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 phone

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

unmv.nga.gov

The Sixty-ninth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,793rd Concert

Carlos Cesar Rodriguez, pianist

Presented in honor ofHispanic Heritage Month

September 26, 2010

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Stephen Ackert, head ofthe music department at the National Gallery 

ofArt, will provide commentary on Hispanic art in the Gallery’s

permanent collection.

Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947)

Lune

From Au claire de la lune, conte en musique (1891)

Jean-Antoine Watteau

From Portraits de peintres, after poems by Marcel Proust (1894)

Etude no. 1 in A-flat Major

From Deux etudes pour le piano (1927)

Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940)

Allegro,for Piano (1939)

Carlos Chavez (1899-1978)

Two Preludes from Diez preludios (1937)

No. 1: Andantino espressivo

No. 2: Allegro

Aurelio de la Vega (b. 1925)

The Magic Labyrinth (1975)

Manuel Ponce (1882-1948)

Balada mexicana (1923)
INTERMISSION

Manuel Sosa (b. 1967)

Geometria, 1

Espacioso-agitado

Intimo

Fantasioso

Washington Premiere Performance

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

El salon Mexico (1932-1936)

Arranged for piano by Leonard Bernstein

Mozart Camargo Guarnieri (1907-1993)

Dansa negra

Improvisacion sobre “Joropo” y “Alma Llanera”

(Improvisations by Carlos Cesar Rodriguez on themes by

Moises Moleiro and Pedro Elias Gutierrez)

The Musician

Acclaimed by The Washington Post as “a powerful pianist,” Carlos Cesar

Rodriguez has performed as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the 

United States, Europe, and Central and South America since his debut in

his native Venezuela at age eleven. He has appeared with the Alexandria

Symphony Orchestra, the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra, and the National

Symphony Orchestra. In addition to this recital—his second at the National

Gallery ofArt—Rodriguez has performed recitals at Carnegie Hall, Constitution Hall, the Corcoran Gallery ofArt, the Cultural Institute ofChicago,

the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Institution, and the White House. He

has also been heard in Salzburg, Austria; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and several

venues in Spain.

A faculty member at the Levine School of Music in Washington, DC,

Rodriguez is guest artist and coach for the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists

Program and artistic advisor for the In Series, where he directs zarzuela 

and opera productions. After completing a bachelor ofmusic degree in piano

at the North Carolina School ofthe Arts, where he studied with Clifton

Matthews, Rodriguez earned a master ofmusical arts degree from the Juilliard

School under Joseph Kalichstein. He studied privately in London with Peter

Feutchwenger and attended master classes at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.

He recently completed the doctorate ofmusical arts degree at the University

of Maryland, College Park, where he was a student ofThomas Schumacher. 

Carlos Cesar Rodriguez records for the Omicron and Brioso labels. Information about his recordings and upcoming performances is available at

www.creartists.net.

5
Program Notes

From the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, most ofthe art that

was produced in the Western Hemisphere was the work of people of Hispanic heritage, or Native Americans who had been trained or influenced

by Spanish artists. Throughout this period, religion provided the primary

stimulus for paintings and sculpture. This continued to be the case in

Hispanic art through the nineteenth century, whereas the primary interest

of European and North American artists moved to secular themes. In the

twentieth century, examples ofreligious art were still plentiful in Latin

American art, although this period also saw a penetration ofthe influence

of French Impressionist and Postimpressionist painters, especially in Mexico.

That century also saw the birth among Latin American artists ofsocial 

realism, Mexican muralism, and representations in art ofthe suffering

ofthe poor classes and social unrest. In addition to examples ofworks by

famous Latin American artists such as Frida Kahlo, Jose Clemente Orozco,

Fernando Garcia Ponce, and Diego Rivera, the National Gallery has in its

permanent collection works by Graciela Iturbide, Rufino Tamayo, Francisco

Toledo, and Marius de Zayas, among others.

Venezuelan-born Reynaldo Hahn was one ofmany turn-of-the-twentiethcentury musicians who were deeply influenced by the French symbolist

poets and Impressionist painters. In addition to music, he was deeply

involved with travel, painting, and literature. His circle offriends included

Sarah Bernhardt, Paul Cadmus, and Marcel Proust. Hahn’s compositions

are eclectic, drawing on such diverse sources as Mozart, Chabrier, and

Saint-Saens, but they apparently did not make an impression on his contemporaries Debussy, Milhaud, Poulenc, and Ravel, who wrote a great deal

about other composers’ music but nothing about Hahn’s. His songs have 

been performed with some frequency in concert at the National Gallery. His

Quintet in F-sharp Minorfor Piano and Strings was performed here in 2008

6

by the Parisii String Quartet in honor ofthe exhibition In the Forest of

Fontainebleau: Painters and Photographersfrom Corot to Monet. This evening

marks the first time that one of Hahn’s piano works has been included in

this concert series.

