Music Department

National Gallery ofArt

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, dc

Mailing address

2000B South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

For events at the Library ofCongress, 

advance reservation oftickets is recommended.

Tickets are distributed by Ticketmaster (202-397-SEAT).

The tickets are free, but there is a service charge

for the reservation.

www.loc.gov/concerts

cover: Carl Joseph Begas, Felix Mendelssohn

Bartholdy, 1821, Private Collection

Mendelssohn on the Mall

January 11-February 27, 2009

Celebrating the 200th Anniversary of

the birth of Felix Mendelssohn

(February 3,1809-November 4,1847)

Presented by the Library ofCongress,

the National Academy of Sciences, and the

National Gallery ofArt under the gracious patronage

of His Excellency Dr. Klaus Scharioth, Ambassador

ofGermany to the United States

Admission isfree
Mendelssohn on the Mall

January 11-February 27, 2009

Concerts and Events

JANUARY

11 Ma'alot Wind Quintet

Mendelssohn: A Midsummer

Night’s Dream, transcribed for

wind quintet; music by Ligeti,

Barber, and Piazzolla

Preceded at 6:00 pm by a

preconcert lecture: Mendelssohn

and the Visual Arts

SUNDAY, 6:30 PM

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

18 Weiss-Kaplan-Newman Trio

with guest artists Amadi Hummings

and Sel Kardan, violas, and Kurt

Muroki, bass

Mendelssohn: Sextetfor Piano

and Strings, op. 87; music by Sheng

and Smetana

Sunday, 3:00 PM

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

18 National Gallery Orchestra,

Kenneth Slowik, guest conductor

Mendelssohn: “Italian” Symphony;

Schubert: Symphony in C Major

(“Great”)

Sunday, 6:30 PM

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

25 Fine Arts Quartet

Mendelssohn: Quartets, opp. 12

and 44/1

Sunday, 6:30 PM

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

The calendar of concerts and events

continues on the inside back cover.

The Sixty-seventh Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell

and F. Lammot Belin Concerts

National Gallery ofArt 

2,706th Concert

February 15, 2009

The University ofAkron Concert Choir

Samuel Gordon, director

With Rosa Lamoreaux, soprano, and Steven Combs, baritone

Program performed without intermission

Psalms, Hymns, and Cantatas by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Verleih uns Frieden (Grant Us Peace) (1831)

Hear My Prayer, O Lord (1830)

O Haupt voll Blut and Wunden (O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded) (1830)

Der 42. Psalm (Psalm 42); Wie der Hirsch schreit nachfrischem Wasser

(As the Hart Longs for Flowing Streams) (1837)

3
The Musicians

SAMUEL GORDON

Samuel Gordon is director of choral studies and professor ofmusic at The

University ofAkron School of Music. His career spans more than thirty years,

during which time he has been either a tenor soloist or the conductor in

hundreds of concerts, both in the United States and abroad. From 1985-2003,

he was the tenor soloist oftire National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble, and from

1988-1996, his Maryland Camerata was choir-in-consortium at the Gallery.

With the Vocal Arts Ensemble, Gordon performed vocal chamber music at the

Musee du Louvre in Paris and at the SchloR Belvedere Museum in Vienna.

He is also the founder and artistic director of Singers Companye, a world-class 

choir that sang its National Gallery debut concert in November 2008.

Gordon has received top prizes at the Concorso Polifonico Guido d’Arezzo 

(Italy), the International Musical Eisteddfod (Wales), and the Welsh National 

Eisteddfod. He was the first American conductor to win the Eisteddfod,

where his ensembles sang in Welsh. His conducting skills have also earned

the Bronze Horreo in Orviedo, Spain, the Laureate ofthe Fiat Conducting

Prize, and the Trimillenial Medal from the city ofCadiz, Spain. He and the

other members ofthe National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble won the 1988

Studio Lauda Award at the International Early Music Festival in Zadar,

Croatia (fonnerly Yugoslavia).

