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 of

the West Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

Music Department

National Gallery ofArt

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

www.nga.gov

cover: Edvard Munch, The Brooch (Eva Mudocci), 1903,

National Gallery ofArt, Washington, Gift ofthe Epstein Family Collection

The Sixty-ninth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,797th Concert

Hakon Austbo, pianist

Presented in honor of Edvard Munch: Master Prints

and in conjunction with “Norway Comes to Washington”

October 6, 2010 

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

Admissionfree
Program

Fartein Valen (1887-1952)

4 Klavierstiicke, op. 22 (1937)

Nachtstiick

Valse noble

Lied ohne Worte 

Gigue

Klaus Egge (1906-1979)

Sonata no. 2 (Sonata Patetica), op. 27 (1955)

Grave stentato; allegro appassionato

Canto etereo

Finale: Quasi una Fantasia

Finn Mortensen (1922-1983)

Sonata, op. 7 (1956)

Quasi una Fantasia

Fuga

RolfWallin (b. 1957)

Seven Imperatives (2001)

Seek

Push

Sink

Spin

Stab

Lean

Quit

This concert is made possible in part by assistance provided by the Royal

Norwegian Embassy
The Musician

In 1974 London’s Daily Telegraph described pianist Hakon Austbo as the 

“possessor oftowering talent worthy ofinternational recognition.” Since

then, critics from New York to Amsterdam have praised his unusual versatility and the originality of his repertoire. Of Norwegian origin, Austbo performed extensively in his homeland before continuing his studies at the

Paris Conservatoire and the Ecole Normale de Musique. In 1970 he was the

first non-French person to win the “Concours National de la Guilde Franchise

des Artistes Solistes” in Paris. The following year he gained international

attention when a unanimous jury awarded him first prize in the Olivier

Messiaen Competition for Contemporary Music in Royan, France. Austbo

furthered his studies at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, as well

as in London and Munich. He was a prize winner at the 1974 International

Munich Competition (in piano duo with Marina Horak); the 1975 Ravel

Competition in Paris; and, as a member ofTrio du Nord, ofthe 1975 unesco

International Rostrum in Bratislava. Based in the Netherlands for more than

thirty years, Austbo has recently returned to his native country and continues to enjoy an extensive solo career throughout Asia, Europe, and the 

United States.

The winner ofthree Norwegian Grammy awards, an Edison award, and

a Classic CD award for “best available recording,” Austbo has recorded major

works ofAlexander Scriabin; Olav Anton Thommessen’s setting ofthe Norse

melodrama Edda-Da with actress Juni Dahr; piano works by Brahms, Janacek,

Satie, and Schumann; and the complete songs of Olivier Messiaen with

soprano Ingrid Kappelle. His most recent recordings include the complete 

piano solo works of Debussy and Grieg and Messiaen’s Oiseaux exotiques.

Austbo received the prize ofthe Norwegian music critics in 1989 and

was chosen “Performer ofthe Year” in Norway in 1992. In 2003 he received

the prestigious Grieg Prize. In addition to his intense performing schedule, 

he is professor of piano at the University of Stavanger.

4

Program Notes

The exhibition Edvard Munch: Master Prints brings together nearly sixty of

Munch’s most important prints to show how his persistent experimentation

and virtuosic handling ofwoodcut, lithography, and intaglio endowed 

different impressions of his primary motifs with new meanings. Munch 

is renowned for his haunting portrayals oflove, alienation, jealousy, and 

death—universal human experiences that he filtered through events in his

own life. By manipulating color, line, texture, and pictorial details, he 

reworked these images in multiple print variations, continually renewing

their power to express his artistic goals. The exhibition remains on view at

the Gallery until October 31, 2010.