Carlos Chavez and Silvestre Revueltas, both born in 1899, were younger

contemporaries of Diego Rivera (1886-1957), and like many oftheir fellow 

Mexicans, revered him for his innovation and courage. Chavez was born to

a Creole family in Mexico City. He came from a long line of distinguished

Chavez ancestors, including a governor ofthe state ofAguascalientes who

was executed by Emperor Maximilian in 1864, as well as an inventor and a

pianist. The Chavez family often went on vacations to Tlaxcala, Michoacan,

Guanajuato, Oaxaca and other places where the cultural influence ofthe Aztec

and other indigenous peoples was still very strong. Carlos Chavez published

a cultural journal, Gladios, and wrote more than 500 articles for the Mexico

City newspaper El Universal. Silvestre Revueltas was a violinist and conductor as well as a composer whose family included two painters. In 1929 he

was invited by Carlos Chavez to become assistant conductor ofthe National

Symphony Orchestra in Mexico City, a post he held for six years. Revueltas 

and Chavez did much to promote contemporary Mexican music. Revueltas 

appeared briefly as a bar piano player in the film jVamonos con Pancho Villa!

(Mexico, 1935), for which he composed the music, and which gave him what

is perhaps his most enduring claim to fame. When shooting breaks out in

the bar while he is playing La Cucaracha, he holds up a sign reading “Se

suplica no tirarle al pianista” (Please don’t shoot at the piano player).

Aurelio de la Vega studied with Fritz Kramer in his native Havana, Cuba,

and with Ernst Toch in Los Angeles. He served as dean ofthe School of

Music at the University of Oriente, executive advisor to Cuba’s National

Institute ofCulture, vice president ofthe Havana Philharmonic Orchestra,

and president ofthe Cuban section ofthe International Society for Contemporary Music. His early works are postimpressionist. In the 1970s he experimented with graph scores, ofwhich The Magic Labyrinth is an example.

7
Manuel Ponce was one ofthe most prolific Mexican composers ofthe

twentieth century. He studied in Italy and Germany, before returning to

Mexico in 1909 to pursue his career as a composer, music educator, and

scholar of Mexican indigenous music. He is best known for a nostalgic song

that he wrote in 1912, Estrellita, which became so popular worldwide that in

earned him the title “father ofmodern Mexican song.” In his more serious

compositions, Ponce borrowed from the musical language of Liszt, Scriabin,

and Wagner.

Manuel Sosa is a member ofthe younger generation of Latin American

composers. Much in demand as a speaker and essayist on the subject of

music and art in South America, he has received commissions for new compositions from the dc Dance Theater, the Melton Foundation, the Minnesota Orchestra, the New Juilliard Ensemble, the New York Choreographic

Institute, and North/South Consonance, among others. Sosa has received 

fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Corporation of Yaddo,

the Juilliard School of Music, and the Van Lier Fund. Geometria, 1 is a personal investigation into the basic geometric principles ofpoint, line, and plane.

Aaron Copland enjoyed a lifelong fascination with the unique rhythm

and melodic turns of Hispanic music, which he knew mainly in examples

from Mexico. Moved to leftist political opinions by the Great Depression, he

befriended Carlos Chavez and visited Mexico at his urging in 1932, finding

inspiration in that country’s revolutionary government as well as in the

customs and music ofits people. In later years, Copland returned to Mexico

for extended working vacations. El salon Mexico, begun during his 1932

Mexican sojourn and completed in 1936, not only served to express his

delight with Hispanic culture but also brought him popular and critical 

acclaim for the first time.

8

Dansa negra is also the work of a non-Hispanic composer, Brazilian

Mozart Camargo Guarnieri. It is included in this program as a mutual salute

between the Spanish-speaking and Portuguese speaking peoples of South

America. Guarnieri studied piano and composition at the Sao Paulo Conservatorio and subsequently worked with Charles Koechlin in Paris. In the

1940s his compositions received important prizes in the United States, 

giving Guarnieri the opportunity to conduct them in New York, Boston,

Los Angeles, and Chicago. A distinguished figure ofthe Brazilian national

school, he served as conductor ofthe Sao Paulo Orchestra, member ofthe

Academia Brasileira de Musica, and director ofthe Sao Paulo Conservatorio,

where he taught composition and orchestral conducting. Guarnieri is

universally recognized as the most important Brazilian composer after

Heitor Villa-Lobos. Shortly before his death in 1993, he was awarded the

Gabriela Mistral Prize by the Organization ofAmerican States as the greatest contemporary composer ofthe Americas.

Program notes by Stephen Ackert

9
Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

Jasmine Choi, flutist

Music by J. S. Bach, Karg-Elert,

and Kuhnau

September 27, 2010

Monday afternoon, 12:10 and 2:00 pm

West Building, Gallery G-37

Duo Miller-Schmid

Music by for cello and piano by

Chopin, Schnittke, and Schumann

September 29, 2010

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

Weiss-Kaplan-Newman Trio

Music by Beethoven, Dvorak, and Newman

October 3, 2010

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court