Performances at international festivals have included the Ambler

Festival, the Bregenz International Festival, the Flanders Festival, the Haydn

Festival of a Lifetime at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 

the Holland Festival, the Llubljana Festival and Mozaik (both in the former

Yugoslavia), the Rheingau Musik Festival (Mainz, Germany), the Salzburg

Festival, and the Spoleto Festival ofTwo Worlds (Spoleto, Italy). As guest

conductor, he has led the Canton Symphony Orchestra (Ohio), the National

Gallery Orchestra, the Pennsylvania Ballet Orchestra, the Perugia Chamber

4

Orchestra, the Santa Fe Symphony, and the Taipei Philharmonic. He has

been a featured soloist with the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, El Paso,

Pittsburgh, Kansas City, and Saint Louis; the National Gallery Orchestra;

and the National Symphony Orchestra.

Gordon is also active as a composer. In 2006 the Santa Fe Women’s

Ensemble premiered his Motetsfor the Ladymass, and the following year he

was named composer-in-residence for that ensemble. He has recorded for

Koch International Classics and Telarc International and has his own choral

music series with National Music Publishers, where he has published more

than twenty choral compositions. His works have been premiered at the

National Gallery and the Kennedy Center.

ROSA LAMOREAUX

After winning the Handel Aria Competition at the Aspen Music Festival 

as a finalist in the Oratorio Society Competition of New York, soprano Rosa

Lamoreaux went on to appear as soloist with the symphony orchestras

of Atlanta, Cincinnati, and Dallas as well as the National Philharmonic

Orchestra. She has won critical acclaim for her performances in the United

States and abroad, performing in such distinguished venues as Carnegie

Hall, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, the Kennedy 

Center, Royal Albert Hall in London, and Usher Hall in Edinburgh. She 

has been a soloist in the masses, passions, and nearly all ofthe cantatas

ofJohann Sebastian Bach as well as in vespers, masses, and oratorios of

Handel, Haydn, Monteverdi, and Mozart. Operatic roles include Cleopatra

in Giulio Cesare, Galatea in Ads and Galatea, and Romilda in Xerxes by

Handel; Belinda and Dido in Dido and Aeneas by Purcell; Venus in Didone

by Cavalli; and Despina in Cosifan Tutte, Susanna in The Marriage ofFigaro,

and Zerlina in Don Giovanni by Mozart.

Lamoreaux is the artistic director ofthe National Gallery Art Vocal Arts 

Ensemble and a frequent soloist with ArcoVoce, the Folger Consort, and

Hesperus, and she has toured with Musicians from Marlboro. Her many

recitals include performances at the Chautauqua Institute, the Cloisters, the

Corcoran Gallery, the Library ofCongress, the Metropolitan Museum ofArt,

5
and the Smithsonian Institution. She has performed overseas at the Amalfi

Coast Music Festival in Sorrento, the La Fenice Chamber Music Festival

in Venice, the Musee du Louvre in Paris, the Rheingau Music Festival in

Mainz, and the SchloR Belvedere Museum in Vienna.

Lamoreaux’s recordings include repertoire by Bach, Berlioz, Handel, 

Hildegard von Bingen, Piaf, Shostakovich, and songs ofThomas D’Urfey.

STEVEN COMBS

Baritone Steven Combs frequently appears as a soloist with many Washington, DC, arts organizations, including the Washington Bach Consort and

the Washington Ballet. He can also be heard in opera and chamber music

concerts, including those ofthe National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble, with 

which he has sung intermittently since 2004. He was a Metropolitan Opera 

National Council Winner and made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1991

under the baton ofJames Levine in the world premiere ofJohn Corigliano’s

The Ghosts ofVersailles. In 1993 Combs sang the title role in Colin Graham’s

first staging of Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd at the Opera Theatre of Saint 

Louis, and he has sung other principal roles with the Boston Lyric Opera,

the Metropolitan Opera, and the Minnesota Opera.

(A biography ofthe University ofAkron School of Music Concert Choir 

appears in the program insert.)

6

Program Notes

Felix Mendelssohn was born on February 3,1809. With “Mendelssohn on 

the Mall,” the Library ofCongress, the National Academy of Sciences, and

the National Gallery of Art join musical presenters around the world in

celebrating the bicentennial ofthe birth of a composer whose works have

become essential to the Western canon. Art historians and cultural historians alike are fascinated by Mendelssohn because he was a “Renaissance 

man” who developed skills in many areas to a highly sophisticated level,

including drawing and painting, sports, and writing. He was lionized in his 

own time as a composer, conductor, and performer, and the world mourned

his untimely death in 1847 at age thirty-eight.

