Upcoming Events of the SeventyFourth Season of The William

Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot

Belin Concerts

Washington Toho Koto Society 

Traditional Japanese music

Presented in conjunction with the

National Cherry Blossom Festival

April 3, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

Rose Ensemble

American Roots: A Journey through

Our Country's Folk, Old-Time, and

Gospel Traditions. Presented in honor

of Three Centuries ofAmerican Prints

from the National Gallery ofArt

April 10, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

Tamagawa University Taiko Group 

Japanese Taiko drum and dance 

In honor of the National Cherry

Blossom Festival

April 15, Friday, 11:00

East Building Atrium

General Information

Admission to the National Gallery of Art

and all of its programs is free of charge,

except as noted.

The use of cameras or recording equipment

during the performance is not allowed.

Please be sure that all portable electronic

devices are turned off.

Concerts are made possible in part

through the generosity of donors to the

National Gallery of Art through The Circle. 

Reserved seating is available in recognition

of their support. Please contact the

development office at (202) 842-6450 or

circle@nga.gov for more information.

www.nga.gov

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The department of music produced these

program notes. Copyright © 2076 Board of

Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington

PostClassical Ensemble

Music by Bernard Herrmann. Presented

in honor of Three Centuries of American

Prints from the National Gallery ofArt

April 17, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

Inscape

Music by Asian composers

April 24, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

Cover Georges Braque, Fruit, Glass, and

Mandolin (detail), 1938, National Gallery of Art,

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

74TH SEASON

OF CONCERTS

MARCH 27, 2016 • NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
2 • National Gallery of Art

PROGRAM

West Building, West Garden Court

Rachel Barton Pine, violin

2:00

Six Sonatas and Partitas

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Sonata no. 1 in G Minor, BWV 1001

Adagio

Fuga (Allegro)

Siciliana

Presto

Partita no. 1 in B Minor, BWV 1002

Allemanda — Double 

Corrente — Double (Presto)

Sarabande — Double 

Tempo di Borea — Double

Sonata no. 2 in A Minor, BWV 1003

Grave

Fuga

Andante

Allegro

3:30

Six Sonatas and Partitas

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Partita no. 2 in D Minor, BWV 1004

Allemanda

Corrente

Sarabanda

Giga

Ciaccona

Sonata no. 3 in C Major, BWV 1005

Adagio

Fuga

Largo

Allegro assai

Partita no. 3 in E Major, BWV 1006

Preludio

Lou re

Gavotte en Rondeau

Menuet I

Menuet II

Bourree

Gigue

74th Season • 3
The Musicians

Heralded as a leading interpreter of the great classical masterworks, international concert

violinist Rachel Barton Pine thrills audiences with her dazzling technique, lustrous tone, and

emotional honesty. With an infectious joy in music-making and a passion for connecting

historical research to performance, Pine transforms audiences' experiences of classical 

music. During the 2015-2016 season, Pine will perform concertos by Beethoven, Brahms,

Bruch, and Vivaldi, with orchestras including the Santa Rosa Symphony, the New Mexico

Philharmonic, and the Flagstaff, Windsor, and Gainesville Symphony Orchestras.

Pine recently celebrated the release of her debut album on Avie Records: Mozart:

Complete Violin Concertos, Sinfonia Concertante, with conductor Sir Neville Marriner and

the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. In September 2015, Cedille Records released her

recording of Vivaldi: The Complete Viola D'Amore Concertos, with Ars Antigua. Pine has

appeared as soloist with many of the world's most prestigious ensembles, including

the Chicago Symphony; the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic; and

the Netherlands Radio Kamer Filharmonie. Her past festival appearances have included

Marlboro, Wolf Trap, Vail, Ravinia, Davos, and Salzburg. She has worked with such

renowned conductors as Charles Dutoit, Zubin Mehta, and Marin Alsop, and with such

leading artists as Daniel Barenboim, Christopher O'Riley, and Mark O'Connor. She has

collaborated with many contemporary composers including Augusta Read Thomas, John

Corigliano, Jose Serebrier, and Mohammed Fairouz.

Pine has a prolific discography of thirty CDs on the Avie, Cedille, Warner Classics,

and Dorian labels. She began an exploration of beloved violin concertos and the concertos

that inspired them with Brahms and Joachim Violin Concertos, recorded with the Chicago 

Symphony Orchestra. Her Beethoven & Clement Violin Concertos, recorded with the Royal

Philharmonic, offered the world premiere recording of Clement's Violin Concerto in D Major.

