For the convenience of concertgoers 

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:00 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 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-eighth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,755th Concert

Tine Thing Helseth, trumpeter

Steffen Horn, pianist

Presented in cooperation with the Royal Norwegian Embassy

and Norwegian Christmas at Union Station

December 13, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959)

Sonatinefor Trumpet and Piano (1956)

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Piece enform de Habanera (1907)

George Enescu (1881-1955)

Legende (1906)

INTERMISSION

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)

Waltz in C-sharp Major, op. 64, no. 2 (1846-1847)

Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)

From Sldtter, op. 72 (1902-1903)

Haugelat

Harald Saeverud (1897-1992)

Rondo Amoroso, op, 14 (1943)

Kjempevise-slatten, op. 22 (1943)

Stanley Friedman (b. 1951)

From Solus for solo trumpet (1975)

No. 4: Fanfare
Haugtussa, op. 67 (1895)

Det Syng (It sings)

Veslemoy (Veslemoy)

Blabaer-li (Blueberry Hill)

Mote (Meeting)

Elsk (Love)

Killingdans (Lambs Dance)

Vond Dag (Bad Day)

Ved Gjaetle-Bekken (At the Gjaetle Brook)

Manuel de Falla (1876-1946)

Siete Canciones populares espanolas (1914)

El pano moruno (The Moorish Panorama)

Seguidilla murciana (Dance from Murcia)

Asturiana (Memories ofAsturia)

Jota (Spanish Dance)

Nana (Nanny)

Cancion (Song)

Polo

The Musicians

TINE THING HELSETH

Born in 1987, Tine Thing Helseth began to play the trumpet at age seven

and is now one ofthe leading soloists of her generation. Helseth has appeared

as concerto soloist with various orchestras including Camerata Nordica, 

Cappella Cracowiensis, Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, the Shanghai

Symphony Orchestra, the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland Pfalz, the Vienna

Chamber Orchestra, the Wiener Symphoniker, and the Ziircher Kammerorchester as well as all the major Norwegian symphony orchestras. A 2009

Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship winner, Helseth currendy studies in Oslo 

with Arnulf Naur Nilsen.

In 2007 Helseth’s debut album oftrumpet concertos by Albinoni, Haydn, 

Hummel, and Neruda received excellent reviews. That same year Helseth

was named “Newcomer ofthe Year” in every genre at the Norwegian Grammy

Awards, the first classical performer ever to be nominated. In 2006 she was 

awarded second prize in the Eurovision Young Musicians Competition in

Vienna. The same year she received the prestigious Prince Eugen’s Culture

Prize in Stockholm, awarded by Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden; the Norwegian Soloists Prize; and was named the Norwegian Broadcasting Soloist 

ofthe Year. In 2005 she was appointed Musician ofthe Year in Norway.

Helseth has appeared at Bergen International Festival, Festspiele

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Risor Festival ofChamber Music, die

Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, and the Usedom Musikfestival. In 2007

she was awarded ’’the Luitpold Prize” as the most outstanding and interesting young artist ofthe year at the Kissinger Summer Festival.

An active advocate for classical music among the younger generations,

Helseth was recentiy named “Born to Play” Ambassador for The Norwegian

Band Federation. Helseth is also the artistic leader of die all-female ten-piece

ensemble tenThing Brassensemble.

5
STEFFEN HORN

Born in 1976 and raised on the west coast of Norway, Steffen Horn represents a new generation of pianists. He started playing the piano at age six,

and was a longtime student ofAstrid Ellingsen at the Haugesund Music 

School. In 1993 he won the Norwegian Youth Piano Championship, then

continued his studies with Jiri Hlinka. In 1996 Horn won second prize in

the Smetana International Piano Competition in the Czech Republic. He

continued his studies at the Barratt Due Institute of Music in Oslo, where

he received the soloist diploma with honors in 2002.

