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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 ofthe

West Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

For the convenience of concertgoers, 

the Garden Cafe remains open for light refreshments

until 6:00 pm on Sundays.

Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

vruw.nga.gov

Concerts are made possible in part through the generosity of donors

to the National Gallery of Art through The Circle. Reserved seating is

available in recognition oftheir support. Please contact the development

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

cover: Mary Cassatt, Lady in Black in a Loge, Facing Right, 1879-1880,

softground etching, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Rosenwald Collection

The Seventy-second Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

3,003rd Concert

Emmanuel Ceysson, harpist

Presented in honor of Degas/Cassatt and in partnership with

the Cultural Service ofthe Embassy of France,

through a grant from safran

June 1, 2014

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Gabriel Pierne (1863-1937)

Impromptu-Caprice

Albert Zabel (1834-1910)

Fantaisie sur les motifs de I’opera Faust de Charles Gounod

Alphonse Hasselmans (1845-1912)

La Source (The Fountain)

Henriette Renie (1875-1956)

Legende, d’apres Les Fifes de Leconte de Lisle

(Legend, after The Elves by Leconte de Lisle)

INTERMISSION

Andre Caplet (1878-1925)

Deux divertissements (Two Divertimentos)

A la fran^aise (In French Style)

A l’espagnole (In Spanish Style)

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Preludes

La fille aux cheveux de lin (The Girl with Flaxen Hair)

Bruyeres (Heaths)

Marcel Tournier (1879-1951)

Vers la source dans le hois (Toward the Fountain in the Woods)

Gabriel Faure (1845-1924)

Une chatelaine en sa tour, op. 110 (A Lady ofthe Castle in Her Tower)

Emmanuel Ceysson (b. 1984)

Paraphrase sur Carmen de Georges Bizet

The Musician

Described by French reviewers as the “enfant terrible” ofthe harp, Emmanuel

Ceysson sweeps away all the cliches associated with his instrument. His

infectious enthusiasm and boundless energy place the instrument and its

music in a world where poetry vies with temperament. His performing career,

which began in 2005, has already taken him to Carnegie Hall, Paris’ Salle

Gaveau, Vienna’s Konzerthaus, London’s Wigmore Hall, and the Berlin 

Philharmonie, where his recitals, concerto appearances, and chamber music

performances have won high praise from the press. In 2006 he joined the

Orchestra ofthe Opera National de Paris as principal harpist—in that capacity, he regularly earns praise for his solo passages from the Paris opera critics.

Among the awards and prizes Ceysson has garnered are the gold medal

and a special performance prize at the 2004 usa International Harp Competition in Bloomington, Indiana; first prize and six special prizes at the 2006

New York Young Concert Artist Auditions; and first prize at the prestigious

ard Competition in Munich in September 2009, making him the first

harpist to obtain awards at three major international events in such a short

span oftime. In 2010 he was nominated in the category “Solo Instrumental

Discovery” at Les Victoires de la Musique Classique, an annual French

classical music award event; and in 2011 he received a Prix d’Encouragement

from the Academie des Beaux-Arts de l’lnstitut de France (Fondation

Simone Del Duca) in recognition ofthe successes ofhis early career.

Recording for the Naive label since 2012, Ceysson is currently preparing

a solo album based on famous opera themes. A visiting professor at the

Royal Academy of Music in London from 2005 to 2009, he has taught at 

the International Summer Academy in Nice since 2010 and gives regular

master classes in France and in the course ofhis international tours.

3
Program Notes

The first halfoftonight’s concert features works that were popular and frequently played during the time Mary Cassatt first visited Paris (in 1855, when

she was eleven years old). These romantic works are either fantasies on

well-known opera melodies or works in other genres that were famous at the

time. By the time Cassatt returned to Paris in the early 1870s, the aspects of

symbolism that were later characterized as impressionism were influencing

both painters and composers. The second halfofthe concert presents symbolism in music through three ofits major emissaries—Debussy, Faure, and

Caplet—as well as harpist and composer Marcel Toumier, who was the chief

French proponent ofmusic for the harp in that era.

Gabriel Pierne was one ofthe many French composers who flourished

in the latter part ofthe nineteenth century and the early part ofthe twentieth, but his name today appears rarely in concert programs outside his

native country, despite the attractiveness ofmuch ofhis music. A pupil of

Cesar Franck (1822-1890) and Jules Massenet (1842-1912), Pierne was 

something of a child prodigy. An organist and conductor, his most notable

early performance was the 1910 world premiere ofIgor Stravinsky’s ballet

The Firebird at the Ballets Russes in Paris. His Impromptu-Caprice is an early 

piece that was also published for piano.

Born in Berlin, Albert Zabel was already at age eleven touring internationally as a harpist with a band led by Austrian composer and bandmaster

Joseph Gungl (1809-1889). Through a scholarship obtained for him by

Giacomo Meyerbeer (who was revered in the 1850s as the rising star among

Parisian opera composers), Zabel studied at the Berlin Institut fur Kirchenmusik, where his harp teacher was Louis Grimm (1820-1882). At fourteen,

he was appointed solo harpist to the Berlin Opera, and in 1855 he emigrated

to Saint Petersburg to become solo harpist with the Imperial Ballet, remaining there for the rest ofhis life.

