“El polo” is a bittersweet Andalusian song and dance that is

similar to the “Rondena” from Book Two of Iberia. It reflects the street

music that is heard at night in the southern part of Spain.

Mimicking the milieu of Lavapies, one ofthe composer’s favorite

quarters in the city of Madrid, the third piece in Book Three, “Lavapies,”

encapsulates the infectious festive nature inherent in the songs and

dances of its inhabitants. To enhance its representation, Albeniz instructs

the performer to play the piece with the utmost spirit and independence.

Book Three of Iberia, with its highly polished musical epigrams,

presents only one aspect of this significant Spanish showpiece. The

whole suite, again quoting Townsend, “is the wonder of piano music...,

the goal of the flamenco and summit of the gypsy style....Never has

piano writing gone so far. Iberia has, without a doubt, a place, perhaps

the highest, among the most luminous stars ofthe king of instruments.”

Program notes by Elmer Booze

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

2478th Concert

MARC-ANDRE HAMELIN,/t/am'sf

Sunday Evening, 28 December 2003

Seven O'clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 

(1756-1791)

Program

Sonata in C Major, K. 330

(1781-1783)

Allegro moderato

Andante cantabile 

Allegretto

Robert Schumann

(1810-1856)

Fantasiestucke, op. 12

(1837)

Des Abends (In the Evening)

Aufschwung (Soaring)

Warum? (Why?)

Grillen (Whims)

In der Nacht (In the Night)

Fabel (Fable)

Traumeswirren (Troubled Dreams)

Ende vom Lied (The End ofthe Song)

Intermission

Issac Albeniz

(1860-1909)

El Albaicin

El polo

Lavaplies

Iberia, Book Three

(1907)

The Musician

Winner of the 1985 Carnegie Hall Competition, pianist Marc-Andre

Hamelin is renowned for his superb musical virtuosity and refined

pianism. He is equally renowned for his attention to lesser-known

composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His

interest in exploring both traditional and unfamiliar repertoire is reflected

in the extensive discography he has produced under exclusive contract

with the British record company Hyperion. His thirty-six recordings

include concertos by Alkan, Berstein, Bolcom, Henselt, Komgold, and

Joseph Marx, and solo discs of Alkan (the Canadian Juno Award, 1966),

Catoire, Grainger (Soundscapes Award, 1977 [Australia]), and Schumann. Hamelin’s compendium, “The Composer-Pianists: From Alkan to

Hamelin,” won the Deutsche Schallplattenkritik Prize for 1997- 1998.

With his reputation well established worldwide, Marc-Andre

Hamelin has given solo recitals in prestigious venues in such cities as

Amsterdam, Berlin, Frankfurt, New York, Paris, Vienna, and

Washington, D.C. His numerous festival appearances include the Ravinia

Festival, the Ruhr Piano Festival, Mexico’s Cervantino Festival, the

Singapore International Piano Festival, the Snape Makings, and the BBC

Proms Festival in London. Hamelin has toured with the Australian

Chamber Orchestra and has appeared with many of the world’s leading

orchestras, including the Chicago, Detroit, Helsinki, Montreal, Royal

Concertgebouw, Toronto, Vancouver, and Philadelphia Orchestras as

well as the BBC Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony.

A winner of several Grammy nominations, instrumental awards,

and unanimous critical praise for his unique musical accomplishments, 

Hamelin was born in Montreal, Canada. He began to play the piano at

age five and by age nine had already won the top prize in the Canadian

Music Competition. Hamelin’s father, a pharmacist who was also a keen

pianist, introduced him to the works of Alkan, Medtner, and Sorabji

at a very young age. His principal teachers were Yvonne Hubert, Harvey

Wedeen, and Russell Sherman. Hamelin studied at the Ecole Vincent

d’lndy in Montreal and later at Temple University in Philadelphia,
where he now makes his home. Marc-Andre Hamelin appears at the

National Gallery by arrangement with Colbert Artists Management, Inc.,

ofNew York City.

Program Notes

Mozart’s Sonata in C Major, K. 330, has 1778 as its date of composition 

in some editions, but it was actually composed between 1781 and 1783,

as cited in Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Eighth

Edition. The death of Mozart’s mother in 1778 introduced a cloud of

darkness that understandably affected his life, and many ofthe sonatas he

wrote between 1778 and 1781 reveal a lugubrious ambiance, reflecting

sentiments reverberating from this and other personal tragedies.

However, Mozart’s attempt at gaining new emotional ground seems to

have taken place in this sonata. The outer movements (Allegro moderato

and Allegretto) are brimming with effulgence and animation, while the

inner movement (Andante) provides an elegant slow theme that is

mellifluous and seductive in its contrasting role.

Schumann’s Fantasiestiicke (Fantasy Pieces), op. 12, are an

expressively conceived but loosely knit collection of eight contrasting 

sketches, dedicated to a Miss Robena Laidlav. Fantasy, taken to mean

bizarre or incredible imaginings, is not apropos to Schumann’s

collection. Writer Klaus George Roy offers another definition: “Fantasy,

for Schumann, was his other world; not an escape-paradise of idle daydreaming without tangible results, but the artistic reality behind the

material facade of daily life.”

The moody, introverted, and mentally disturbed Schumann often

took flight into a fantasy world to re-enact or play out his life through his

alter egos, Florestan and Eusebius—the former loquacious, lithesome,

and impetuous, and the latter quixotic, reflective, and otherworldly. The

fluctuations between Florestan and Eusebius in the Fantasy Pieces are

easily discernible. For example, the extroverted Florestan makes his

appearance in the vociferous “Aufschwung” (Soaring) and the

rhythmically oriented “Grillen” (Whims), while the introverted Eusebius

surfaces in the more serene, passionate, and self-possessed “Des Abends”

(In the Evening), “Traumeswirren” (Troubled Dreams), and “Ende vom

Lied” (The End ofthe Song).

Schumann’s fantasy excursion was also motivated by an outward

driving force, his love for the youthful Clara Wieck. The entire collection

of pieces is about love and despair, and, as the pianist and musicologist 

Louis Biancoli states, the “Fantasiestiicke, like so much else of

Schumann’s piano music of this period, is the poetic and passionate

record of a young man in love.”

Isaac Albeniz conceived his magnum opus, Iberia, as a suite of

twelve Spanish pieces for solo piano in four books. A child prodigy,

Albeniz was taken to Paris at the age ofseven, where he was accepted as

a private pupil of the distinguished French pianist and pedagogue

Antoine-Fran^ois Marmontel (1816-1898), the teacher of Bizet and

Debussy. As a pianist, Albeniz was judged an incomparable virtuoso.

Iberia serves to validate his pianistic prowess, as it is one of the most

dazzling works in the genre. Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of

Musicians describes the work as “a brilliant display of piano virtuosity.”

The first of the three pieces from Iberia selected for performance 

by Marc-Andre Hamelin, “El Albaicin” evokes the music of gypsies

living in the eponymous Moorish section of Granada. In composer and

writer Douglas Townsend’s account of the piece, the music resonates

with their “sounds and colors [such as the strumming of guitars]...using

melodic fragments characteristic of their songs and dances....In the

middle section Albeniz exploits the utmost resources ofthe piano, so that

at times it seems as though it will explode into countless drops of

brilliant colors like an impressionist painting.”