Horn has given concerts in Angola, China, the Czech Republic, Egypt,

Germany, Iran, Italy, Norway, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, and Venezuela. In

2002 he gave his debut performance at Oslo University and his London debut

in Wigmore Hall. Both engagements received enthusiastic ovations from

the audience and the press. He has performed as a soloist with the Cairo 

Symphony Orchestra, the Hradec Kralove Philharmonic Orchestra in the

Czech Republic, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, the Orchestra Simon Bolivar

in Venezuela, the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Stavanger Symphony

Orchestra. Horn has collaborated with conductors Stephan Barratt-Due, Ingar

Bergby, Rolf Gupta, Terje Boye Hansen, Susanna Malkki, Alfredo Rugeles, 

and Kjell Seim.

Since 2000 Horn has been one ofthe Norwegian “Statoil Musicians,”

a sponsorship title shared by Norwegian world class artists Truls Mork and

Leif Ove Andsnes. In 2007 Horn released his fifth cd, konsert, on the

Norwegian label El to international acclaim, and garnered comparisons to

the recordings of Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels, two ofthe greatest

pianists ofthe twentieth century.

Tine Thing Helseth and Steffen Horn appear at the National Gallery by

arrangement with Pro Arte International Management of Bergen, Nomay.

6

Program Notes

One ofthe more prolific composers ofthe twentieth century, Bohuslav

Martinu has a distinct and almost immediately recognizable style. His highly

individual personal voice can be attributed largely to the fact that his first

twelve years were spent living with his family in a tower high above the

Bohemian city of Policka. Despite this isolation—his father was a cobbler,

fire-watcher, and bell-ringer—he showed early musical talent and in 1906

the local community raised funds to send him to the conservatory in Prague.

Not suited to academic life, Martinu did poorly in his studies and was 

repeatedly suspended for bad attendance, but he took great advantage ofthe

cultural opportunities surrounding him in Prague and continued to learn on

his own. Eventually he made his mark as a violinist, and while on tour with

the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in Geneva, London, and Paris, he began

to explore his compositional abilities.

Composed in 1956, the Sonatinafor Trumpet and Piano, came into being

while Martinu was living in the United States. The single-movement work

draws upon Stravinsky’s neoclassicism as well as the jazz rhythms Martinu

encountered frequentiy in New York.

Maurice Ravel, whose mother was from the Basque region, had a lifelong fascination with Spanish music and culture. He frequently used Spanish

forms in his compositions, as he did when he wrote the Piece enform de

Habanera. Originally composed as a vocalise, or song without words, for voice

and piano, it is replete with scales, trills, and has a challenging piano accompaniment. It proved valuable to many performers as a virtuosic etude, and

was soon transcribed by Ravel for cello and piano. Since his death other

composers have transcribed it for almost every instrument.

Romanian composer George Enescu began his musical life as a child

prodigy violinist. At age fourteen, after earning the silver medal from the

Vienna Conservatory, he went to Paris to continue his violin studies and

study composition with Jules Massenet (1842-1912) and Gabriel Faure

(1845-1924). The works for which he is best known are his two Romanian

Rhapsodies, based on folk songs from his homeland, but his compositional

7
style was always influenced by his years in Paris. Legende holds an important

place in the somewhat limited solo trumpet repertoire, as a piece that allows

the trumpeter to showcase both the lyrical and technical capabilities ofthe 

instrument. It was dedicated to and premiered by Merri Franquin (1848-

1934), a professor of cornet at the Paris Conservatoire, who worked to introduce the trumpet and the cornet as more soloistic, chromatic instruments.

Chopin’s Waltzes, op. 64, ofwhich there are three, were some ofthe last 

pieces he composed before his illness made it impossible for him to continue his work. These pieces, though titled Waltzes, are too short to be

considered danceable, and are actually character pieces in the form of a

waltz. The Waltz in C-sharp Major, op. 64, no. 2, written in ABA form, 

contains perhaps the most melancholy of all melodies written by Chopin.