She writes her own cadenzas to many of the works she performs, including for the Beethoven and Mozart concertos. In 2009, Carl Fischer published The Rachel Barton Pine Collection

that includes original compositions, arrangements, cadenzas, and editions penned or

arranged by Pine, making her the only living artist and first woman to join great musicians

like Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz in Carl Fischer's Masters Collection series.

4 • National Gallery of Art

Program Notes

"You must practice Bach. It is the music of Gott!" Thus I was regularly instructed by the

elderly German ladies at St. Paul's Church in Chicago, the church of my youth and my 

earliest years as a violinist.

I was fortunate to grow up at St. Paul's, a church with a deep dedication to music

and a spiritual home to a number of opera singers and members of the Chicago Symphony

Orchestra. Oratorios, cantatas, and other choral works of the great classical composers

are often performed as part of the service, and the music of Bach is celebrated above all

others. The sanctuary itself features a stained glass window of Bach. I have vivid memories

of spending Sunday mornings surrounded by the glorious sound of Bach's toccatas and

fugues on the organ.

My relationship with Bach's music began and matured within St. Paul's sanctuary.

A work of Bach was the first piece I played, at the age of four, for a worship service. I

regularly shared portions of the Six Sonatas and Partitas for prelude or offertory, sat in an

orchestra of professional musicians for full-scale Bach masses, and played obbligato lines

for Bach's vocal works. A particularly special memory was joining, as an eleven-year-old,

with fellow church members, Chicago Symphony's principal oboist Ray Still and principal

bassist Joe Guastafeste, for Bach's oboe and violin concerto.

The Sonatas and Partitas are among the greatest human achievements, and I have

always viewed them with the deepest reverence. However, remembering Bach's essential 

humility prevents these masterpieces from becoming overwhelming in their significance.

Instead, each time I play them, I feel as though I'm conversing with the very best of friends.

The Sonatas and Partitas are full of technical challenges that must be overcome in

order to bring out the harmonies and polyphonies. They require a highly refined technique

of both the left and right hands. Clearly Bach was not only a genius composer and master

keyboard player, but also a violin virtuoso of the first rank. The violin was most likely the

first instrument he studied with his violinist father, Johann Ambrosius. His first professional

jobs in Liineberg and Weimar included significant duties as a violin player, and he continued

to play the instrument throughout his life. Perhaps his esteem for the violin is reflected in

the fact that the longest fugue he ever wrote was not for organ, harpsichord, or ensemble, 

but for unaccompanied violin (the Fuga of BWV 1005).

The Six Sonatas and Partitas are the culmination of an almost century-old tradition

of multiple-voice writing for unaccompanied violin in Germany. Works by Thomas Baltzar,

Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, Johann Paul von Westhoff, and Georg Pisendel serve as

significant examples of this improvisatory and compositional practice with which Bach

was intimately familiar.

Bach's autograph manuscript from Kothen is dated 1720, though some scholars

believe Bach may have begun writing the Sonatas and Partitas as early as 1717. The title page

includes the designation "Part 1," with Part 2 being the Six Suites for unaccompanied cello.

The internal symmetry of the six violin works points to the composer's conception of them

as a cycle, rather than a mere collection.

74th Season • 5
Each Fuga is increasingly longer and more complex. In contrast, the third movements

of the Sonatas become ever sparer, dropping from three voices to two to primarily one. The

Partitas increase in size from four movements to five to six. Their stylistic language follows

a forward path, from the proto-seventeenth century's B minor to the High Baroque Italian of 

the D minor to the modern French style of the E major.

Bach's three sonatas are in sonata da chiesa (church sonata) form: slow-fast-slowfast. Each pair of opening movements is an adagio and fugue, joined by an unresolved 

chord in the A minor and C major. The first movements of the G minor and A minor are

covered in highly elaborate ornaments. The simpler ABA form of the G-minor Adagio gives

us a wonderful opportunity to compare the different ornaments of the parallel first and last

sections. The C-major Adagio is an entirely different concept, almost not a movement in

its own right but rather an extended introduction, with a beginning that opens like a sunrise

followed by a gradual unfolding of the music.

