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Music Department

National Gallery of Art

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The Seventy-first Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,942nd Concert

Katherine Chi, pianist

April 28, 2013

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Toccata in G Major, bwv 916 (c. 1710)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Sonata no. 27 in E Minor, op. 90 (1814)

Mit Lebhaftigkeit und durchaus mit

Empfindung und Ausdruck 

Nicht zu geschwind und sehr singbar vorgetragen

Richard Wagner (1813-1883)

Schmachtend (Elegy for Piano) (c. 1858)

Johann Strauss Jr. (1825-1899)/Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938)

Symphonic Metamorphosis ofThemes from Die Fledermaus (1912)

INTERMISSION

John Mallia (b. 1968)

Distaff(2012)

World premiere performance

Maurice Ravel (1835-1937)

Le Tomheau de Couperin (1914-1917)

Prelude

Fugue

Forlane

Rigaudon

Menuet

Toccata

The Musician

KATHERINE CHI

Firmly established as one of Canada’s fastest-rising musical stars, pianist

Katherine Chi has performed throughout Europe and North America to

great acclaim. The New York Times praised her New York recital debut, citing

her “keen musical intelligence and a powerful arsenal oftechnique.” Among 

her recent and upcoming performances are concerto appearances with the 

symphony orchestras of Huntsville, Alabama; Calgary, Alberta; Richmond, 

Virginia; and San Antonio, Texas as well as the Calgary Philharmonic,

Edmonton Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestras. Festivals at which she

has appeared include the Aldeburgh, Banff, Domaine Forget, Launadiere, 

Marlboro, Osnabriick Kammermusik, Ruhr, Santander Summer, and

Vancouver music festivals as well as Canada’s Festival ofthe Sound.

Noted for the breadth of her repertoire, Chi has received critical acclaim

for her interpretations of Mozart and piano concertos by twentieth-century

composers. After a recent appearance in Toronto, the Globe and Mail praised

her performance as “... the most sensational but, better, the most unfailingly cogent and compelling Prokofiev’s Third I have heard in years.”

One year after Chi’s debut recital at age nine, she was enrolled at the 

Curtis Institute of Music. She continued studies with Russell Sherman and 

Wha Kyung Byun at the New England Conservatory in Boston; the International Piano Foundation in Como, Italy; and the Hochschule fur Musik in

Cologne, Germany. Other teachers include Seymour Lipkin, Galina Eguiazarova, and Wassily Lobanov. A prizewinner at the 1998 Busoni International

Piano Competition, Chi was the first Canadian and the first woman to win

Canada’s Honens International Piano Competition. Her debut recording on

the Arktos label features works by Beethoven and Rachmaninoff. Katherine 

Chi appears at the National Gallery ofArt by arrangement with Jonathan

Wentworth Associates, Ltd, www.jwentworth.com.

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Program Notes

Johann Sebastian Bach’s set ofseven Toccatas for keyboard date from 

1707-1711, just prior to and during the first years of his post as organist at

the ducal court in Weimar. During those formative years, he experimented

with a wide variety of compositional models. In addition to French genres, 

such as the dance suite, he took great interest in Italian baroque forms, 

among them the toccata and the concerto. His Toccata in G Major, bwv 916,

draws its improvisatory character from the former Italian genre and its

three-movement structure—unique among his toccatas—from the latter.

Composed during the summer of 1814, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no. 27

in E Minor falls into his heroic middle period, but it also looks forward to the 

contemplative music of his later years. Returning to writing for the piano 

after a five-year hiatus, the composer can be seen looking ahead to his last 

group ofmasterpieces, written between 1816 and 1822 (Opp. 101,106,109,

no, and 111). This work is one of a handful ofsonatas Beethoven composed 

with only two movements, instead ofthe typical three, and in which the 

tempo indications are written in German, as opposed to the more common

Italian ones.

The first movement, marked “Mit Lebhaftigkeit und durchaus mit

Empfindung und Ausdruck” (“With liveliness and feeling and expression 

throughout”), features taut sonata form. It begins emphatically in the key

of E minor, restless and agitated, but finds itselfin the dominant minor

by the first cadence and then in the relative major at the start ofthe next

phrase. The movement’s second theme shifts to the key of B minor. Initially

concerned with the first theme’s motif, the brief development channels the 

second theme’s energy in approaching the recapitulation. Both the exposition and the coda ofthis movement fade gently away.

The second and final movement, a rondo with the indication “Nicht zu 

geschwind und sehr singbar vorgetragen” (“Not too fast; singing”), begins 

with a cantabilc melody offolk-like charm. Gentle and jovial, the movement

by and large conveys feeling of contentment, though fleeting shadows

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return with touches ofthe minor key. Toward the end, the agitation ofthe 

first movement returns briefly, just before the final statement ofthe rondo’s

refrain.

May 22, 2013, marks the 200th anniversary ofRichard Wagner’s birth.

Known best for his grand-scale operas, including the Ring Cycle, he is one of

the most studied, written-about, and influential composers ofthe nineteenth

century. An entry in the diary ofCosima Wagner (9 February 1883) suggests

that Wagner rediscovered the melodic fragment on which Schmachtend (Elegy

for Piano) is based after having forgotten it for twenty-five years. The title,

which in English would be Languishing, suggests the mood ofthe melody,

which the composer had intended for inclusion in the title page ofthe score

for his opera Parsifal. The evocative fragment was made famous by the Italian

orchestrator Franco Mannino (1924-2005), who made profuse use ofit in the

soundtrack he composed for Luchino Visconti’s film Ludwig (1972).

Polish-American pianist, composer, and teacher Leopold Godowsky was

best known for his transcriptions of other composers’ works. In this tenminute fantasy of melodies from Johann Strauss Jr.’s Die Lledermaus,

Godowsky superimposes several melodies upon one another, rather than

merely creating a medley. The outcome is a very difficult score, meant to

show offthe skills of a flashy virtuoso. A sinister opening section toys with

the rhythm from the operetta’s Act 1 trio (also famous as the zestiest part

ofthe overture), pulling it from the somber depths ofthe keyboard up to

its glittering upper reaches. Godowsky proceeds to present themes in more

recognizable form, but steers them into odd new harmonies almost from 

phrase to phrase and disguises the melodies with ornamental figures and

intricate counter-themes. The writing becomes extravagantly contrapuntal

as Godowsky layers melody upon melody in a free fantasia. Adding to the 

music’s complexity is its rhapsodic nature, which requires a constant

pushing and pulling ofthe tempo (rubato), and luftpausen (pauses that

interrupt the beat and create a feeling ofsuspense).

Codirector ofthe Auros Group for New Music from 1992 to 1999, John

Mallia has produced more than seventy concerts of contemporary music in

New England and New York. His compositions for diverse instrumental,

vocal, and electronic forces have been performed internationally in Bulgaria,

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France, Germany, Greece, Spain, and The Netherlands. He has collaborated

with visual artists and poets on three multi-media installations: Bloodlines:

Remembering Smyrna, 1922 (with artists John Rexine and Annee Spileos Scott);

Summons (with poet Dana Dalton); and Sight, Sound, Synapse (with sculptor

Jacques Abelman, poet Dana Dalton, and neuroscientist Kara Pratt). Mallia’s

work has received special recognition from the Institut de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges’ International Competition of Electro-acoustic

Music and Sonic Art, the Luigi Russolo Competition, and the Boston Microtonal Society’s annual award for the creation ofmicrotonal music.

Though he desperately wanted to fight for his country in the First World

War, Maurice Ravel’s lifelong frailty prevented him from serving in the

infantry. He was nevertheless able to enlist as a truck driver for the Thirteenth Artillery Regiment. When he returned from the front in 1917 to

recover from injuries, he completed a piano suite he had begun before the 

war, originally intended to be a suite of French pieces modeled after baroque

dance suites, Le Tombeau de Couperin. “Tombeau” as a musical term had

been used by Couperin himselfto indicate a memorial piece. In Ravel’s case,

each movement in the suite is dedicated to a fallen soldier:

Prelude: “To the memory of Lieutenant Jacques Chariot” (who transcribed Ravel’s four-hand piece Ma Mere l’oye for solo piano);

Fugue: “To the memory ofJean Cruppi” (to whose mother Ravel

dedicated his opera I’Heure espagnole);

Forlane: “To the memory of Lieutenant Gabriel Deluc” (a Basque

painter from Saint-Jean-de-Luz);

Rigaudon: “To the memory ofPierre and Pascal Gaudin” (brothers 

killed by the same shell);

Menuet: “To the memory ofJean Dreyfus” (at whose home Ravel

recuperated after he was discharged);

Toccata: “To the memory of Captain Joseph de Marliave” (a French

musicologist who was killed in 1914, just a few weeks after the onset

ofthe war).

Program notes by Danielle DeSwert Hahn, music program specialist,

National Gallery ofArt

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Upcoming Concerts at the National Gallery ofArt

Ignacio Prego, harpsichordist

Music by Frescobaldi, Scarlatti, and Spanish composers

Presented in collaboration with the Delegation of

the European Union to the United States

May 1, 2013

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

National Gallery Orchestra

Paul Badura-Skoda, pianist and guest conductor

Music by Mozart

Presented in collaboration with the Delegation of

the European Union to the United States

This concert is the fifth in a series of chamber music

concerts made possible by support from 

The Gottesman Fund in memory of Milton M. Gottesman.

May 5, 2013

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court