4

Belgian-born harpist and composer Alphonse Hasselmans first studied

the harp with his father, and later with leading harpists in Stuttgart, Brussels, and Paris. The early part ofhis career was spent in Brussels, where he

became harpist at the Theatre de la Monnaie. In 1877 he gave eight successful solo concerts in Paris, which brought him appointments as solo harpist

with the orchestras ofthat city’s Conservatoire, Opera, and Opera-Comique.

Appointed professor ofharp at the Conservatoire in 1884, he revised the

harp course, published an important article on harp technique, and, as a

virtuoso performer, revived interest in his instrument as the twentieth

century approached. In addition to La Source, his op. 44, he wrote several

other solo works and numerous transcriptions.

Revered during her lifetime and since as “la grande dame de la harpe

(the great lady ofthe harp),” Henriette Renie belongs to both the romantic

and the impressionist eras in French music history. As the story goes, she

saw Adolphe Hasselmans perform in concert when she was five years old,

and declared that he would become her harp teacher. Allowed to begin

lessons with Hasselmans at the Paris Conservatoire at age eight, she won

a second prize in harp performance when she was ten. (The committee

had actually voted to give her first prize, but the director ofthe institution

decided the first prize was inappropriate for such a young performer.) Poetic 

justice prevailed the next year (1886), when she won the conservatory’s

Premier Prix. After graduating the following year, Renie gave performances

throughout France. Encouraged by her harmony teachers to compose, in

1903 she wrote Legende, a substantial harp solo inspired by the poem Les

Fifes by Charles Marie Rene Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894). Renie was active

in promoting the double-action harp of Sebastien Erard (1752-1831), a

French instrument maker of German origin. It was an offhand complaint

about pedals that Renie made to another famous manufacturer ofharps,

Gustave Lyon (1857-1936), which inspired the creation ofthe chromatic

harp. Her compositions have been mainstays ofthe harp repertoire throughout the fifty-plus years since her death.

5
A trusted collaborator ofClaude Debussy, Andre Caplet won the Prix de 

Rome in 1901, establishing himself as a composer and later as a conductor

of eminence. Debussy entrusted him with completing the orchestration of

Le martyre de Saint-Sebastien (The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian) and the

direction ofits first performance. Though Caplet was not specifically a harp

composer, his Deux divertissements have become mainstays ofthe harp

concert repertoire. A veteran ofWorld War 1, Caplet suffered from pleurisy

after having been gassed in battle, and died at age forty-seven.

Claude Debussy composed his two books oftwenty-four Preludes between late 1909 and early 1913. He saw to it that the titles ofthe preludes

were not printed as a header above the first page, but as a footer on the last

page, suggesting that the title was inspired by the music and not the other

way around. Lafille aux cheveux de lin, from Book 1, is a tender paraphrase

of Scottish Song by Leconte de Lisle, and Bruyeres calls to mind an idyllic

English landscape.

Another protege ofHasselmans, Marcel Toumier is among the relatively

few important composers who were also virtuoso harpists. Not surprisingly,

his output is dominated by music for the harp, although he did compose

choral and stage works as well as chamber and piano pieces. While Toumier’s

music has generally remained outside the standard concert repertory, his

concert study Au Matin (In the Morning) appears regularly in concert and on

recordings. Evoking water flowing from a fountain, Vers la source dans la bois is

a miniature he composed in 1922.

A composer who achieved greatness without resorting to flamboyance

or pretension, Gabriel Faure wrote no symphonies or concertos, preferring

instead to write for the piano, voice, and small chamber groups. In addition

to his famous Requiem and numerous short choral works (some ofwhich will

be heard here next week, when the National Gallery ofArt Vocal Ensemble

sings the second concert in honor of Degas/Cassat), Faure wrote many songs

ofoutstanding beauty. He left only two works for harp—the Nocturne of1904,

dedicated to Hasselmans, and Une chatelaine en sa tour, which he completed in

1918. In typical symbolist fashion, the composer took his inspiration from the

6

second line of a poem by Paul Verlaine (1844-1896): “Une sainte en son

aureole/Une chatelaine en sa tour..In 1870 Faure had written a setting for

the entire poem, titled Une sainte en son aureole, but here the “impressionist”

composer needed only a single idea to inspire a delicious musical moment.

In honor ofEdgar Degas and Mary Cassatt, two artists for whom the Paris 

Opera was an important source ofinspiration, and following the examples of

his harpist/composer predecessors, Emmanuel Ceysson finishes his program

with his own transcription ofmusic from the score ofone ofthe most popular

of all French operas, Bizet’s Carmen. Written in 1875, Carmen incorporates

romantic tragedy and proletarian realism in a way that offended most critics

and audience members at the time. Its initial short run in Paris was deemed a

flop, and it was not seen again in Paris until 1883. It met with immediate

success, however, in Austria and Germany, and its New York premiere in 1878

was also enthusiastically received.

Program notes based on materials provided by Emmanuel Ceysson

Upcoming Concert at the National Gallery ofArt

United States Army Chorus and Saint Albans School Chorale

Music by Biebel, Thompson, Wilhousky, and others

June 5, 2014

Thursday, 12:10 pm

West Building, West Garden Court