Edvard Munch’s experiments with painting and printmaking techniques

place him at the forefront ofthe development ofmodern expressionism. In

The Sick Child from 1886 (National Gallery, Oslo), Munch attacks the surface— scoring, incising, scraping, and abrading the paint—fatiguing the

canvas until the forms in the painting, most especially the head of his dying

sister Sophie, appear to be disintegrating before our eyes. Tied to the poignancy ofthe theme, Munch’s technique reinforces the subjectivity ofthe 

scene—the sense ofthe artist/brother trying to hold on to the image of his

sister to whom he was devoted.

Munch’s personal approach to painting involved not only the abovementioned abrasive and kinetic techniques, but also thinning paint to encourage it to run across the surface and respond to gravity. Often he allowed

bare canvas to show through in a finished work and left changes made during

his creative process. Munch frequently placed his completed paintings outdoors (especially in winter) to “weather.”

As a printmaker, Munch responded strongly to the “primitive” quality

of Paul Gauguin’s woodcuts. He found much to admire in Gauguin’s art and 

his own woodcuts reflect a similar spirit of experimentation. Munch often

cut his blocks into puzzle-like pieces for different colors, inking them separately, and reassembling them for the final pull. His tools included gouges

for making deep cuts into the wood, resulting in bold, expressive effects of

5
black and white. He also took advantage ofthe grain and imperfections of

the wood itselfin creating his images.

Munch and Gauguin shared a common friend—the English composer

Frederick Delius (1862-1934). Delius was an art lover and in 1898 had purchased Gauguin’s important painting Nevermore from 1897. Gauguin’s first

woodcuts were intended as illustrations for his Tahitian journal, Noa Noa,

published in 1897. When the journal was published in book form in 1901,

Delius and Munch learned about plans by others to adapt that exotic work

into new forms ofmusic, dance, and theater. This excitement about Noa

Noa encouraged the two men to consider a collaboration with a writer on a

work that would combine words, pictures, and music. Unfortunately, this

project was never realized.

One of Munch’s most important relationships was with the English

violinist Evangeline Hope Muddock (c. 1883-1953), whose stage name was

Eva Mudocci. Attracted by Mudocci’s stunning appearance and musical

talent, he portrayed her in The Violin Concert, The Brooch, and Salome, three

prints from 1903, the year in which they met. Composers, writers, and playwrights were also an important part of Munch’s circle going back to his

earliest days in Kristiana (present day Oslo) and continuing during his stays

in Paris and Berlin. The Swedish playwright August Strindberg often remarked

that Munch’s art needed musical explanation—words alone were inadequate

to do it justice.

Munch’s great legacy as an artist was the willingness and fearlessness

with which he plunged into the depths of his life, soul, and psyche. He

realized this when he wrote: “Just as Leonardo da Vinci studied the recesses

ofthe human body and dissected cadavers, I try to dissect souls.” Like

Leonardo, Munch’s achievements are indicative of a lifelong commitment

to experimentation, variety of expression, and technical innovation. Unlike

Leonardo, Munch’s held an unshakable beliefin the primacy of his personal

experiences and his relentless rumination on their universal significance. He

wrote: “In my art I have tried to find an explanation for life and to discover

its meaning. I also intended to help others understand life.”

6

Munch’s art continues to give permission to younger artists to look

inward, to scrutinize, analyze, and disentangle the sources ofthe complex

emotions and motivations that make us human. From generation to generation, his message has resonated most with those who believe as he did that

“all art, literature, and music must be produced with one’s heart-blood. Art is

the heart-blood of a person.”

Bearing in mind the long-lasting influence of Edvard Munch on subsequent generations of artists, Hakon Austbo has chosen repertoire from four

generations ofNorwegian composers, each ofwhom studied with the former, 

thus forming an unbroken line of development.

Fartein Valen (1887-1952) was a younger contemporary of Munch (1863-

1944) and a pupil of Edvard Grieg. Choosing not to follow closely in Grieg’s

footsteps, Valen was a true “internationalist,” using elements from late

German romanticism, and, later, from the Second Viennese school, as represented by Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951). His personal atonal polyphonic

style served him well throughout his career. His works are built on melodic

motifs that are treated in reverse, diminution, or augmentation, and sometimes transposed. The theme of Valse noble is a twelve-tone row. It is a mosaic

ofvoices in which the counterpoint is presented in continuously changing

constellations, and the texture alternates between emotional density and

poetic clarity.

