The use ofcameras or recording equipment during

the performance is not allowed. Please be sure that cell

phones, pagers, and other electronic devices are turned off

For the convenience ofconcertgoers

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:30 p.m.

The Sixty-second Season of

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and

L. LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

2476th Concert

ANGELA HEWITT, pianist

Sunday Evening, 14 December 2003

Seven O'clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Ludwig van Beethoven

(1770-1827)

Program

Sonata No. 12 in A-flat Major

Op. 26(1800-1801)

Andante con variazioni

Scherzo: Allegro

Marcia funebre sulla morte d’un eroe

Allegro

Intermission

Johann Sebastian Bach Aria with Thirty Variations, BWV 988

(1685-1750) (“Goldberg Variations”) (1741-1742)

Aria

1. Duet

2. Trio

3. Canone all’ unisono

4. Quartet

5. Sonata

6. Canone alia seconda

7. A1 tempo di giga

8. Sonata

9. Canone alia terza

10. Fughetta

11. Sonata

12. Canone alia quarta

13. Adagio

14. Sonata

15. Canone alia quinta:

Andante

16. Ouverture

17. Sonata

18. Canone alia sesta

19. Trio

20. Sonata

21. Canone alia settima

22. Alla breve

23. Sonata

24. Canone all’ottava

25. Adagio

26. Sonata

27. Canone alia nona

28. Sonata

29. Sonata

30. Quodlibet 

Aria da capo

The Musician

Pianist Angela Hewitt first performed at the National Gallery in 1978,

having won Washington’s own Johann Sebastian Bach International

Competition in 1975, and she continues to captivate and charm audiences

around the world with her musicianship and virtuosity. Since her triumph

in the 1985 Toronto International Bach Piano Competition, she has been

hailed as “the pre-eminent Bach pianist of our time” {The Guardian,

London, 2001), and “nothing less than the pianist who will define Bach

performance on the piano for years to come” (Stereophile, 1998). In 1994

she embarked on a ten-year project to record all of the major keyboard

works by Bach for the Hyperion label, a series that has been called “one

of the recorded glories of our age” by London’s Sunday Times. The

music magazine Gramophone praised Hewitt’s performance as

“effortlessly eclipsing all competitors.” Her recording of Johann

Sebastian Bach’s Six English Suites was released last September. Her CD

of Bach arrangements won the 2001 Juno Award in Canada tor the best

entry in the instrumental and chamber music categories. Her discography

also includes CDs of works by Enrique Granados, Olivier Messiaen, and,

most recently, the complete works of Maurice Ravel. During the concert

season 2000-2001, she gave complete performances of Bach’s Fortyeight Preludes and Fugues in Canada, the United States, England, and

Germany.

Bom into a musical family (her father was the organist of the

Anglican Cathedral in Ottawa, Canada), Angela Hewitt began her piano

studies at age three, performing in public at age four and winning her

first scholarship at age five. In her formative years, she also studied

violin, recorder, singing, and classical ballet. At age nine she gave her

first recital at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, where she studied

from 1964 to 1973. She continued her piano studies with Jean-Paul

Sevilla at the University of Ottawa, from which she earned the bachelor 

of music degree at age eighteen. Angela Hewitt currently resides in

London, England, where she has been living since 1985, but she also has

homes in Canada and Umbria, Italy. She appears at the National Gallery

by arrangement with Cramer/Marder Artists of Lafayette, California.
Program Notes

Beethoven’s Sonata No. 12 in A-flat Major, op. 26, is an anomaly among

his works for the piano. Dedicated to Prince Carl von Lichnowsky, it is

Beethoven’s only sonata to include a designated “funeral march” as well

as a set of variations used as the opening movement. Organically, the

sonata appears to be disjointed. As writer Samuel Chotzinoff puts it:

“structurally loose, like a package of assorted good things not overtly

related....A sonata, like a novel, can conceivably accommodate the most

disparate elements.” The first movement (Andante con variazioni) opens

with a simple yet elegant theme, followed by a set of rhythmic variations

that is uniquely Beethoven. The second movement (Scherzo: Allegro

molto) is charismatic and represents a marked contrast to the shifting

rhythmic patterns of the preceding movement. It is interrupted by a

genteel intermediary section. The third movement “Marcia funebre sulla

morte d’un eroe” [A Funeral March on the Death of a Hero] is

recognized even by listeners who know little of Beethoven’s music.

Beethoven gave no hint as to who the hero was. The Allgemeine

Musikalische Zeitung, in reviewing a performance of the work, called

this movement “great, sombre and splendid...because here all difficulties 

and artistry serve the expressive purpose of the music, and are therefore 

essential.” The fourth movement (Allegro) is a perpetuum mobile that

Chotzinoff calls “a mystical delight.” Beethoven purportedly modeled

this movement after the Three Piano Sonatas, op. 23, of Johann Baptist

Cramer (1771-1858).

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, were

originally published as Part IV of his Clavier-Ubung, a collection of the

keyboard works he deemed to be his best. The aria that provides the

theme for the variations is a sarabande from Bach’s second

Clavierbiich/ein for Anna Magdalena Bach, published in 1725. It is at

once serene and vivacious. The work carries the name of a Bach pupil,

Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (1727-1756), who was a harpsichordist in the

service of Count Hermann Karl von Kayserlingk, the Russian

ambassador to the electoral court at Dresden in the 1740s. According to

Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749-1818), the first Bach biographer, Count

von Kayserlingk was afflicted with nervous attacks and sleepless nights.

One of the duties of the count’s harpsichordist was to play in an

adjoining room until his patron was able to fall asleep. The count,

knowing Bach’s reputation, commissioned him to write a composition of

considerable length and enthralling diversity, so that Goldberg would

have plenty of material with which to fulfill his nocturnal duties. Having

received the score, the count wrote a letter to Goldberg requesting that he

“come and play my variations for me.” Goldberg reportedly acceded to

this request many times, with the result that posterity knows the

variations by his name and not that of his master.

Forkel does not tell us whether the count was cured or even

relieved of his insomnia by this music, and the accuracy of detail in his

report has been called into question by Baker’s Biographical Dictionary

ofMusicians, Eighth Edition. There is little question, however, that these

variations are Bach’s magnum opus for the two-manual harpsichord and

rank with the “Diabelli ” Variations of Beethoven as one of the greatest

keyboard works in theme and variation form.

The variations make calculated use of a musical device known as

canon, in which the theme is presented in imitation of itself. The

imitation begins before the first presentation of the theme is finished,

resulting in a duet. The canons occur at nos. 3, 6, 9, and so forth, and are

labeled by Bach with the Italian name for the interval between the two

voices that appear in canon. Bach utilizes all of the intervals in order,

starting with the unison and moving through to the ninth. The other

variations are in free style and highly virtuosic. The final variation is a

quodlibet, a composition in which well-known melodies or texts are

presented simultaneously or successively, with results that are intriguing

and often humorous. After the quodlibet there is silence, which is broken

by the reappearance ofthe aria—aristocratic, somber, and contented, as it

was at the beginning—bringing this mighty work to a quiet close.

Program notes by Elmer Booze