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

For events at the Library ofCongress, 

advance reservation oftickets is recommended.

Tickets are distributed by Ticketmaster (202-397-SEAT).

The tickets are free, but there is a service charge

for the reservation.

www.loc.gov/concerts

cover: Cad Joseph Begas, Felix Mendelssohn

Bartholdy, 1821, Private Collection

Mendelssohn on the Mall

January 11-February 27, 2009

Celebrating the 200th Anniversary of

the birth of Felix Mendelssohn

(February 3,1809-November 4,1847)

Presented by the Library ofCongress,

the National Academy of Sciences, and the

National Gallery ofArt under the gracious patronage

of His Excellency Dr. Klaus Scharioth, Ambassador

ofGermany to the United States

Admission isfree
Mendelssohn on the Mall

January n-February 27, 2009

Concerts and Events

JANUARY

11 Ma’alot Wind Quintet

Mendelssohn: A Midsummer

Night’s Dream, transcribed for

wind quintet; music by Ligeti,

Barber, and Piazzolla

Preceded at 6:00 pm by a

preconcert lecture: Mendelssohn

and the Visual Arts

SUNDAY, 6:30 PM

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

18 Weiss-Kaplan-Newman Trio

with guest artists Amadi Hummings

and Sel Kardan, violas, and Kurt

Muroki, bass

Mendelssohn: Sextetfor Piano

and Strings, op. 87; music by Sheng

and Smetana

Sunday, 3:00 PM

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

18 National Gallery Orchestra,

Kenneth Slowik, guest conductor

Mendelssohn: “Italian” Symphony;

Schubert: Symphony in C Major

(“Great”)

Sunday, 6:30 PM

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

25 Fine Arts Quartet

Mendelssohn: Quartets, opp. 12

and 44/1

Sunday, 6:30 PM

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

The calendar of concerts and events

continues on the inside back cover.

The Sixty-seventh Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell

and F. Lammot Belin Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,704th Concert

February 1, 2009

Ulrich Urban, pianist

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Three Songs without Words

Allegretto, op. 85, no. 5

Andante tranquillo, op. 67, no. 3

Molto allegro e vivace (“Jagerlied”), op. 19, no. 3

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Sonata in E-flat Major (“The Great”), Hob. 52 (1794)

Allegro

Adagio

Finale: Presto

Mendelssohn

Three Fantasies or Caprices, op. 16 (1829)

Fantasy in A Minor (Andante con moto; allegro vivace)

Fantasy in E Major (“The Rivulet”) (Andante)

Caprice in E Minor (Scherzo: Presto)

INTERMISSION
Elizabeth R. Austin (b. 1938)

Four Puzzle Preludes on Classical Themes (1994-2009)

Vivace-Adagio (Mendelssohn)

World Premiere Performance

Andante con moto (Brahms)

Allegro (Beethoven)

Andante (Schubert)

Mendelssohn

Variations serieuses, op. 56 (1841)

This concert is made possible by funds provided by the 

Embassy ofthe Federal Republic of Germany.

The Musician

Born in Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany, Ulrich Urban studied piano at the 

Leipzig Conservatory with Gunter Kootz, and conducting with Rolf Reuter.

From 1969 to the present, he has taught at that institution, where he was

promoted to full professor of piano in 1991. His first performances of Bach

garnered glowing reviews, and his repertoire includes works by composers

associated with Leipzig’s musical traditions such as Mendelssohn, Robert

Schumann (1810-1856), Max Reger (1873-1916), and Richard Wagner

(1813-1883). He has also introduced new works by Elizabeth R. Austin,

Gernot Grohs, and Erie Ninow as well as the complete works ofthe English 

composer Clement Harris, which he recorded in 2004. His concert tours

have taken him to Europe, Japan, South Africa, South America, and the 

United States, where he has also conducted master classes. Urban has

performed piano concertos with more than forty orchestras, including the 

Berlin Symphony Orchestra, the Dresden and Hamburg Philharmonic

Orchestras, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and the Weimar Staatskapelle, as

well as orchestras in other parts of Europe and South Africa.