Valen’s pupil Klaus Egge explored a different path. In his first period, his

works were directly or indirectly influenced by folk music, and he developed

his own characteristic use of ecclesiastical modes combined with his own

bold energy. Beginning with his Second Symphony, op. 22, and especially in

his Violin Concerto, op. 26, Egge’s style became less tonal and more markedly

polyphonic. He began to integrate aspects ofValen’s technique while maintaining his personal style ofstrong contrasts between marcato rythmic

passages and ethereal atmospheres, as in the second movement of his Sonata

Patetica, op. 27. The sonata is structurally and thematically complex, with

powerful energy and deep emotional expression. Though folk music influences the work heavily, the music is simultaneously contemporary and

cosmopolitan, similar to that of Bela Bartok (1881-1945).

7
Finn Mortensen wrote piano sonatas prolifically from his early period 

on: his Sonata, op. 7, was completed only one year after his teacher Egge had

written his Sonata no. 2. These two sonatas, both from the 1950s, are perhaps the most important in the genre from this period in Norwegian music. 

Mortensen’s work is much freer than Egge’s, although the second movement fulfills the requirements of a fugue. “Quasi una fantasia” streams from

an eruptive impulse, creating a swarm of clusters, dissonances, and trills.

A nebula of diatonic scales surrounds the melodic second theme. The intervals ofthe fugue are stretched to seemingly impossible extremes, as an 

augmented octave is streched out to a perfect eleventh. The contrapuntal

figurations go continuously faster, supporting an unbearable crescendo, 

until the eruptions ofthe first movement return toward the end ofthe fugue.

According to Hakon Austbo, “Mortensen uses extreme means in this work

and he must have felt them well suited to my way of playing, since he had 

a strong wish that I should perform it. I did so at the Bergen International

Festival in 1977.”

Finn Mortensen began composition studies with Klaus Egge just before

the outbreak ofWorld War 11. Like many of his countrymen, Mortensen 

joined the resistance, making studies impossible. After the war was over, he 

found himself drawn to the avant-garde activity that was going on among

composers in Darmstadt and at Karlheinz Stockhausen’s (1928-2007)

electronic studio in Cologne. Upon his return to Norway, Mortensen became 

a proponent ofmusical modernism. When Norway’s State Academy of Music

was establised in 1974, Mortensen was appointed its first professor of composition. In this role he trained a new generation of Norwegian composers, 

ofwhom RolfWallin (b. 1957) is one ofthe most prominent. Wallin’s musical 

voice is very personal, with a special harmonic color that emerges from 

mathematical calculations. In spite ofthe mathematics behind it, Wallin’s

music has a striking intuitive directness, exemplified by his Seven Imperatives.

The model Wallin had in mind was Grieg’s Lyric Pieces, opp. 12, 38, 43, and

47. The titles ofthe Seven Imperatives are one-syllable, four-letter verbs that, 

when taken together, create a dramatic story, very precisely characterized in

every movement.

In 2001 Hakon Austbo was the pianist for the world premiere performance of Seven Imperatives in Bergen, the home of Norway’s Carte Blanche

Dance Company, which commissioned the work.

Notes on Munch by David Gariff, Lecturer, National Gallery ofArt

Program notes on composers by Hakon Austbo, translated by Kjell Wernoe,

Pro Arte, Norway

9
Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

Nordic Voices

Music by Lasse Thoresen

and other Norwegian composers

Presented in honor of Edvard Munch: Master Prints

and in conjunction with “Norway Comes to Washington”

October 10, 2010

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

East Building Auditorium

Gesangverein Hofbieber

Music by Hassler, Lechner,

and other Renaissance composers

October 13, 2010

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building, West Garden Court