For the convenience of concertgoers 

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:00 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-fifth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

“Sixty-five, but not retiring”

National Gallery ofArt

2,595th Concert

Shaun Tirrell, pianist

December 3, 2006

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
The Mason and Hamlin concert grand piano used in this performance 

was provided by Piano Craft of Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Program

Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757)

Sonata in F Minor, K. 466 (1738)

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)

Ballade in F Major, op. 38 (1840)

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

Funerailles (1849)

Vallot d’Obtrmann (1855)

INTERMISSION

Sergey Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

Sonata no. 2 in B-flat Minor, op. 36 (1913)

Allegro agitato

Lento

Allegro molto
The Musician

Shaun Tirrell is an internationally acclaimed pianist who has made his 

home in the Washington, dc, area since 1995. A graduate ofthe Peabody

Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, where he studied under Julian Martin 

and earned a master ofmusic degree and an artist diploma, he received a

rave review in the Washington Post for his 1995 debut recital at the Kennedy

Center’s Terrace Theater. The reviewer praised his “impressive control of

phrasing and dynamics and the kind of expressive freedom and emotional

depth that lie in the heart ofChopin’s style.” In June 2005 he was the featured

soloist with the Saint Petersburg (Russia) Symphony Orchestra, playing

George Gershwin’s Concerto in F Major. Tirrell’s solo debut in Dublin with 

the National Symphony Orchestra ofIreland was broadcast live over the radio

and was critically acclaimed in the Irish Times and the Irish Independent.

Tirrell has recently performed in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, playing three different concertos with the National Symphony Orchestra and 

several works for two or more pianos. He has performed with the Collegium 

Musicum of Heidelberg, Germany, under the baton of Peter Shannon, and

with the Chesapeake Chamber Orchestra, with which he played Franz

Liszfs Totentanz as well as works by Camille Saint-Saens and Felix Mendelssohn. He made his Boston debut in Jordan Hall with the Longwood Symphony Orchestra, followed by a live radio recital on Boston’s classical music

station, wgbh.

Tirrell earned a bachelor ofmusic degree at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Joseph Schwartz and received

the college’s most prestigious prizes for pianists, the John Elvin Prize and 

the Rudolph Serkin Prize. He also shared the first prize in the Pro Piano

International Competition in New York. He has recorded a solo CD on the 

mrc label featuring the works of Bach, Chopin, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff.

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Program Notes

In this program, Shaun Tirrell shares with the National Gallery audience his

skill in interpreting both baroque and romantic music. To represent the music

ofthe early eighteenth-century masters ofthe harpsichord (the keyboard

instrument of choice in that era), he has chosen a sonata by Domenico 

Scarlatti. Born in Naples, Scarlatti was employed as harpsichord instructor

to Infanta Maria Barbara (1711-1758), daughter of King John v of Portugal.

When she married the crown prince ofthe Spanish royal family, Scarlatti

moved with her household to Madrid. His relatively light duties at court left

him ample time to compose, and he produced operas, oratorios, and songs

for solo voice in addition to more than five hundred keyboard sonatas. The

resurgence ofinterest in Scarlatti owes much to the research ofthe American harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick (1911-1984), whose chronology provides the sonatas with their unique “K” numbers.

Each ofthe three romantic composers represented in the program was

a legendary virtuoso whose compositions were pivotal to the development 

of piano literature. Frederic Chopin and Franz Liszt were almost the same 

age and knew each other’s work well. There is much evidence ofChopin’s

influence in the music of Liszt, especially in the works written after Chopin’s

death, including Funerailles. Many scholars believe Liszt composed this piece

in 1849 to commemorate Chopin’s death, in October ofthat year. Others 

theorize that this music ofremembrance was written in honor ofthree of 

Liszfs friends who perished in the revolutionary turmoil of 1848. The impetus for Liszt’s tone poem Vallee d’Ohermann was a novel by Etienne Pivert

de Senancour (1770-1846). Liszt evokes a transcendental experience ofthe 

novel’s main character with a melancholy theme that is transformed in the 

course ofthree sections into a joyful paean.

Chopin’s Ballade in F Major, op. 38, is dedicated to another close contemporary, Robert Schumann (1810-1856). Both composers were drawn to the 

power of poetry, and Chopin’s inspiration for this work was a ballade entitled

Switez, by the Polish nationalist poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855). The

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ballad is marked by a generous use ofrubato, tempo fluctuations that allow 

the inner chromaticism ofthe music to blossom more fully.

Sergey Rachmaninoffis certainly the most famous ofthe pianist-composers who carried the romantic tradition into the twentieth century. His

keyboard music is not only florid in texture and massive in scale, but also

very demanding on the pianisfs technique, thanks to the unusual size of

the composer’s hands, which could easily span an octave-and-a-half on the

piano keyboard. When he wrote his second piano sonata in September 1913,

Rachmaninoffwas occupying a small apartment on the Piazza di Spagna in

Rome that had once been inhabited by Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893).

Rachmaninoffwas given to mystical musings, and it is likely that he sensed

the presence ofthe older composer. He may have remembered meeting

Tchaikovsky years earlier in the home offriend and fellow student Matvey

Pressmann, who is the dedicatee ofthe sonata. In 1931 Rachmaninoffrevised 

the sonata, reducing its length by 120 measures and simplifying sections

that he deemed too complex. The later version reflects an emphasis on lyricism that marked his late years and shows how much his style changed over 

the course oftwenty years. The three movements are closely linked; the second proceeds into the third without interruption.

Program notes by Sorab Modi

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Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

Anonymous 4

With special guests

Darol Anger,fiddler and mandolin player

Scott Nygaard, guitarist

“Long Time Traveling”

American hymns and tunes from the 19th century

December 10, 2006

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court