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Music Department

National Gallery ofArt

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

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to the National Gallery ofArt through The Circle. Reserved seating is

available in recognition oftheir support. Please contact the development

office at (202) 842-6450 or circle(a) nga.gov for more information.

The Seventy-Third Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

3,019th Concert

Alexander Shonert, violinist

Natalia Shonert, pianist

Presented in collaboration with the

Mutual Inspirations Festival and with assistance

from the Embassy ofthe Czech Republic

October 26, 2014

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)

Slavonic Dance in E Minor; op. 46

Alexander Shonert (b. 1972)

Fantasy Dedicated to F. Kajka for violin solo

Jaromir Vogel (b. 1943)

Menora

Piotr Illyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Meditation, op. 42, no. 1

Humoresque, op. 10, no. 2

Shonert

Fantasy Inspired by the Sephardic Melody Noches-Noches

Shonert

The Wind

Rodion Shchedrin (b. 1932)

Quasi Albeniz

INTERMISSION

Ernest Bloch (1880-1959)

Baal Shem

Vyacheslav Grokhovsky (b. 1945)

Jewish Melodies in a Fantasia

Shonert

Fantasy Inspired by Karel Hasler’s Melodies

Bedrich Smetana (1842-1884)

Vltava
The Musicians

ALEXANDER SHONERT

A graduate ofthe Novosibirsk Russian State Conservatory, Russian-born

violinist Alexander Shonert is known for his emotionally rich tone, intensity of

feeling, and the originality ofhis interpretations and improvisations. He has

received many honors, including Laureate ofthe Berlin International Competition (2003), the World prize ofAntonin Dvorak (2001), and the European

Prize ofGustav Mahler (2001). Since 1999, Shonert has made the musical city

of Prague his home, and has represented both the Czech Republic and the

Russian Federation at cultural events, including the 2009 convention ofthe

European Commission in Brussels. In recognition ofhis substantial contribution to Czech culture, he received the right of dual citizenship.

Active as a soloist and guest performer with orchestras throughout

Europe, Shonert has played frequently in the United States since 2005.

Among the wide variety ofmusicians with whom he has collaborated are the

popular Russian jazz pianist Leonid Ptashka and Ilya and Alina Levinsky,

with whom he appears as Trio Di Levone. In recent years, Shonert has developed and refined a concert program titled “Alexander Shonert Plays the

Jewish Classics and Gershwin,” which he performs as a duo with his mother,

pianist Natalia Shonert.

A popular and successful educator, Shonert administers his own music

school in Prague, employing the best teaching traditions ofthe Russian

violin school. Graduates ofhis academy play in various orchestras in Europe,

Russia, and the United States. Alexander Shonert plays a violin by the

renowned contemporary Czech violin maker Petr Zdrazil.

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NATALIA SHONERT

Born in Irkutsk, Russia, Natalia Shonert studied piano at that city’s musical

college and the Eastern Siberian State Academy ofCulture and Arts, where

she subsequently taught as a member ofthe faculty. Since 1999, she has

lived in Prague, where she collaborates with classical and opera singers and

has established her own school of piano, graduating many young players

who have gone on to prominence. Shonert has performed for the Czech

Parliament, for Czech Television, and at Bertramka (Mozart's preferred

residence while in Prague). In recognition ofher artistic achievement and

service to the Czech Republic, she was awarded The Rudolf 11 Prize, bestowed by the Masaryk Academy ofArt in Prague.

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Program Notes

This evening’s concert is one event in the 2014 Mutual Inspirations Festival,

sponsored by the Embassy ofthe Czech Republic in Washington, dc, and

focused on the life and work of Franz Kafka. In presenting music from

the Czech Jewish heritage, the musicians recreate, insofar as possible, the

author’s musical environment. On first examination, Kafka’s writings might

suggest that he had no abiding interest in music or a sense ofits power. He 

didn’t play an instrument, and he once admitted to his friend Max Brod that

he “couldn’t tell the difference between The Merry Widow and Tristan and

Isolde.” After attending a concert of Brahms’s chamber music, he made the

following entry in his diary (along with a penned portrait ofthree clerics who

had sat in a box near his): “The essence ofmy unmusicalness consists in my

inability to enjoy music connectedly. It only now and then has an effect on me,

and how seldom it is a musical one.”

But a deeper search in Kafka’s oeuvre shows that he shared with three

contemporary composers— Dvorak, Janacek, and Mahler—a distinctively

Eastern European tendency to refer back to folk memory to establish

identity and positive values. In Kafka’s case this was Jewish folk memory.

In his unfinished novel Amerika, for example, he attributes the ability

to play standard classics on the piano to a character who is bourgeois

and conventional, but in the earlier work Metamorphosis, he treats Grete’s

unsophisticated renditions offolk tunes on the violin much more sympathetically: “Her face was leant to one side, following the lines ofmusic

with a careful and melancholy expression.” In his last short story, “Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk,” Kafka cites music as the essence

ofreligious impulse, one that links a congregation with the sacerdotal

through the agency ofsong. Music and musical activity as a metaphor

appear repeatedly throughout his work, attesting to their subconscious

and often enigmatic effect on him.

Program Notes by Stephen Ackert, Senior Music Program Advisor,

National Gallery ofArt

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Upcoming Concerts at the National Gallery ofArt

Prague Philharmonic Choir

Music by Brahms and Dvorak

October 31, 2014

Friday, 3:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Francisco Bernier, guitarist

Music by De Narvaez, Sor, and other composers

In honor of El Greco in the National Gallery ofArt

and Washington-Area Collections: A /footh Anniversary Celebration

November 9, 2014

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

National Gallery ofArt New Music Ensemble

Music by Antosca and Oliver

November 16, 2014

Sunday, 3:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court