the tramp of

a giant like him behind us.” It was Schumann who

planted the seed ofa symphonic destiny for Brahms when he

compared him to Beethoven and suggested that Brahms was most

likely Beethoven’s successor, if not his progeny. Twenty-three

years later, Brahms finally completed his first symphony. Its

first performance took place on4 November 1876 in Karlsruhe

(Germany), with Felix Dessoff conducting, and the second in

Mannheim several days later, with Brahms on the podium.

Walter Niemann (1876-1953), Brahms’ biographer, who detected

a relationship between Brahms’ First Symphony and Beethoven’s

Fifth Symphony, remarked that the choice ofC minor translates 

intoa“hard, pitiless struggle, demonic, supernatural shapes,

sinister defiance, steely energy, dramatic intensity of passion,

dark fantasy, [and] grisly humor.” The first movement {Unpoco

sostenuto; allegro) resonates with high drama. The unhurried

introductory statement announces several themes and is draped 

in austerity, with an undercurrent of calamity and hopelessness.

This gloomy mood, however, has an ephemeral reprieve that

appears in the form of an allegro section. The second movement (Andante) luxuriates in elongated melodies ofreflective gentleness. 

The third movement {Un poco allegrettoe grazioso) isa paragon

of lucidity and elegance. Here one finds Brahms replacing the

classical third-movement forms of Haydn and Beethoven with his

own intermezzo.“A stroke of originality; [it owes] nothing to the

past” (Jonathan D. Kramer, Listen to the Music:A Self-guided Tour

through the Orchestral Repertoire). The fourth movement(Adagio;

allegro nontroppo, macon brio), with its mirror image of the sonata’s

opening movement, commences witha leisurely passage that

presents several themes. The lasting despair that was so prevalent 

in the first movement is dissipated when the high drama at the

climax is interrupted by an ambrosial melody, introduced by

the horns and accompanied by trombone chords and muted,

tremulating strings. From this point on, the music soars toa

glorious height that assuresa triumphal conclusion. Lawrence 

Gilman of the Philadelphia Orchestra was moved to label this 

movement

“the greatest symphonic finale in all music.”

Program notes by Elmer Booze

The use ofcameras or recording equipment

during theperformances is not allowed.

For the convenience ofconcertgoers

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

The Fifty-eighth Season of

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and E LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

2351st Concert

NATIONAL GALLERY ORCHESTRA

GEORGE MANOS, conductor

Sunday Evening,4 June 2000

Seven

O’clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
PROGRAM

Felix Mendelssohn Overture: The Hebrides (Fingal’s Gave)

(1809-1847) Op. 26 (1830)

Jean Sibelius

(1865-1957)

En Saga (A Tone Poem)

Op. 9 (1891-1892)

INTERMISSION

Johannes Brahms Symphony No. 1 in C Minor

(1833-1897) Op. 68 (1855-1876)

Un poco sostenuto; allegro

Andante sostenuto

Un poco allegretto e grazioso

Adagio; allegro non troppo, ma con brio

Selectionsfrom concerts at the Gallery

can be heard on the second Sunday ofeach month

at 9:00p.m. on WGMS, 103.5FM.

Conductor, composer, and pianist George Manos has been

director of music at the National Gallery of Art and conductor

of the National Gallery Orchestra since 1985. He is also artistic

director of the American Music Festival and of the National

Gallery vocal and chamber ensembles, which he founded. Manos’

career as a performing pianist and teacher has included several

years on the faculty of Catholic University in Washington, DC,

where he taught piano, conducting, and chamber music. In

addition, he held the directorship of the Wilmington, Delaware,

School of Music, presenting an annual jazz festival and clinic.

Maestro Manos founded and directed for ten years the renowned

Killarney Bach Festival in the Republic of Ireland and was

the music director of the 1992 Scandinavian Music Festival in

Folding, Denmark.

Fingal’s Gave, a large cavern on an islet west of Mull in the

Hebrides of Scotland, has been an important tourist attraction for

more than a century. Mendelssohn became enamored with the

genius loci surrounding the cavern during his visit there in 1829

and wrote to his sister, Fanny: “In order to make you understand

how extraordinarily the Hebrides affected me, the following came

into my mind there.” The letter proceeds with a manuscript of

the first twenty-one measures ofthe melody that later became the

opening passage in the overture known as The Hebrides, or FingaTs

Cave. Mendelssohn’s ability to translate the wild, desolate beauty

of that world into music may well be linked with his skill as a

draftsman and watercolorist. Some of his best landscape drawings

were done in the course of that same journey.

Sibelius was twenty-seven years old in 1892 when the conductor

Robert Kajanus, who was to become a champion of his works,

approached him with an invitation to compose an “insubstantial”

composition for the Helsinki Philharmonic Society’s coming

concert series. The resulting composition became the now famous

Fn Saga, a magnum opus that ranks as one of Finland’s greatest

works. Sibelius gleaned much of the material for En Saga from

an octet that he wrote in 1891 for flute, clarinet, and strings,

but never published.

Brahms, who reached middle age before completing his Symphony

No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68, actually drew up a sketch for it at age 

twenty-five. The year was 1853, the same year in which he

completed two movements of his Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor,

Op. 15. Brahms’ reluctance to compose a symphony was still strong

some years later, when he confided in a friend that attempting to

compose a symphony after Beethoven was not a laughing matter:

“You have no conception of how the likes of us feel when we hear