For the convenience of concertgoers 

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:oo 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 ofArt

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

National Gallery ofArt

2,603rd Concert

Till Fellner, pianist

February n, 2007

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Sonata in F Major, op. 10, no. 2 (1797)

Allegro

Allegretto

Presto

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Fijteen Three-part Inventions, bwv 787-801 (1723)

No. 1 C Major

No. 2 C Minor

No. 3 D Major

No. 4 D Minor

No. 5 E-flat Major

No. 6 E Major

No. 7 E Minor

No. 8 F Major

No. 9 F Minor

No. 10 G Major

No. 11 G Minor

No. 12 A Major

No. 13 A Minor

No. 14 B-flat Major

No. 15 B Minor

INTERMISSION

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Sonata in A Major, D 959 (1828)

Allegro

Andantino

Scherzo: Allegro vivace

Rondo: Allegretto

The Musician

Born in Vienna, Till Fellner studied with Flelen Sado-Stadler before going

on to study privately with Alfred Brendel, Meira Farkas, Oleg Maisenberg, 

and Claus-Christian Schuster. Fellner first gained international recognition

in 1993 by winning first prize at the prestigious Clara Haskil International

Piano Competition. Fie has performed with many orchestras, including

the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the bbc Symphony Orchestra, the

Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic,

the Orchestre de Paris, and the Vienna Philharmonic. He has also worked 

with many ofthe world’s most famous conductors, including Claudio

Abbado, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Marek Janowski, Sir Charles Mackerras,

Sir Neville Marriner, Kent Nagano, Leonard Slatkin, and Franz Welser-Most.

Fellner’s career has taken him to musical centers throughout Australia,

Europe, Japan, and North and South America, and he has appeared at the 

Edinburgh International Festival, Festival International de Piano de la Roque

d’Antheron, Festival de musique de Montreux-Vevey, the Klavier-Festival

Ruhr, the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York, Mozartwoche Salzburg, the

Salzburg Festival, the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, the Tanglewood Music

Festival, and the Wiener Festwochen.

Recent highlights of Fellner’s career include a tour with London’s

Philharmonia Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnanyi, a cycle ofselected

Mozart piano concerti with the Wiener Kammerphilharmonie, and performances of Schubert’s last three piano sonatas in Amsterdam, Antwerp, 

London, Rotterdam, and Vienna, and at the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg. 

This season he will appear as soloist with many orchestras throughout

Europe and will perform with cellist Heinrich Schiffin Europe and the

United States. Fellner has recorded numerous CDs, including the first book

ofJohann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, which was released by

ecm Records in 2004.

3
Program Notes

When Ludwig van Beethoven arrived on the musical scene in the late eighteenth century, the piano sonata had only recently been perfected by Carl

Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), Josef Haydn (1732-1809), and Wolfgang

Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). This was the same period in which the piano

replaced the harpsichord as the primary keyboard instrument, as composers

and performers alike were drawn to the piano’s instant dynamic response and

tonal gradation, singing quality, and carrying power, sufficient for the larger

concert venues that became the norm in the nineteenth century.

Beethoven began his artistic career in Vienna as a virtuoso pianist. A

report on his playing dating from the 1790s reads, “The great virtuosity of

this attractive, lively-minded young man... is, apart from mere facility, more

eloquent, significant, and expressive.... He is as good a player of adagios as

he is of allegros.” In writing sonatas for his own performance, Beethoven

exploited his pianistic ability to the fullest. The vigor and gaiety ofthe fast

movements stand in contrast to the contemplation, tranquility, and melancholy ofthe slow movements. Even during his early years, Beethoven was

aware ofhis own musical language, which he used to carry the sonata far

beyond the accomplishments ofhis forebearers.