Among Mendelssohn’s most enduring contributions to the world of

European music was his fostering of oratorio societies. As a youth, he was

familiar with the activities ofthe Berliner Singakademie, an association of

amateur singers and music lovers in which his family had been active since 

its founding in 1791. In 1829, the Akademie engaged the twenty-year-old

Mendelssohn to prepare, conduct, and accompany from the piano a performance ofJohann Sebastian Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion, the first public 

performance ofthe work since Bach’s death in 1750. The first three works

on this evening’s program were composed during the two years following

that event and may well have been written for performance by the Berliner 

Singakademie. During his years in Diisseldorf (1833-1835), Mendelssohn

organized and conducted revivals of The Seasons and The Creation by Haydn

and Alexander’s Feast, Israel in Egypt, Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus, Solomon,

and the “Dettingen” Te Deum by Handel. During the same period, Mendelssohn also undertook to write his own first oratorio, Saint Paul, based 

on passages from The Acts ofthe Apostles, as paraphrased by authors Julius

Schubring and Julius Fiirst.

7
Mendelssohn’s primary opportunity to organize and conduct performances

of all kinds came in 1835, when he was appointed municipal music director

for the city of Leipzig, which placed its Gewandhaus Orchestra and a number

of choirs at his disposal. During the next twelve years, he presented his own 

works and those of Beethoven, Haydn, Handel, and Mozart in more than

400 concerts. The setting of Psalm 42 with which this concert closes was

composed for performance in those Leipzig concerts in 1837. Ever the perfectionist, Mendelssohn postponed the first performance until 1839, by which

time he had revised the work twice.

Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

Mendelssohn Piano Trio

Peter Sirotin, violin

Fiona Thompson, cello

Ya-Ting Chang, piano

Music by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schubert

February 22, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Leon Bates, pianist

Music by Dett, Matheny, Walker, and other composers

Presented in honor ofAfrican American History Month

February 25, 2009

Wednesday at 12:10 pm

East Building Auditorium
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.

10

FEBRUARY

Exhibition ofMendelssohn manuscripts, letters, and drawings

THROUGHOUT FEBRUARY 2OO9

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

i Ulrich Urban, pianist

Mendelssohn: Fantasies and Caprices,

op. 16; selected Songs without Words;

Variations serieuses, op. 54

SUNDAY, 6:30 PM

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

6 Cypress Quartet

Mendelssohn: Quartet, op. 13;

music by Beethoven and Puts

FRIDAY, 8:00 PM

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

8 Josef Feigelson, cellist

Peep Lassmann, pianist

Mendelssohn’s complete works

for cello and piano

Sunday, 6:30 PM

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

10 Mira Trio

Hensel: Piano Trio in D minor, op. 11;

Mendelssohn and Hensel: Songs

without Words; Mendelssohn:

Piano Trio no. 2 in C minor, op. 66

Preceded at 6:15 pm by a

preconcert lecture by Susan 

Clermont, Music Division, Library

ofCongress

FRIDAY, 8:00 PM

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

15 University ofAkron Concert Choir,

Samuel Gordon, conductor

Mendelssohn: Wie der Hirsch schreit,

op. 42; Chorale Cantata: O Haupt

voil Blut und Wunden; hymn: Hor

mein bitten

SUNDAY, 6:30 PM

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

18 Trio con Brio Copenhagen

Mendelssohn: Piano Quartet in

B Minor, op. 3; Beethoven:

“Archduke” Trio

WEDNESDAY, 8:00 PM

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

19 Lecture by R. Larry Todd,

Duke University

Reflections on the Mendelssohn

Bicentenary

THURSDAY, 7:00 PM

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

22 Mendelssohn Piano Trio

Mendelssohn: Piano Trio in D Minor,

op. 49; music by Beethoven

Sunday, 6:30 PM

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

27 Mendelssohn Choir ofPittsburgh,

Betsy Burleigh, director

Mendelssohn: Psalm 55; Sechs

Spriiche, op. 79; music by Handel, 

Haydn, and Mozart

Friday, 8:00 PM

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

13 Atrium Quartet

Mendelssohn: Quartet, op. 80;

music by Shostakovich and Borodin

FRIDAY, 8:00 PM

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS