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.

For the convenience of concertgoers the Garden Cafe

remains open until 6:00 pm for light refreshments.

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-eighth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,776th Concert

Ewa Poblocka, pianist

Presented in honor ofthe

200th year ofChopin’s birth and in cooperation 

with the Embassy ofthe Republic of Poland

March 14, 2010

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Music by by Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849)

Nocturne in E Minor, op. 72 (c. 1829)

Ballade no. 1 in G Minor, op. 23 (c. 1835)

Polonaise in A Major, op. 40 (1838)

Waltz in B Minor, op. 69 (1829)

Waltz in D-jlat Major, op. 64, no. 1 (1847)

Waltz in C-sharp Minor, op. 64, no. 2 (1847)

Impromptu in A-jlat Major, op. 29 (c. 1837)

Ballade in A-jlat Major, op. 47 (1841)

INTERMISSION

Nocturne in C-sharp Minor, op. 27, no. 1 (1835)

Scherzo in B-flat Minor, op. 31 (1837)

Mazurka in E minor, op. 41, no. 1 (1838)

Mazurka in B Major, op. 41, no. 2 (1839)

Mazurka in A-jlat Major, op. 41, no. 3 (1839)

Mazurka in C-sharp Major, op. 41, no. 4 (1839)

Scherzo in B Minor, op. 20 (c. 1835)

The Musician

Distinguished Polish pianist and pedagogue Ewa Poblocka is a graduate

ofthe Music Academy in Gdansk, and the holder oftop awards from

piano competitions in Bordeaux, Vercelli, and Warsaw. She has performed

throughout Europe, as well as in Australia, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and

both North and South America, and has appeared at famous venues that

include the Herkules-Saal in Munich, the Musikhalle in Hamburg, the

Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, the Barbican Centre and Wigmore Hall in

London, the Musikverein in Vienna, New York’s Lincoln Center, and Glenn

Gould Studio in Toronto.

Poblocka’s concert performances include appearances with the London

Symphony Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra del Maggio

Musicale Fiorentino, Bayerisher Rudfunkorchester, Niederosterreichisches

Tonkiinstlerorchester, Polish National Philharmonic Orchestra in Warsaw,

Polish Chamber Orchestra, and the Polish Radio National Symphony

Orchestra in Katowice. She has collaborated in performance with singers

Ewa Podles, Jadwiga Rappe, and Olga Pasiecznik, as well as with violinist

Piotr Ptawner and the Silesian String Quartet.

Poblocka’s performances have been broadcast widely. She has recorded for

the BeArTon, Conifer Records, Deutsche Grammophon, and VICTOR JVC labels.

Her recording ofWitold Lutoslawski’s Piano Concerto, under the direction of

the composer, was named “Record ofthe Year” in 1996 by Studio magazine.

Her recording of Field’s complete Nocturnes was awarded the John Field Medal.

Poblocka’s other award-winning recordings include the piano concertos of

Andrzej Panufnik, Witold Lutoslawski, and Pawel Szymanski with the Polish 

National Philharmonic Orchestra under Kazimierz Kord, and a recording with 

contralto Jadwiga Rappe ofthe songs by Mieczyslaw Karlowicz. Her most

recent recordings include Chopin’s complete Mazurkas; Chopin’s Fantasia on

the Polish Airs, op. 2 with Sinfonia Varsovia under Jacek Kaspszyk (world

premiere recording based on the Polish National Edition edited by Jan Ekier);

Bach’s complete Partitas; and Faure’s complete Nocturnes.

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Program Notes

On May 9, 2008, the Sejm, Poland’s lower house of Parliament, declared

2010 the “Year of Fryderyk Chopin.” Considered to be one ofthe greatest

artists in the history of Polish culture, and the country’s most distinguished

Romantic composer as well as a cultural ambassador for the folk music of

Poland, Chopin played an exceptional role in shaping the country’s national

identity. To commemorate the composer’s birthday, events are scheduled

all over the world throughout the year. Tonight’s concert—one ofmany in

Washington, DC —is being presented in cooperation with the Embassy of

the Republic of Poland.

