Jazz in the Garden

The Gallery’s 18th season ofJazz in the

Garden begins in May. This free concert

series features jazz artists performing a wide

variety ofstyles—traditional New Orleans

jazz, blues, swing, Ska, Funk, Pan-Caribbean

salsa, boogaloo, Go-go, and more—every 

Friday evening, May 18-August 24, from

5:00 to 8:30, at the National Gallery ofArt

Sculpture Garden.

To learn more about our concerts and 

performers, call the Gallery’s concert line 

at (202) 842-6941 or visit nga.gov/jazz or

nga.gov/music.

Admission to the National Gallery of Art 

and all of its programs is free of charge,

except as noted.

The use of cameras or recording equipment during the performance is not

allowed. Please be sure that all portable

electronic devices are turned off.

The department of music produced

these program notes. Copyright © 2018

Board ofTrustees, National Gallery of

Art, Washington

Concerts are made possible in part

through the generosity of donors to

the National Gallery ofArt through

The Circle. Reserved seating is available

in recognition of their support. Please 

contact the development office at

(202) 842-6450 or circle@nga.gov for 

more information.

nga.gov/music

76TH SEASON OF CONCERTS

MAY 20, 2018 / NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
Carrie Mae Weems, May Flowers, 2002. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund.

© Carrie Mae Weems, courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

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Program

Christina and Michelle Naughton, pianos

Gottesman Fund

MAY 20, 2018/3:30

WEST BUILDING, WEST GARDEN COURT

This concert is generously supported by The

in memory ofMilton M. Gottesman.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

(i756-i79i)

Sonata for Piano Four-Hands in 

D Major, K. 381 (K. 123a)

Allegro

Andante

Allegro molto

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Rondo for Piano Four-Hands in

A Major (“Grand Rondo”),

D. 951, op. 107

William Bolcom (b. 1938)

Recuerdos

Choro

Paseo

Valse Venezolano

Intermission

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)/

Gyorgy Kurtag (b. 1926)

Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, BWV 38

Gottes Zeit ist die allerheste Zeit, BWV 106

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

En Blanc et Noirfor Two Pianos

Avec emportement

Lent. Sombre

Scherzando

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)

Rondo in C Major, op. 73, for 

Two Pianos (“Grand Rondo”)

Witold Lutoslawski (1913 -1994)

Paganini Variations for Two Pianos

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The Musicians

Christina and Michelle Naughton, twin sisters, have been hailed by the San Francisco

Examiner for their “stellar musicianship, technical mastery, and awe-inspiring artistry.”

1 hey have captivated audiences throughout the world with the unity created by their

mystical musical communication; in their own words, “There are times [we] forget

we are two people playing together.” (Wall Street Journal)

"The duos 2017-2018 season began with recitals at the La Jolla Music Society

and the Ravinia Festival. Additional engagements have included the sisters’ Lincoln

Center debut, as well as appearances at the Rockefeller Evening Concerts, Gilmore

Keyboard festival (Kalamazoo, Michigan), Purdue Convocations, Oregon’s Portland

Piano International, Society of the Four Arts (Palm Beach, Florida), Sharon Fynne

Wilson Center (Brookfield, Wisconsin), and the Virginia Arts Festival. Orchestral

season highlights include performances with the Detroit, St. Louis, San Diego,

Midland, and Puerto Rico Symphonies. The duo will also be seen in recital and

orchestral engagements in New Zealand, Brazil, Belgium, and Spain.

In 2016, the Naughtons’ debut record was released on the Warner Classics 

label, titled Visions and featured the music of Messiaen, Bach, and Adams. The album

received much critical acclaim, with the Washington Post hailing the Naughtons as

one ofthe “greatest piano duos of our time.” The record was chosen as “Editor’s

Choice” in Gramophone Magazine.

Born in Princeton, New Jersey, to parents of European and Chinese descent,

Christina and Michelle are graduates of the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute

of Music, where both received the Festorazzi Prize. They are Steinway Artists and 

currently reside in New York City.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

SONATA FOR PIANO FOUR-HANDS IN D MAJOR. K. 381 (K. 123A)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s D-Major Sonata was composed in 1772, while Mozart

was in Italy for the premiere of his opera Lucio Silla. Mozart wrote the sonata to play

with his sister Maria Anna, as he had done in two previous piano four-hand sonatas. 

In her youth, Maria Anna was considered an accomplished performer and most

certainly a capable chamber partner for Wolfgang. The two musicians were immortalized in a portrait by the Austrian painterJohann Nepomuk della Croce, which

shows them seated at the piano. Mozart’s biographer Alfred Einstein described this

three-movement work as a reduction of an Italian symphony, where the distinctive

writing for strings and winds and ofsolos and tuttis is clearly laid out.

FRANZ SCHUBERT

RONDO FOR PIANO FOUR-HANDS IN A MAJOR (“GRAND RONDO”), D, 951, OP. 107

In the last year of his short life, Franz Schubert was producing works on a larger and

greater scale than ever before. These works included his last three piano sonatas, the

cello quintet, and his Ninth Symphony, among other works including the Rondo in 

A Major, D. 951. The Rondo is not at the highest point of Schubert’s late works, but

it is also no simple rondo. A blend of a sonata and rondo forms, it is chock-full of

themes for such a short work and is agreeable music that doesn’t include the conflict

and drama characteristic of the composer’s late work. Commissioned by Domenico

Artari, it was published a month after Schubert’s death in 1828.