IfJohann Sebastian Bach’s forty-eight preludes and fugues from The

Well-Tempered Clavier are the pianist’s “Old Testament,” then the Beethoven

sonatas are the “New Testament.” Beethoven’s thirty-two piano sonatas

were written over a span oftwenty-seven years—from his opus 2 published

in 1796, to his opus in published in 1823 —and constitute his great legacy

for pianists. In July 1798 the Viennese publisher Joseph Eder announced,

“Within six weeks, three very beautiful piano sonatas by Herr Ludwig van 

Beethoven will appear under my imprint.” Beethoven began work on

the three sonatas of opus 10 in 1796 and dedicated them to Countess Anna

Margarete Browne. The spirit of Haydn, with whom Beethoven studied

briefly in 1792, dominates the Sonata in F Major, op. 10, no. 2. The relationship between the old master and his then twenty-two-year-old student was

frosty. Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838), who studied piano with Beethoven,

4

collaborated with another of Beethoven’s acquaintances to write Beethoven

Remembered: The Biographical Notes ofFranz Wegeler and Ferdinand Ries. Ries

recalled that Beethoven, “although he had some instruction from Haydn,

never learned anything from him.”

Johann Sebastian Bach fathered twenty children, four ofwhom became

significant composers in their own rights. For them and for his many students outside the family, Bach composed a large body of keyboard music for 

pedagogical purposes, frequently publishing pieces under the heading “Keyboard Exercises.” For example, his inventions and sinfonias were intended

to be practice material for his son Wilhelm Friedemann (1710-1784). These

pieces are compiled in what is now known as the Clavier-Buchlein (Little

Book for the Keyboard), which contains fifteen inventions in two voices and

fifteen sinfonias in three voices. (It has become customary to apply the term

“invention” to both genres.) In addition to notes, Bach provided fingerings

and an explanatory preface, which expresses the hope that the book will

provide “upright instructions, wherein lovers ofthe clavier, but especially

those desirous oflearning, will be shown a clear way, not only (1) to play

clearly in two voices, but also, after further progress, (2) to deal correctly

and well with three obbligato parts.”

The Bach inventions are still the most widely used instructive finger

exercises in the musical repertoire. Their unaffected grace has been imitated,

but never surpassed, in subsequent collections of etudes by great composers,

among them Bartok, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and Shostakovich. Each set of

fifteen pieces explores the full cycle ofmajor and minor keys in existence

before the advent oftempered tuning (i.e., keys that have three or fewer flats

or sharps). Later in life, having been introduced to “well-tempered” tuning,

Bach explored the full range ofthe twenty-four keys in his Well-Tempered

Clavier; Books 1 and 11.

5
One ofthe torchbearers at Beethoven’s funeral was Franz Schubert, who

admired the master but never knew him intimately. In an article on Schubert’s

piano sonatas that appeared in The Musical Courierin 1928, the centenary

of Schubert’s death, the great pianist Artur Schnabel (1882-1951) wrote, 

“Schubert’s inspiration never needed the external stimulus ofpoetry... .To

convince ourselves, we only need to look at.. .the second movement ofthe

Sonata in A Major; in which he employs a wholly new kind of expression.”

Schnabel was one ofthe first pianists to champion the works of Schubert and

often programmed the composer’s last three sonatas in a single concert.

Schubert, justly famous as the creator ofthe lied, loved the piano’s possibilities for intimate expression. His early lied An mein Klavier is a setting of

a poem in praise ofthe piano by Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart (1739-

1791). Schubert’s piano music is almost entirely anchored in the melodic

writing that infuses his lieder. In the case ofthe Sonata in A Major; D 959, the

opening Allegro is a tribute to Beethoven that reflects many ofhis contributions

to the sonata form, but it also reflects Schubert’s unique melodic approach to

the piano. The Andantino has a direct connection to the song Pilgerrise, which

Schubert composed in 1823. The Scherzo, marked Allegro vivace, has an almost

Mendelssohnian sparkle, and its trio breathes the same air as Schubert’s great 

String Quintet in C Major, D 956, which he finished in September 1828, just

two months before his death. The finale, a rondo marked Allegretto, similarly 

belies the composer’s ill health and premonitions ofthe end ofhis life, as

did his lengthy house concert on September 27,1828, in which he performed

his final three piano sonatas and accompanied a rendition ofhis final song

cycle, Schwanengesang.

Program notes by Sorab Modi

6

Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

Mark Kaplan, violinist, and Yael Weiss, pianist

Music by Carter, Feigin, and Sessions

Presented in honor of

Jasper Johns: An Allegory ofPainting, 1955-1965,

as part ofthe Sixty-second American Music Festival

February 18, 2007

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

East Building Auditorium