For the convenience of concertgoers 

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:oo pm.

The use of cameras or recording equipment during the

performance is not allowed. Please be sure that cell phones, 

pagers, and other electronic devices are turned off.

Please note that late entry or reentry of

the West Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

Mailing address

2000b South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-eighth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,770th Concert

Miceal O’Rourke, pianist

Stephen Ackert, narrator

February 21, 2010 

Sunday, 6:30 pm

East Building Auditorium

Admissionfree
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Preludes, Book I (1907-1910)

Lent et grave... Danseuses de Delphes (Delphic dancers)

Modere... Voiles (Sails)

Anime... Le vent dans la plaine (The wind on the plain)

Modere.. .“Les sons et les parfums tournes dans Fair du soir”

(Sounds and scents swirl in the evening air)

Tres modere... Les collines d’Anacapri (The hills of Anacapri)

Triste et lent... Des pas sur la neige (Footprints in the snow)

Anime et tumultueux... Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest

(What the west wind saw)

Tres calme et doucement expressif... La fille aux cheveux de lin 

(The girl with flaxen hair)

Moderement anime... La serenade interrompue

(The interrupted serenade)

Profondement calme... La cathedrale engloutie 

(The submerged cathedral)

Capricieux et leger... La danse de Puck (Puck’s dance)

Modere... Minstrels

Program The Musicians

MICEAL O’ROURKE

Internationally regarded as the leading interpreter ofthe music of Dublinborn composer John Field (1782-1837), Irish pianist Miceal O’Rourke is

equally at home with the music ofChopin, Debussy, Ravel, and numerous

other composers. O’Rourke graduated from University College, Dublin, and

pursued his musical studies in Antwerp and Paris, where he now lives. He

studied piano under Marcel Ciampi, a pupil of Debussy. Since 1976, when

O’Rourke gave his first public recital in France, he has built a career as a

highly respected performer, playing at major venues including the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Great Hall ofthe Moscow Conservatory, the 

National Concert Hall in Dublin, Philharmonia Hall in Saint Petersburg, 

Queen Elizabeth Hall and Royal Festival Hall in London, Salle Pleyel in

Paris, and Symphony Hall in Boston, as well the John F. Kennedy Center

for the Performing Arts and the National Gallery of Art. His most recent

performances with orchestra include concertos by Ravel and Mozart with 

the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, concertos by Field with the 

Moscow Symphony Orchestra, and Rachmaninoffs third piano concerto 

with the National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin. His performance of the

Rachmaninoff with the Boston Symphony Orchestra earned the following

praise from the reviewer for the Boston Globe: “A tremendous virtuoso,

playing with the simplicity of a child singing.”

O’Rourke’s command of a wide variety ofstyles is reflected in his 

extensive discography on the Chandos label. His eight best-selling CDS

featuring the music ofJohn Field have won many awards, including the

Classic CD Award (Great Britain), Disques de l’Annee of Le Monde de la

Musique (France), and Penguin Awards (Great Britain). He has also recorded 

albums ofworks by Chopin, Debussy, and Schumann and world premiere

recordings of works by George Frederic Pinto (1786-1806) and Michele

Esposito (1855-1929). O’Rourke’s televised recordings ofChopin’s complete 

nocturnes have been broadcast throughout Australia, Europe, and the 

United States, and he has introduced two generations ofmusic lovers to the

3
music ofJohn Field through his recordings ofthat composer’s complete

piano concerti, sonatas, and nocturnes. In 1994 he was awarded the prestigious Chopin Medal by the Warsaw Frederic Chopin Society in recognition

of his “outstanding Chopin playing”—the first and only pianist to date to

be so honored. Miceal O’Rourke appears at the National Gallery by arrangement with John Gingrich Management, Inc., of New York City.

STEPHEN ACKERT

Stephen Ackert is the head ofthe music department at the National Gallery 

of Art and a member ofthe music faculty of Northern Virginia Community

College in Alexandria, Virginia. He studied the organ at Oberlin College 

Northwestern University, and the Hochschule fur Musik in Frankfurt am

Main, Germany, where his teachers were Helmut Walcha and Maria JaegerJung. Ackert completed his doctoral studies in organ in 1974 at the University

ofWisconsin in Madison (usa). From 1974 to 1978 he had the unique opportunity to work as a professional musician in Iran, serving as music advisor

and resident keyboard artist ofthe National Iranian Radio and Television 

Network. A resident ofthe Washington, D.C., area since 1979, Ackert has

performed on organ, harpsichord, and piano in many ofits prime venues,

including the Kennedy Center, the National Shrine ofthe Immaculate Conception, the National Cathedral, and the German Embassy. In 2007 he undertook his eighth recital tour ofhistoric concert halls and churches in Germany.

