and Schumann

11 Ma’alot Wind Quintet

Music by Barber, Ligeti,

Mendelssohn, and Piazzolla.

Presented in conjunction with

the Mendelssohn on the Mall

anniversary celebration

* Preceded at 6:00 pm by a

preconcert talk on Mendelssohn

and the visual arts

West Building Lecture Hall

18 National Gallery Orchestra

Kenneth Slowik, guest conductor

Music by Mendelssohn and Schubert.

Presented in conjunction with

Mendelssohn on the Mall

25 Fine Arts Quartet

String Quartets by Mendelssohn

Presented in conjunction with

Mendelssohn on the Mall

* unless otherwise indicated

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