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The Seventy-Third Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

3,047th Concert

Irina Nuzova, pianist

Mara Milkis, violinist

Sophie Shao, cellist

March 29, 2015

Sunday, 3:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court
Program

Lili Boulanger (1893-1918)

Trois morceaux pour piano (1914)

D’un vieux jardin

D’un jardin clair

Cortege

Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979)

Sonatafor Viola (Cello) and Piano (1919)

Impetuoso

Vivace

Adagio; Allegro

Irina Tseslyukevich (b. 1955), text by Tokuboku Yahikawa

It Seems in Life Past You Were My Sister, Sad Cuckoo

Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931)

Chaconne (1962)

Clara Schumann (1819-1896)

Piano Trio in G minor, op. 17 (1846)

Allegro moderato

Scherzo: Tempo di menuetto

Andante

Allegretto

The Musicians

IRINA NUZOVA

Winner ofthe Bruce Hungerford Award at the Young Concert Artists in New

York, pianist Irina Nuzova has appeared as a soloist and as a chamber musician

in the United States, Europe, and South America. She has played at the

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Music in the Park Series 

in St. Paul, the University ofWisconsin Milwaukee, Weill Recital Hall in

New York, Yale University, and the National Gallery ofArt and the Phillips

Collection in Washington, DC. She has also appeared on numerous live

radio interviews and performances.

Nuzova is a native of Moscow, Russia, where she studied at the Gnessin

Academy of Music with Alexander Satz before moving to the United States. 

She holds degrees from the Hartt School of Music, the Juilliard School, and

the Manhattan School of Music.

Nuzova is a member ofthe Phillips Camerata at the Phillips Collection

and is on the piano faculty of New York’s Special Music School and Italy’s

InterHarmony International Music Festival. She currently teaches master

classes and serves as a jury panelist for New Jersey’s Young Pianist Competition.

MARA MILKIS

Born in Odessa, Texas, and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia, violinist Mara

Milkis immigrated to Canada to continue her education at the Banff Centre

of Fine Arts and the University ofToronto. As the leader of a string-quartetin-residence, she continued with an assistantship at Indiana University. A

disciple of Lorand Fenyves, Josef Gingold, Aron Knayfel, and Zoltan Szekely,

Milkis has participated in numerous master classes with William Primrose,

Gyorgy Sebok, Oscar Shumsky, Janos Starker, and Karen Tuttle. Milkis has

held concertmaster positions with the Mid-Atlantic Chamber Orchestra,

the New American Chamber Orchestra, the New York City Symphony, and

the Windsor Symphony, and has been the lead violinist ofseveral chamber

groups, including Les Amis, the Chamber Arts String Quartet, and the New

York Concertino Ensemble. Milkis has appeared on stages throughout the

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world, such as the Great Hall of St. Petersburg, the Great Hall in Taipei,

Merlcin Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Wigmore Hall, and Town Hall and Trinity

Church in New York City.

Milkis has also been on the faculty ofboth Bridgeport University in

Connecticut and InterHarmony International Music Festival in Germany

and Italy. Currently she lives in New York City, playing chamber music,

teaching at the Kaufman Center, and serving as vice president ofthe Brooklyn Music Teachers’ Guild.

SOPHIE SHAO

Cellist Sophie Shao received an Avery Fisher Career Grant at age nineteen,

in addition to winning a prize at the 2001 Rostropovich Competition and

being a laureate ofthe xn International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2002.

She has given the world premiere performances of Howard Shore’s Mythic

Gardens, a concerto written for her, and Richard Wilson’s Concertofor Cello

and Mezzo-Soprano with Leon Botstein and the American Symphony

Orchestra. She has also appeared as soloist with the bbc Concert Orchestra

and Keith Lockhart in performances ofthe Elgar and Haydn C major concertos. She has performed Saint-Saens’s La Muse et lepoete with violinist

Miranda Cuckson at the Bard Music Festival and presented Bach’s Six Suites

in one afternoon at Union College in Schenectady, New York. She has made

recital and chamber music appearances 'with the Philadelphia Chamber Music 

Society, Chamber Music Northwest, Middlebury College, and Vassar College.

Shao studied at the Curtis Institute with David Soyer and Felix Galimir. 

Upon graduating, she continued with Aldo Parisot at Yale University, receiving a Bachelor ofArts degree in religious studies and a Master of Music

degree from the Yale School of Music, where she was enrolled as a Paul and

Daisy Soros Fellow. Shao plays on an Honore Derazey cello previously

owned by Pablo Casals.