Chopin’s actual date ofbirth is a source ofsome controversy: the official

town registration recorded his birth date as February 22,1810, but he (and

his family) always said that his birthday was March 1. Born to a French father

and a Polish mother, he was the second offour children in a family that

had the resources to provide a complete and well-rounded education in

which culture and art were emphasized. Showing a prodigious talent at an

early age, Chopin’s first public performance was at age nine. In 1928, while

Poland was in the throes ofrevolution, Chopin performed in Austria and

Bohemia, before settling in Paris. At the time Europe’s most vibrant musical

city, Paris housed many exiled Polish aristocrats, and he found a home there,

literally and musically. In France, Chopin began the most storied part of his

life—his relationship with writer George Sand (Mme. Aurore Dudevant).

Under her influence for seven years, Chopin lived with her in Paris, in

Nohant at her country home, and at one point, in Majorca. Following a tour

throughout England and Scotland, he died oftuberculosis in Paris in 1849.

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With a distinct style that is immediately recognizable, Chopin’s music

is arguably the most frequently performed of all composers of piano music.

Equally gifted at creating memorable and engaging melodies as well as

complex chromatic harmonies, Chopin was the master ofminiatures.

He composed innumerable shorter pieces, mostly inspired by dances— 

mazurkas, polonaises, and waltzes—and also created some new forms,

such as the Ballade, a single-movement work oflarge proportion. Inspired

by Italian opera—in particular by Bellini’s bel canto style—Chopin composed many pieces that featured a beautiful lyrical right-hand melody with a

simple accompaniment in the left hand. The Nocturnes exemplify this style.

With a misleading opus number of 72, the Nocture in E Minor, published

and catalogued posthumously, was among the first compositions, and

definitely the first ofthe nocturnes that Chopin composed. As a student at 

the University of Warsaw, Chopin would have heard the Nocturnes of Irish

composer John Field (1782-1837). In posterity, Field’s work has been all but

forgotten, but he is remembered for originating the form that Chopin took

to a superior level.

Inspired by the epic ballads of the Romantic poets (Friedrich Schiller,

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and especially Polish poets Adam Mickiewicz 

and Yulius Slovatski), Chopin developed his Ballades as a new type ofwork. 

He incorporated multiple themes and contrasting ideas into one extended

movement. Ballade no.i in G Minor was praised by both Robert Schumann

and Franz Liszt, who also composed works that did not fall into traditional

classical categories.

As a champion of all things Polish, Chopin did a great service to the

national pride by taking various folk dance forms and popularizing them as

energetic, virtuosic piano works. Though the tide “polonaise” was used

previously by J. S. Bach, Carl Maria von Weber, and other composers, Chopin

revitalized the form, infusing it with a new spirit. The Mazurkas are masterpieces of harmonic innovation—each one unique as an aspect offolk culture

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as well as a tribute to the genius ofthe composer. The Waltzes, ofwhich there

are fourteen, do not brim so much with national fervor, as the dance form

did not originate in Poland. Chopin used charm and elegance in these pieces, 

and sometimes even took the “dance-ability” out ofthe waltz rendering it a

little more nostalgic in tone.

The four Impromptus fall somewhere between the Nocturnes and the

larger pieces. Generally composed with two themes, they are excellent

examples ofsalon music, and probably were not considered great concert

pieces by the composer. Used as a musical form by Bach and Beethoven—

typically as a movement within a larger work—the Scherzo, in the hands

ofChopin, became something much larger and more complex. Far from

the Italian meaning ofthe word—a joke, or a witty character—Chopin’s

Scherzos are dramatic and tragic works that explore several different themes

and return to them before the piece is finished.

Program notes by Danielle DeSwert Hahn

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Next Week at the National Gallery of Art

amarcord

Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century German music

March 17, 2010

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Dan Franklin Smith, pianist

Music by Chopin, Gershwin, and Liszt

March 21, 2010

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court