German Radio productions account for 20 ofthe 35 piano concertos 

Urban has played in more than 160 broadcasts. His spoken commentaries

that accompany his radio performances add new insights into the music as

well as the specially featured pianos by the German manufacturers Bliithner 

and Irmler. His numerous CD recordings encompass all musical styles, with 

emphasis on the turn ofthe nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His cds

are available on the Ambitus, Berlin-Classics, Beoton, Capstone, Eterna,

Hanssler, Koch-Schwann, Magna, Querstand, and vms labels.

5
Program Notes

Felix Mendelssohn was bom on February 3,1809. With “Mendelssohn on the

Mall,” the Library ofCongress, the National Academy of Sciences, and the

National Gallery ofArt join musical presenters around the world in celebrating the bicentennial ofthe birth of a composer whose works have become

essential to the Western canon. Art historians and cultural historians alike

are fascinated by Mendelssohn because he was a “Renaissance man" who

developed skills in many areas to a highly sophisticated level, including

drawing and painting, sports, and writing. He was lionized in his own time as

a composer, conductor, and performer, and the world mourned his untimely

death in 1847 at age thirty-eight.

Mendelssohn composed incidental pieces that he titled “Songs without

Words” throughout his career, resulting in a total of eight volumes of pieces

that received wide distribution. With these songlike and lyrical short interludes, the composer seems to be contrasting his masterful symphonies and

oratorios with the inflection offolksong and the mood and expectations of

the early Victorian period. The Allegretto in A Major comes from the seventh

volume and signals the onset of evening by its heraldic chords. The Andante

tranquillo in B-flat Major, from volume six, carries suppressed emotion

almost to the point of austerity, yet portends the melodic style ofJohannes

Brahms (1833-1897). The famous “Jagerlied” (Hunting Song) is found

already in the first volume. It makes its impression by means ofrhythmic

forcefulness and pianistic brilliance.

Haydn’s Sonata in E-jlat Major is one of his last piano sonatas. It represents an amalgam of all ofhis previous experiences with the sonata form and

points ahead to the more virtuosic style of early romantic composers such as

Mendelssohn. The first movement projects majestic dignity in its opening

measures, but as it unfolds, it indulges in extremes, ranging from jocularity 

and joyful exuberance to deeply dramatic diversions. The detachment from

the world that seems to prevail in the E-flat minor portion ofthe Adagio is

overtaken and reversed by the change ofkey to E major. The theme for the

6

final movement (Presto) sounds like a popular street ballad. It proceeds at

such a breakneck pace that the composer sees fit to insert periodic fermatas

as points at which to catch one’s breath. Haydn wrote the sonata in 1794 in

London, but did not publish it there. He took it with him when he returned

to Germany in 1795, and submitted it for publication to the Leipzig firm

Breitkopf& Hartel.

Mendelssohn wrote his three Fantasies or Caprices while on a grand tour of

England and Scotland at age twenty. This was the same year (1829) in which

the young composer organized and conducted the first “modem” performance

ofJohann Sebastian Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion, a notable achievement for its

time and for a person ofhis age. The dark beginning in A minor ofthe first

fantasy (Andante con moto; allegro vivace) intimates how Mendelssohn will later 

begin his “Scottish” Symphony. The famous Presto in E minor is the second

fantasy, and the triptych is completed by the Andante, a hymn to nature. These

three pieces are no less mature than the incidental music for A Midsummer

Night’s Dream, which Mendelssohn completed a few years earlier.

Bom in Baltimore in 1938, Elizabeth R. Austin received her early musical

training at The Peabody Conservatory, studying under Grace N. Cushman.

Austin was a student-composer when the famous French composer and

master teacher Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) visited Goucher College in

Towson, Maryland. Boulanger awarded Austin a scholarship to study at 

the Conservatoire Americaine in Fontainebleau, France, after hearing her

Drei Rilke Lieder (Three Rilke Songs). Later in her career, Austin taught

composition and music theory at various music institutions in Hartford,

Connecticut, including the Hartt School of Music at the University of

Hartford, where she earned a master ofmusic degree while on the faculty.

