Faure’s Opus 57 is incidental music for a play after Shakespeare’s

Shylock by Edmond Haraucourt. Faure’s pupil and biographer, Charles

Koechlin (1867-1950) writes: “It is impossible to put into words the

Venetian charm this score suggests. For the Madrigal, the scenes of

Carpaccio, homely or worldly....For the Serenade, the picture of elegant 

gondolas and delightful palaces of pink marble....As for the Nocturne

for strings alone, ...the intense tenderness of night here revealed was one

of the most beautiful incentives of Faure’s inspiration....”

Rachmaninoff wrote the Symphonic Dances, Op. 45, during the

summer and fall of 1940 in New York. Because of the threat of war, he

had interrupted a successful concert tour in Europe and returned to his

adopted homeland. His original title for the first dance was Noon, with

Twilight and Midnight for the second and third dances. Before the work

was finished, however, he replaced these with the simple title Symphonic

Dances. The work is filled with glimpses of American musical culture 

and, contrary to the implications of its title, exists primarily for listening 

rather than for dancing.

Mahler conceived the music now known as Totenfeier as the first 

movement of his second symphony. While he was contemplating ways

to complete the work, he attended a memorial service for his idol, the

brilliant pianist Hans von Biilow (1863-1928). He was suddenly struck

with the meaning and the title for his project: Totenfeier, or Funeral Rite.

Natalie Bauer-Lechner, a musician who knew Mahler during his last

years in Vienna, envisioned the movement as “the titanic struggles of a

mighty being still caught in the toils of this world; grappling with life

and with the fate to which he must succumb-and [with] death.”

Program notes by Elmer Booze

The use ofcameras or recording equipment during

the performance is not allowed.

For the convenience ofconcertgoers

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

The Fifty-ninth Season of

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and

F. LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

2358th Concert

NATIONAL GALLERY ORCHESTRA

GEORGE MANOS, conductor

ANTONIO GIULIANO, tenor, guest artist

Presented in honor of the Exhibition

Art Nouveau, 1890-1914

Sunday Evening, 22 October 2000

Seven O'clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission free
PROGRAM

Erik Satie

(1866-1925)

Gymnopedie No. 2

(1888)

Gabriel Faure 

(1845-1924)

Incidental Music for Shylock, Op. 57

(1890)

Chanson

Entr’acte

Madrigal

Epithalame

Nocturne

Final

Sergei Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dance, Op. 45, No. 1

(1873-1943) (1940)

Gustav Mahler 

(1860-1911)

Non allegro

Andante con moto, tempo di valse

Lento assai, allegro vivace

INTERMISSION

Totenfeier

(1887;rev. 1893-1894)

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. Maestro Manos founded and directed for 

ten years the renowned Kilarney Bach Festival in the Republic of Ireland 

and was the music director of the 1992 Scandinavian Music Festival in

Kolding, Denmark.

American tenor Antonio Giuliano has appeared in opera, concert, and

recital throughout the United States and Europe. A member since 1988

of the United States Army Chorus, Giuliano sang his Italian recital debut 

in 1993 in Como, Italy, and was invited to study with Franco Corelli at

his home in Milan. He has enjoyed considerable success in opera,

singing the roles of Alfredo in La traviata and Manrico in II trovatore

with the Baltimore/Washington Metropolitan Repertory Opera. He also

appeared as Rodolfo in Luisa Miller with New York’s Opera Nova. In

the upcoming season, he will appear in recital and as soloist in Verdi’s

Requiem with the New Dominion Chorale and Orchestra.

There were two significant trends in European music between 1890

and 1914. On the one hand, iconoclastic composers, among them Erik

Satie, were deliberately breaking all the established rules of harmony and

form to develop new parameters for their music. The other composers 

represented on this program, however, followed the prevailing trend of

the period, which was to look for new modes of expression while

adhering to the musical language that had been firmly established since

the early nineteenth century. In both cases, composers were keen to

distinguish themselves from the one composer whose music still

dominated Europe’s concert halls and opera houses between 1890 and

1914, Richard Wagner (1813-1883). In this respect, they may be seen to

have had something in common with the Art nouveau movement, in

which artists attempted to create a new style in reaction to the academic 

historicism of much of nineteenth-century art.

Despite his very small number of compositions, Satie’s influence on

his contemporaries, both French and American, was profound. As

described by Patrick Gowers in The New Groves Dictionary of Music

and Musicians, “The Gymnopedies are in a [class by themselves]: the

textures are simple, with monodies riding over plain, delicately modal

accompaniments.” Biographer Rollo Myers (1892-1985) surmised that

Satie coined the word, Gymnopedies, with the suggestion that the pieces

represent “the tracing of some graceful arabesque by naked boys

dancing under an early morning Grecian sky.” Originally for piano solo,

Gymnopedie No. 2 was orchestrated by the French composer and writer 

on music, Alexis Roland-Manuel (1891-1966).