Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, dc

Mailing address

2000B South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-third Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,518th Concert

Mendelssohn Piano Trio

Peter Sirotin, violin

Fiona Thompson, cello

Ya-Ting Chang, piano

9 January 2005 

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission free
For the convenience of concertgoers

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:oo pm.

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 after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

2,518th Concert

9 January 2005, 6:30 pm

Tom Benjamin (b. 1940)

Aperitiffor Piano Trio (1983)

Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Piano Trio No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 67 (1944)

Andante

Allegro non troppo

Largo

Allegretto

INTERMISSION

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 97 (“Archduke”) (1810-1811)

Allegro moderato

Scherzo; allegro

Andante cantabile, ma pero con moto

Allegro moderato
The Musicians

The Mendelssohn Piano Trio was bom in 1997, when three ofthe most

talented students in the chamber music class of violinist Earl Carlyss and

pianist Ann Schein decided to form a chamber ensemble, naming it after a

nineteenth-century composer each ofthem admired greatly. Since then, the

trio has developed a growing and loyal audience and performed repertoire

from all periods in which piano trios have been written. The membership of

the trio proves the adage that music transcends national boundaries: Peter 

Sirotin was born in Ukraine, Fiona Thompson is from England, and pianist

Ya-Ting Chang is from Taiwan, yet their ensemble playing has repeatedly

drawn praise for its homogeneity. Reviews of Mendelssohn Piano Trio concerts in the Washington Post and Fanfare Magazine describe performances as

“unfathomably beautiful,” “transcendent,” and “electrifying.” In 2002 Post

music critic Cecelia Porter wrote, “[The Mendelssohn Piano Trio is] one 

ofthe more recent stars adding radiance to today’s constellation of chamber

music ensembles.”

The trio members are artists-in-residence at Messiah College in

Grantham, Pennsylvania, and appear frequently in Washington as the

resident ensemble ofthe Embassy Series. Recently they toured Taiwan,

where their performance in the National Concert Hall in Taipei was broadcast on Taiwanese public television. The ensemble has also presented

the complete Beethoven trios as a cycle in Portugal. With one CD already 

completed and released (piano trios by Sergei Tanayev on the Centaur

label), the Mendelssohn Piano Trio looks forward to the release ofits

second CD, which will feature trios by Karl Goldmark.

Each member ofthe Mendelssohn Piano Trio has enjoyed a diversified 

career as a soloist in his or her own right. Violinist Peter Sirotin has studied

and worked with a veritable who’s who of Russian chamber musicians in the

late twentieth century, including Natalia Gutman, Alexander Rudin, Alexei

Lubimov, Yuri Bashmet, Igor Zhukov, and the members ofthe Borodin String

4

Quartet. Sirotin played his debut with the Kharkov Philharmonic Orchestra

at age fourteen while still a student at Moscow’s prestigious Central Music 

School, from which he graduated with honors in 1991 at age eighteen.

He was immediately accepted as a member ofthe Moscow Soloists Chamber

Orchestra, becoming the youngest member ofthat world-renowned ensemble. Later he continued his studies at the Moscow State Conservatory and

the Peabody Institute ofthe Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In addition to his charter membership in the Mendelssohn Piano Trio, Sirotin

founded the Razumovsky String Quartet and is associate concertmaster of

the Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Symphony Orchestra.

Cellist Fiona Thompson began studying her instrument in her native

England at age seven. Her rigorous music education included studies with

Leonid Grokov and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester

and at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She is the principal cellist ofthe Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra and the Metropolitan

Chamber Orchestra and has appeared in chamber music concerts at the

National Gallery, the Phillips Collection, the Penn Alps Music Festival, and

the Spoleto usa Music Festival in Charleston.

Pianist Ya-Ting Chang rose to national prominence in her native Taiwan 

when she won the 1987 Taiwan National Piano Competition. As a participant

in Taiwan’s Gifted Children’s Program, in 1988 she was sent to the United

States to study piano with Enrique Graf and flute with Gail Cameron and

Bonnie Lake. She received a scholarship for study at the Peabody Institute,

where her teacher was Ann Schein. Chang has performed extensively

throughout the United States and Germany as well as Asia, where she undertook tours with the Hong Kong Chamber Orchestra, the Tung Hsin Choir

Society, and the Mendelssohn Piano Trio. She has taught piano as a member

ofthe faculty of Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, Maryland.

5
Program Notes

Composer Tom Benjamin, a native of Bennington, Vermont, received

degrees in composition from Bard College, Harvard University, Brandeis

University, and the Eastman School of Music. His teachers were Leon

Kirchner, Carlos Surinach, Ernst Krenelc, Arthur Berger, and Bernard 

Rogers. More than sixty of Benjamin’s works have been published; they

include concertos for violin, piano, and viola; symphonies; oratorios;

cantatas; and six operas. He is the author oftwo books on counterpoint

and the coauthor ofthree music theory texts. The many awards and commissions he has received include grants from the National Endowment

for the Arts, the American Society of Composers and Publishers, Meetthe-Composer, and the Barlow Foundation. Active as a clarinetist and 

choral conductor, Benjamin has taught at the National Music Camp in

Interlochen, Michigan, the University of Houston, and the Peabody

Institute, where he was chair ofthe music theory department. His lighthearted piano trio, Aperitif, was commissioned by the Mirecourt Trio.

Intended as a concert opener, it displays both the virtuoso and the 

expressive possibilities ofthe three instruments. The structure resembles

a rondo and the musical language is frankly tonal.

Dmitry Shostakovich’s second piano trio has been alternately described

as his most tragic and his wittiest work. But this musical paradox merits

both descriptions. Strikingly brilliant passages are suddenly and sarcastically

fragmented by the composer, with jarring effect on the listener. Dedicated

to Iwan Sollertinski, Shostakovich's close friend who died in a Soviet work

camp, the trio is a vehement censure oftotalitarianism and violence. An

especially poignant symbol is presented in the final movement, when a

rustic Jewish tune is almost swept away by a rush of cacophony.

6

Often acclaimed as the greatest work in its genre, Beethoven’s Piano

Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 97, was dedicated to Archduke Rudolph of Austria

(1788-1831), a pianist and composer in his own right and one of Beethoven’s

pupils. Beethoven held the archduke in high esteem and dedicated eleven

works to him, including the monumental Fifth Piano Concerto.(“ Emperor”)

and the opera Fidelio. Eschewing the convention of an introduction,

Beethoven plunges directly into the majestic first theme ofthe work, powered by a pulsating eighth-note accompaniment. The second theme is

presented in the key of G major, a very distant relative ofthe home key of Bflat major, a radical departure for Beethoven, and an indication that he has

remarkable things to say in this work. The second movement is a scherzo,

recognizable not only in its repetition pattern but also in the skittishness of

its themes. The traditional lightheartedness ofthe scherzo is modified here

by the introduction ofirregular key changes and heated chromaticism. The 

third movement represents an apotheosis of music in the theme and variations form. Here the variations do not merely decorate or comment upon

the theme; rather, each variation in this movement is part of a single musical 

thought that gains energy and grandeur as it progresses, culminating in an 

extended coda that is much more than a final variation. The last movement

dances fiendishly to a whirlwind conclusion, marked presto.