with Schumann’s Camaval). The composer drifts from one room of

the exhibition to another, hence the recurring Promenades. While

Ravel’s orchestrated version ofPicturesatanExhibition is better known

today, it is not considered an improvement over Mussorgsky’s original piano edition, which is in its own right a masterpiece.

- Program notes by Elmer Booze

February 1998

15 Kolja Blacher, violinist

Jessica Krash, pianist

Schumann:

Prokofiev:

Brahms:

Ravel:

Sonata in A Minor

Sonata No. 1

Sonata in A Major

Oiseaux tristes

from Miroirs

Tzigane

22 Talich String Quartet Beethoven:

Mozart:

Janacek:

Quartet; Opus 131

Quartetin D Major

QuartetNo. 1

March 1998

1 National Gallery Orchestra

George Manos, conductor

Delius:

Dvorak:

Schumann:

On Hearing the

First Cuckoo in

Spring

Scherzo

capriccioso

Symphony No. 1

The use ofcameras orrecording equipment

during theperformance is not allowed.

Forthe convenience ofconcertgoers

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:30pm.

The Fifty-sixth Season of

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and

E LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

2258th Concert

HUGH SUNG, pianist

Sunday Evening, February 8, 1998

at Seven O’Clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission Free

mL
PROGRAM

Muzio Clementi Sonata in B-flat Major

(1752-1832) Op. 24, No. 2 (1804)

Allegro con brio

Andante quasi allegretto

Rondo: Allegro assai

Maurice Ravel

(1875-1937)

Gaspard de la nuit

(1908)

Ondine

Le gibet

Scarbo

INTERMISSION

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky

(1839-1881)

Promenade

Gnomus

Promenade

The Old Castle

Promenade

In The Tuileries Gardens

Bydlo

Promenade

Pictures at an Exhibition

(1874)

Samuel Goldenberg and

Schmuyle

Promenade

The Market Place at

Limoges

The Catacombs

The Hut on Fowl’s Legs

The Great Gate of Kiev

Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks

Bom in Philadelphia in 1968, HUGH SUNG began his piano

studies with his mother at the age ofthree. At age eight he became

a pupil of Eleanor Sokoloff and Susan Starr, and at eleven he appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Upon entering

the Curtis Institute of Music in 1982, Mr. Sung became a pupil of

Jorge Bolet and Seymour Lipkin. Hugh Sung has performed as

soloist in the United States, Canada,Japan, and Korea. He has won

major prizes from the National Foundation for the Advancement of

the Arts, and the 1991 Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition. Mr. Sung appeared at the National Gallery in 1996, in recital

with violinist Aaron Rosand.

dementi’s Sonatain B-flatMajorwas first performed by the composer on Christmas Eve, 1781 in a program arranged by Emperor

Joseph II of Austria. That concert also included Mozart playing

some of his own works, having been devised as a contest between

the two composers. In a letter to his father following the concert,

Mozart criticized Clementi mercilessly, using such words as “charlatan” and “mechanical.” Mozart did not shrink from borrowing

from the composer he found so inferior, however. The theme ofthe

openingAllegro ofthe Clementi sonata became the principal theme

ofMozart’s Overture to TheMagic Flute.

Gaspardde la nuit was written in 1908 and derived its title from

the eponymous collection byAloysius Louis Bertrand (1807-1841),

an exponent ofchimerical poetrywho was held in awe by Baudelaire

and Mallarme. Bertrand attributed the poems in the collection to

the devil, alias Gaspard. Ravel’s desire was to “write a piano piece

that is even harder to play than Mily Balakirev’s oriental fantasy, 

Islamey.” Each of the three pieces teems with Herculean requirements: double notes that are effervescent and unrelenting (Ondine);

repeated bell-like notes, requiring extraordinary control (Legibet);

and forward surging runs, creating an inexorable charge (Scarbo).

Ravel creates in music the satanic elements inherent in all three

poems: Ondine, a water nymph with her contemptuous laughter; Le

gibet, a bell tolling atsunset as a corpse hangs from the gallows (Ravel’s

paraphrase); and Scarbo, a goblin appearing as a frightening apparition. 

One French writer observed: “[The pieces] are not atmospheric portraits in the style ofLiszt or Schumann, but psychological case studies,

observed and recorded with the incorruptibility ofan analyst.”

Deeply moved by the death of his friend, the stage designer, artist, and architect Victor Hartmann, Mussorgsky wrote Picturesatan

Exhibition in the space ofjust one month. Having visited a memorial exhibition of Hartmann’s paintings, the composer gave a musical impression ofthe various pictures (a comparison could be made