WILLIAM B0LC0M

RECUERDOS

Recuerdos (“memories” in Spanish) is a set of three pieces inspired by Latin American 

dances. 1 he first movement is the Choro, a Brazilian folk song that is typically joyful 

and full ofsyncopations, with moments of brilliant flourishes. The second movement,

Paseo, is a blend of both South American and North American music that sprouted

up in New Orleans in the nineteenth century and was popularized by the well-traveled 

and virtuosic pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk. The final movement, Valse Venezolano, 

is in the form of a Venezuelan waltz, which was a popular style of composition by

mainly anonymous composers. Vaises Venezolano were composed for the instruments

readily available in nineteenth-century Venezuela, including bandolas, guitars, cuatros, 

violins, and pianos.

Program Notes

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JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH / GYORGY KURTAG

AUS TIEFER NOT SCHREIICH ZU DIR. BWV 38

GOTTES ZEIT 1ST DIE ALLERBESTE ZEIT, BWV 106

Bach’s Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir and Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, composed

originally as chorale cantatas, were arranged hy the Hungarian composer and pianist

Gyorgy Kurtag for performance with his wife Marta Kurtag, also a formidable pianist. 

The Kurtags have performed and recorded together for years with a clear affinity in

arranging works by Bach.

Bach’s chorale cantatas have been a source for many composers, including the

straightforward adaptations by the Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924),

much in the same manner as Kurtag’s. These cantatas are drawn from Lutheran church

hymnals, and the first cantata,Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, translates as “From deep

affliction I cry out to you.” The translation of the second cantata, Gottes Zeit ist die

allerbeste Z,eit, is “God’s time is the very best time,” and this piece was used for funerals 

in the Lutheran church. Bach is not the only composer in today’s program to draw 

on Lutheran hymnals; in the next work’s second movement, Debussy quotes from 

the Lutheran hymn, “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” (A mighty fortress is our God).

CLAUDE DEBUSSY

EN BLANC ET NOIR FOR TWO PIANOS

Written before he died of cancer in 1918, the three-movement En Blanc et Noir is

one of Debussy’s last works. The title plays on the colors of a piano’s keys, in addition

to another meaning that Debussy expressed in a letter to his friend Robert Godet:

“These pieces need to draw their color, their emotion, simply from the piano, like the

‘grays’ ofVelazquez, if you understand me.” Diego Velazquez, the seventeenth-century

Spanish painter, was known for his shading in grays.

Debussy dedicated each of the suite’s movements to one of his musical friends.

The first movement, Avec emportement, was dedicated to the Russian conductor and

composer Serge Koussevitzky, who would go on to conduct the Boston Symphony

Orchestra. The second movement, Lent. Sombre, was dedicated to Jacques Chariot,

a fellow pianist who had been killed during World War I and was also a cousin of

Jacques Durand, Debussy’s publisher. The final movement, Scherzando, was dedicated

to the composer Igor Stravinsky. The American composer Ned Rorem remarked in

an essay on En Blanc et Noir that “This suite is formed not from broad strokes but

from dozens ofsparkling mosaics, here glued together by an expert sense of keyboard 

writing.” Before the advent ofrecordings, many composers would arrange orchestral

works for two pianos, to be accessible to a wider audience. Rorem observes that this

piece has the “look and sound of an arrangement,” and that it concludes with what

turns out to be a wonderful coincidence for today’s concert: “two pianos [that] seem

more like twins than like differentiated and conversational personalities.”

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FREDERIC CHOPIN

RONDO IN C MAJOR, OP. 73, FOR TWO PIANOS (“GRAND RONDO”)

Frederic Chopin wrote this Rondo when he was a student at the Warsaw Conservatory. 

Originally it was for solo piano and later arranged for two. Opening with an introduction in a Sturm and Drang (Storm and Stress) style, it moves into a more delicate

and lively melodic line with the appearance of the first theme. Other briefideas 

emerge and disappear around the first theme before eventually morphing into the

second theme, which carries Slavic folk influences. As the second theme progresses,

the stormy character of the introduction slowly returns. The Rondo adheres to its

form, moving back and forth from its refrain and various episodes, ultimately coming

to a conclusion with a brilliant and climatic coda that closes the piece. This was

Chopin’s only work for two pianos, and both the solo and two-piano versions went

unpublished in his lifetime.

WITOLD LUTOSLAWSKI

PAGANINI VARIATIONS FOR TWO PIANOS

Witold Lutoslawski’s Variations dates from the difficult years of Germany’s occupation of Poland during World War II. From his recollections of the year 1939, the

composer states: “When the Nazis entered Warsaw, Polish music stopped. After the

Jews and gypsies, we Slavs were hated most by them. They took over the orchestras,

kept most of the Polish musicians, but German conductors and repertory were

imported. Poles boycotted their concerts, but we arranged clandestine meetings in

rooms during imprisonment to play chamber music or premiere some of our things.”

During this period of his life, the young Lutoslawski found his only audiences in

local cafes. He formed a piano duo with his colleague and friend, Andrzej Panufnik,

and they began to perform together regularly. The always resourceful Lutoslawski

began writing four-hand and two-piano arrangements of many different instrumental

and operatic works from the standard repertoire. While Brahms and Rachmaninoff

wrote arrangements of Niccolo Paganini’s famous Caprice for Solo Violin, op. 1, no. 

24, Lutoslawski (like Franz Liszt) wrote an actual transcription. Lutoslawski’s version

captures the intoxicatingly macabre and devilish virtuosity so closely associated with

Paganini. Although the showy variations seem designed for the salon audience, they

incorporate a number of Lutoslawski’s more innovative techniques: parallel triads,

dense chromaticism, and an exploitation of the tritone.

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