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Program Notes

The younger sister offamed composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger (1887-

1979), Lili Boulanger was a child prodigy whose talent was evident beginning at age two. Her parents were both well-connected musicians, and it 

was their friend, Gabriel Faure (1845-1924), who first discovered that Lili

had perfect pitch. Lili competed in the Prix de Rome in 1912, but collapsed

during her performance from illness. She did return the next year to win the

composition prize, becoming the first woman to win for her Faust et Helene.

Lili suffered from chronic illness, beginning with bronchial pneumonia and

complicated by Crohn’s Disease, which led to her premature death. However

she remained active, traveling often to Italy and helping Nadia support French

soldiers during World War 1.

Rebecca Clarke was an English composer best known for her chamber

music featuring the viola. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music and

the Royal College of Music in London and was one ofthe first female professional orchestral players. She settled permanently in New York City after

being disowned by her father in 1916, and in 1944 married the composer

and pianist James Friskin. Clarke produced a small oeuvre, but these works

gained considerable attention from scholars and performers following a

1976 revival ofinterest in her music, which culminated in the establishment

ofthe Rebecca Clarke Society in 2000. Clarke entered her Sonatafor Viola

and Piano in a 1919 competition, and out ofthe seventy-two entries she tied

with Swiss composer Ernest Bloch for first place. The sonata demonstrates

an affinity for the modes and the whole-tone scale, as Clarke’s primary

influences were Debussy and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Belarusian pianist and composer Irina Tseslyukevich graduated from

the Leningrad Conservatory with graduate and post-graduate degrees under

the guidance ofVladimir Arzumanov and Boris Tishchenko. Since 1981

Tseslyukevich has been a composition teacher at the A. P. Petrov school of

music, as well as a member ofthe Russian Union ofComposers. She has

participated in numerous international festivals. Her style is influenced by

post-romanticism and primitivism and features irony and rhetorical clarity.

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Her oeuvre includes six operas, two ballets, musical scores for theater and

films, and symphonic, chamber, and vocal music. She has also composed

piano, choral, and ensemble music for children.

Sofia Gubaidulina was born in Soviet Russia, and as she grew up she

viewed music as an escape from her country’s sociopolitical atmosphere.

Aesthetic themes in her compositions include human transcendence and

mystical spiritualism. A Russian Orthodox Christian, Gubaidulina has

associated music with the divine, using a mixture of chromaticism and

diatonicism to simulate the struggle between the human and the divine.

Structure is an important component in her works—her Chaconne is a

reference to the baroque form used most masterfully by Johann Sebastian

Bach in his chaconne from the Second Violin Partita (1720). Gubaidulina

wrote her entire piano output between 1962—1978, during her early compositional period, and her Chaconne is a stunning achievement ofmelodic

evolution and transformation.

One ofthe most talented pianists ofthe romantic era and wife of Robert

Schumann, Clara Schumann enjoyed a distinguished career as a composer

and performer. Robert was not particularly supportive ofClara’s artistic

aspirations. In one letter shortly after their marriage, he wrote her, “Ifyou

were not to be forgotten as an artist, would you not be beloved as a wife?

The first year of our marriage you shall forget the artist, you shall live only

for yourself and your house and your husband. Just wait and see how I will

make you forget the artist—because the wife stands even higher than the

artist.” She remained devoted, at times stagnating in her piano practice

and composition to allow Robert to compose in silence. She managed his

business affairs while serving as the family’s primary breadwinner through

her own career as a performer. She also bore and mothered eight children,

and cared for Robert during his episodes ofmental illness. That she was able

to achieve such success is an amazing testament to her artistic will and talent.

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Clara outlived Robert by over forty years, touring often with the legendary

violinist, Joseph Joachim (1831-1907), and remaining close to Johannes Brahms, 

who died soon after her. She did write one orchestral piece and one piano

concerto, but generally she was most comfortable writing lieder and chamber

music. She initially dismissed her Piano Trio in G minor, op. 17 as “effeminate

and sentimental,” but it is one ofher finest works. Felix Mendelssohn (1809-

1847) was quite fond ofthe work, especially its second movement in his own

“song without words” style, and the fugato in the development ofthe finale.

Program Notes by Michael Jacko, Music Program Assistant, National Gallery ofArt.

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