The subjects of the G-minor and A-minor Fugas are equally brief, but the G minor

is much more compact in structure. This movement was my first insight into hearing 

beyond the violin in Bach's solo violin works; to my ears the organ with its variety of stops

is often present, particularly in the pedal points of the coda. The more complex A-minor

Fuga features a countersubject in a descending chromatic line and both themes in inversion. 

The C-major Fuga is a stunning masterpiece. The subject is taken from the chorale tune

"Komm, Heiliger Geist, Herr Gott" (Come, Holy Ghost, Lord and God). Bach's inventive

treatment of this theme includes major and minor, double fugue, stretto, inversion, and

even burying the theme in single-voice eighth notes. The density of his polyphony uses as

many as four voices, one per string. This is an unparalleled academic achievement, yet the 

result is a feeling of transcendence and ecstasy.

Each third movement is in a key that contrasts with the rest of the sonata. The lilting

Siciliana conjures up a trio sonata, with a melodic bass line and two treble voices in duet.

The two voices of the Andante have distinct roles, melody and accompaniment. The delicate

Largo includes only the barest addition of a few harmony notes here and there. All of the last

movements are single-voiced and in binary form, though with complex multi-voiced writing

buried within, and numerous cross-rhythms. The A-minor Allegro has the most frequent use

of written dynamics in Bach's cycle, with various echoes and a subito piano near the end.

The brilliance of the C-major Allegro assai seems to suggest the E-major Prelude that follows.

The Partitas are suites of dance movements. Bach follows the standard Italianate

sequence of Allemande, Corrente, Sarabande, and Gigue in his D-minor Partita, but deviates

from it in the last movement of the B minor, substituting an intriguingly titled Tempo di

Borea. (Perhaps this was a nod to Pisendel, whose earlier sonata had concluded with a Giga

and Variation.) Despite the fact that none of these dances were meant to accompany actual

dancing, Bach is often meticulous in his adherence to form, such as the tags at the end of 

each half of the Allemandes where the dancers would bow to each other.

6 • National Gallery of Art

Across the Partitas, Bach uses different spellings of the same movement titles to

suggest stylistic differences. The B minor has the feel of an older aesthetic. Seventeenthcentury influences include a Sarabande, which is flowing rather than lingering, and a variation

of each movement in "division" style. Particularly in the outer movements, the affect is

theatrical, evoking an orchestra accompanying dancers onstage rather than chamber music.

In contrast, the D-minor Partita has the more intimate feel of a single fiddler, or a

few of them. The first four movements could form a suite of their own, but it turns out that

they are leading up to one of the pinnacles of all music. Much has been written about the

Ciaconna as a monumental showpiece, or a journey through the deepest emotions. The

theory that Bach wrote it as a memorial to his first wife has been convincingly debunked, 

but we still continue to hope that perhaps it has some hidden, poignant extramusical

meaning such as the crucifixion. Yet, the music need not justify itself beyond its notes and

the emotions they portray. These thirty-four imaginative variations in three sections are

grand, playful, peaceful, uncertain, triumphant, and tragic. Yet, somehow, Bach never loses

the spirit of the dance.

The feeling that I always get from the E-major Partita is one of sheer happiness, 

capturing the delight of the fashionable French style without the fussiness. The Gavotte, 

often played as a stand-alone like the Prelude, is a rare instance of a Rondo movement

in Bach's output. The elegant Loure and the first Minuet contrast with the rustic flavor of

the Bouree and the musette-like second Minuet. Having lived and breathed the writtenout ornaments of Couperin and Marais for many years, it felt natural to sprinkle some 

of these characteristic decorations onto Bach's pseudo-French dances. How wonderful

that he concludes his entire cycle not with an emphatic statement but with a cute little

Gigue that smiles and waves as it makes its lighthearted exit.

A note about the instrument: I began playing these works with a baroque bow at age

fourteen, and since age eighteen, I have never played them with anything else. Whether

paired with a baroque violin or with my primary concert violin in modern set-up, a modernized 1742 Guarneri del Gesu, the articulations and colors of the baroque bow enable me

to more easily and effectively achieve my vision for Bach's music. I offer this performance

to you in the spirit of Bach: Soli Deo Gloria.

Program notes by Rachel Barton Pine

74th Season • 7