In addition to administering the National Gallery’s concert series, Ackert 

lectures on interrelationships between music and art. Since 1990 his talks 

have been a part ofthe National Gallery’s programming. He has also presented them at the Austrian and German embassies, the Kennedy Center, 

the San Antonio Museum of Art, and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

4

Program Notes

A denizen of Paris for all but a few months of his life, Claude Debussy was

surrounded by the vibrant community of artists who also chose Paris as a

place to live and work. They recognized it as the world’s primary center for 

the visual arts, a ranking it held well into the twentieth century. He was 

profoundly influenced by this environment, as evidenced by his music and

what he wrote about it in letters and program notes. Each of Debussy’s

Preludes, Book I (1907-1910) is a short but substantial work that conveys a

particular mood or impression suggested by its title. Even though he subscribed to the “theory of correspondences”—an aspect ofsymbolist thought

that equates creative activity in music with creative activity in poetry and the

visual arts—as formulated by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), Debussy was 

wary of any labeling of his pieces as mere illustrations or impressions. The

references to visual images that appear in his manuscript for the Preludes,

Book I, are added as a subtitle at the end of each Prelude, a kind offootnote.

In other writings, he vigorously defended his Preludes, and indeed all of his

music, as “pure music.”

Through his studies in the late 1960s with the celebrated French pianist

and teacher Marcel Ciampi, Miceal O’Rourke gained a unique insight into

the Debussy Preludes. Ciampi was one ofthe last students of Debussy, giving

him the unique opportunity to study these works with the composer. He

made careful notes on the comments he received from his teacher, and the

scores that were used in those lessons contain subtle supplementary indications that were written in the margins by Debussy himself. Ciampi allowed

O’Rourke to make copies ofthe notes and the scores, and the unique information they contain has served as the basis for O’Rourke’s interpretation of

the Preludes in performances and recordings.

Ciampi’s notes include some specific comments from Debussy about

the subtitles he applied to the Preludes. Some were inspired by poems: “Le

vent de la plaine [suspend son haleine]” (The wind on the plain holds its 

breath) comes from one of Paul Verlaine’s (1844-1896) “Romances sans

paroles” (1873). “Les sons et les parfums toumes dans Fair du soir” (Sounds

5
and scents swirl in the evening air) comes from Baudelaire’s “Harmonie du

soir” from the collection Fleurs du mal (1857).

“Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest” (What the west wind saw) is not a quote, but

refers to these lines from one of Debussy’s favorite poems by Charles

Grandmougin (1850-1930):

At night in the mayhem ofthe tempest,

Who can tell ifthe clamor rising to the heavens

Is not the searing cry

Ofsouls in anguish?

“La fille aux cheveux de lin” (The girl with flaxen hair) is a line from

Leconte de Lisle’s (1818-1894) “Chanson ecossaise:”

Whence comes that song this chilly morning?

Tis the girl with flaxen hair, the girl with cherry lips.

In other examples, the subtitle refers to a visual image that had special

appeal for Debussy. “Danseuses de Delphes” is the French name for a famous

artifact of ancient Greek sculpture— three figures in high relief above a

column of acanthus found in 1894 near the Sanctuary of Pythian Apollo

at Delphi. Debussy knew this sculpture in reproduction. Voiles (Sails) and

La cathedrale engloutie (The submerged cathedral) call to mind scenes at 

the seaside, a favorite place ofrespite for the composer. At the turn of the

twentieth century, boats with sails still outnumbered motorized craft in any 

port or marina, and many ofthem sported brightly colored sails. Debussy

captures both the motion and the colors ofthis scene. The submerged

cathedral recalls a legend ofthe port city of Ys, where fishermen tell how,

at dawn, under certain atmospheric conditions, a great cathedral surges up

out ofthe sea, its bells pealing and its organ thundering. As it sinks back

into the water, the echoes ofits sounds are slow to fade away.

Program notes by Stephen Ackert

o

6

Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

Harold }ones, flutist 

Peter Vinograde, pianist

Music by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson

and other composers

Presented in honor of

African American History Month

February 24, 2010

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

co

)musica(aperta

Music by Bizet, Buononcini, Gabrieli,

Golijov, Ortiz, and Shostakovich

Presented in honor of

The Sacred Made Real:

Spanish Painting and Sculpture, 1600-1700

February 28, 2010

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court