Grieg’s Slatter, op. 72, is based on a group ofseventeen Norwegian peasant dance tunes, which were part ofthe repertoire ofthe famed Hardanger

fiddle player, Knut Dale (1849-1909). At the request of Dale, Grieg transcribed the dance tunes for piano in 1902-1903. 0ystein Sommerfeldt (1919-

1994) orchestrated three ofthe dances in 1979, emphasizing the folk element

and utilizing the tambourine to bring out the dance rhythms.

Harald Saeverud, the most prolific and well-known Norwegian composer

since Grieg, studied piano and harmony at the Musical Academy in Bergen,

and published his first piece in 1919. The following year he attended the

Berliner Hochschule fiir Musik, where he studied under Friedrich Ernst 

Koch and Clemens Kraus, after which he returned to Bergen and earned his

living playing the piano and teaching. The works that he composed at this 

time showed the influence of Brahms and Bruckner, but by 1943, when

Saeverud composed the works included in this program, he had begun to

experiment with other musical styles. After the Nazi invasion of Norway,

Saeverud was driven to begin composing music that was characteristically

Norwegian, with works such as Shepherd's Tune Variations, Festa campestre

and Sinfonia dolorosa. In 1952 Saeverud was inducted into the Swedish

Musical Society, and in 1957 he was granted knighthood in the Order of

Saint Olaf, first-class.

Composer, performer, and conductor Stanley Friedman’s works have

been performed by l’Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, the Los Angeles

Philharmonic Chamber Music Society, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, 

and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra as well as major soloists in 

festivals around the world. Widely known for his music for brass, Friedman 

has won awards and commissions from the International Trumpet Guild,

the International Florn Society, and the International Trombone Association

as well as commissions from leading soloists and ensembles. His Solus for

unaccompanied trumpet has been designated required contemporary repertoire for solo competitions in Munich, Germany and Toulon, France. A recipient ofthe doctor ofmusical arts degree in composition from the Eastman

School of Music, Friedman has held faculty positions at universities around

the world. From 1998 to 2001 Friedman taught at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan.

Grieg was almost as prolific as a composer ofsongs as he was of piano 

music. He wrote many songs for solo voice and piano for his wife, Nina. He

considered her to be the best interpreter of his vocal music, and they toured

extensively together. His songs are almost always strophic in form, with simple yet lyrical melodies. In later years, he began to experiment more with 

piano accompaniment, including longer interludes and new harmonies. Grieg

spent the summer of 1895 writing most ofthe pieces that comprise the song

cycle based on Arne Garborg’s (1851-1924) epic poem Haugtussa. Grieg was

thoroughly enchanted when he first read the poetry, which impressed him as

“a sea of unborn music.” Five ofthe eight published songs were orchestrated

by Sparre Olsen (1903-1984). The songs tell of a young shepherdess’ first 

encounter with love and describe the landscape and people ofwestern Norway.

Widely considered the most distinguished Spanish music ofthe early

twentieth century, Manuel de Falla’s output was small but rich in content. 

Most of his music was geared for the stage, and his style is difficult to pinpoint. His earliest influences came from Spanish folk music, Renaissance 

Spanish church music, and early Spanish opera. In 1907 he went to Paris

and became enchanted by Debussy, Ravel, and Dukas’ use of impressionism.

9
Returning to Madrid in 1914, Falla worked to apply the things he had heard

in France to the Spanish idiom. In addition, he had become fascinated by

harmonic studies, in the course ofwhich he developed theories about the

ineffectiveness of classical harmonic structure in folk music. It was during

this time that he composed his Siete Canciones populares espanolas, in which

he tried to capture various folk styles and sounds. The songs were premiered

in 1915, with the composer at the piano. The composer Ernesto Halffter (1905-

1989) subsequently orchestrated the pieces, and they have since been transcribed for many combinations ofinstruments.

Program notes by Danielle DeSwert Hahn

Upcoming Concerts at the National Gallery ofArt

National Gallery of Art Vocal Ensemble

and

National Gallery ofArt Chamber Players

Christmas Concert

Music by Johann Sebastian Bach

and Michael Praetorius

December 20, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

CX3

Sharon Isbin, guitarist

Music by Albeniz, Granados,

Tarrega, and other composers

December 27, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court