While studying for her Ph.D. at the University ofConnecticut, Austin won

first prize in the Lipscomb Electronic Music Competition for her Klavier

Double for piano and tape. Other awards have included a Connecticut

Commission on the Arts grant, an award from gedok (The Society ofWomen

7
Artists in German-speaking Countries), first prize in the International Association ofWomen Musicians’ 1998 Miriam Gideon Competition, and a

Rockefeller Foundation award for a month-long residency at Bellagio, Italy,

in 2001. Austin’s music has been broadcast worldwide, including repeated 

broadcasts on Germany’s Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk in collaboration with

Ulrich Urban, who has also performed her works in the Leipzig Gewandhaus. 

Austin is organist and choir director at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church, Windham Center, Connecticut, and she serves on the Alumni Board ofthe Walden

School for Young Composers in New Hampshire.

With Four Puzzle Preludes on Classical Themes, Elizabeth Austin has 

reworked a motive from classical music in her own “American” style,

thereby building a bridge between the “old” and “new” worlds. In the first

prelude, which Austin composed specially for this concert, there is a reference to Mendelssohn’s Presto, op. 16, no. 2, giving a new perspective to

this witty piece. The original themes in the other preludes also take on new 

meaning as they appear in an atonal setting or in a camouflaged form.

Mendelssohn first performed his Variations serieuses in 1841, while

visiting Robert and Clara Schumann in their Leipzig apartment. Written at

the apogee of Mendelssohn’s creative life, the variations are today regarded

as his most important contribution to piano literature. They elaborate on a

theme in D minor that is presented earnestly and dispassionately, but each

subsequent variation adds a new level ofmovement and stormy virtuosity.

The slower variations that appear toward the middle ofthe work provide rest

and composure. They are followed by a short fugue, so masterfully crafted

that the listener wishes it were much longer. After one more quiet and 

remarkably simple variation—the only one in D major—the work rushes

to a dramatic close.

Program notes by Ulrich Urban, translated by Stephen Ackert

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.
FEBRUARY

Exhibition of Mendelssohn manuscripts, letters, watercolors, and the 

Mendelssohn family scrapbook

THROUGHOUT FEBRUARY 2009

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

i Ulrich Urban, pianist

Mendelssohn: Fantasies and Caprices,

op. 16; selected Songs without Words;

Variations serieuses, op. 54

SUNDAY, 6:30 PM

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

6 Cypress Quartet

Mendelssohn: Quartet, op. 13;

music by Beethoven and Puts

FRIDAY, 8:00 PM

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

8 Josef Feigelson, cellist

Peep Lassmann, pianist

Mendelssohn’s complete works

for cello and piano

Sunday, 6:30 PM

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

10 Mira Trio

Hensel: Piano Trio in D minor, op. 11;

Mendelssohn and Hensel: Songs

without Words; Mendelssohn:

Piano Trio no. 2 in C minor, op. 66

Preceded at 6:15 pm by a

preconcert lecture by Susan 

Clermont, Music Division, Library

ofCongress

FRIDAY, 8:00 PM

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

13 Atrium Quartet

Mendelssohn: Quartet, op. 80;

music by Shostakovich and Borodin

FRIDAY, 8:00 PM

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

15 University ofAkron Concert Choir,

Samuel Gordon, conductor

Mendelssohn: Wie der Hirsch schreit,

op. 42; Chorale Cantata: O Haupt

voll Blut und Wunden; hymn: Hor

mein bitten

SUNDAY, 6:30 PM

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

18 Trio con Brio Copenhagen

Mendelssohn: Piano Quartet in

B Minor, op. 3; Beethoven:

“Archduke” Trio

WEDNESDAY, 8:00 PM

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

19 Lecture by R. Larry Todd,

Duke University

Reflections on the Mendelssohn

Bicentenary

THURSDAY, 7:00 PM

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

22 Mendelssohn Piano Trio

Mendelssohn: Piano Trio in D Minor,

op. 49; music by Beethoven

Sunday, 6:30 PM

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

27 Mendelssohn Choir ofPittsburgh,

Betsy Burleigh, director

Mendelssohn: Psalm 55; Sechs

Spriiche, op. 79; music by Handel, 

Haydn, and Mozart

Friday, 8:00 PM

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS