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Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, dc

Mailing address

2000B South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-fourth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,549th Concert

Elisabeth Adkins, violinist

Edward Newman, pianist

November 20, 2005

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission free
Program

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

Suite italienne (1933)

Introduzione: Allegro moderato

Serenata: Larghetto

Tarantella: Vivace

Gavotta con due variazione

Scherzino: Presto alia breve

Minuettoe finale

Cesar Franck (1822-1890)

Sonatafor Violin and Piano inA Major (1886)

Allegretto

Allegro

Fantasia

Allegretto

INTERMISSION

Manuel de Falla (1876-1946)

Suite populaire espagnole (1922)

El pano moruno (The Moorish Cloth)

Nana (Lullaby)

Cancion (Song)

Polo (Andalusian Song)

Asturiana (Dance from Asturia)

Jota (Aragonese Dance)

Miklos Rosza (1907-1995)

Duo for Violin and Piano, op.7 (1931)

Tranquillo

Allegretto capriccioso

Largo doloroso

Allegro vivoe giusto

The Musicians

Violinist Elisabeth Adkins is equally at home in solo, orchestral, and cham­

ber music. As associate concertmaster ofthe National Symphony Orchestra,

she is frequently heard asa soloist, most recently in that orchestra’s Wolf

Trap performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending. She 

has appeared in recital with her husband, pianist Edward Newman, at the

Kennedy Center, the Phillips Collection, and the Cosmos Club. This is their

second appearance at the National Gallery, the first having taken place in

October 1994. An active chamber musician, Adkins appears regularly with

the Twenty-first Century Consort, for which she is the solo violinist. She 

has appeared as concerto soloist with the Dallas Symphony, the Baltimore

Symphony, and the Maryland Symphony as well as the Friday Morning

Music Club Orchestra and the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra. Adkins is the

daughter of noted musicologists, and her siblings include three violinists,

two cellists, anda soprano. The family chamber group, the Adkins String

Ensemble, gave its debut performance in 1993 and has since produced

four CD recordings.

Pianist Edward Newman received the bachelor and master ofmusic

degrees from the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. He has won 

prizes at many major competitions, including the 1979 Robert Casadesus

Competition, where he won the grand prize, the Gina Bachauer Competition,

and the University of Maryland International Competition. Newman has

beena featured soloist with the Baltimore Symphony, the Boston Pops, the

Cleveland Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Utah Symphony,

anda number of European orchestras. He concertized throughout the United

States for ten years as the pianist ofthe American Chamber Players. In addi­

tion to regular appearances with his wife, Elisabeth Adkins, he plays with

the Adkins String Ensemble when it performs repertoire that includes the

piano. Newman has served on the faculties of George Mason University and

the Levine School of Music, and he maintainsa private teaching studio in

Arlington, Virginia.

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Program Notes

A unique aspect ofthe program chosen by Elisabeth Adkins and Edward

Newman is that the works by Stravinsky and Falla were not originally

intended by the composers as works for violin and piano. Stravinsky’s Suite

italienne is based on ballet music that he wrote for the Ballets Russes, at

the suggestion ofthe impresario Sergey Diaghilev (1872-1929). The music

was first heard under the title Pulcinella in 1920 at the Paris Opera. For that

performance Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) designed the set and the costumes

and Leonide Massine (1896-1979) was the choreographer. Diaghilev had

introduced Stravinsky to the music of Italian composer Giovanni Battista

Pergolesi (1710-1736), and it is said that Stravinsky played through all

ofthe Pergolosi manuscripts then available before making his choice.

Stravinsky’s interest in this music and that of other baroque composers 

had a decisive impact on his own style in the 1920s and led to the genesis 

of what musicologists now call his “neoclassical” period. In Stravinsky's

own words, “Pulcinella was my discovery ofthe past.... It was a backward

look, of course—the first of my many love affairs in that direction.”

Stravinsky also arranged the suite for cello and piano at the behest of

cellist Gregor Piatigorsky (1903-1976).

Strangely enough, the founder ofmodern French chamber music was

not born in France. Although Cesar Franck lived in Paris throughout his

professional life, he was born in Liege, Belgium. His chief contributions to

chamber music are the Piano Quintet in F Minor (1879), the String Quartet

in D Major (1889), and the work on this program, the Sonatafor Violin and

Piano in A Major (1886). The person credited with suggesting to Franck in

1858 that he write a sonata for the violin was the daughter of Franz Liszt,

Cosima von Biilow, who was married to conductor Hans von Btilow and 

later married Richard Wagner. Some twenty-eight years later Franck delivered a sonata for violin and piano at the home of his compatriot, the great 

Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaye (1858-1931), as a wedding gift.

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In writing this demanding work, which calls upon both the pianist and 

violinist to push the expressive limits oftheir instruments, Franck no doubt 

had the prodigious skills of his friend in mind as well as his own keyboard

prowess. Here, as in many of his works, he uses a device that music theorists call cyclical form. All ofthe main themes in the four movements are

derived from three short motifs. Because the themes are expanded by development and presented in the context of many different harmonies, the work

has variety and freshness throughout while at the same time presenting a

unified whole.

Manuel de Falla’s Suite populaire espagnole is based on traditional

Spanish songs that he collected in the second decade ofthe last century.

Nationalism, which had been a major force in music in the closing decades

ofthe nineteenth century, carried over into the early years ofthe twentieth.

Among composers, the chief proponents of nationalism were the Hungarians Bela Bartok (1881-1945) and Zoltan Kodaly (1882-1967) and the

Czech Leos Janacek (1854-1928). Nationalism was represented in England 

by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), in Norway by Edvard Grieg

(1843-1907), and in Finland by Jean Sibelius (1865-1957).

Spain was home to a considerable number of nationalist composers,

among whom the pioneer was Felipe Pedrell (1841-1922). His followers

included Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909) and Falla, whose opera La vida breve

and ballet El amor brujo are also imbued with the melodic and rhythmic

qualities of Spanish popular music. The Adkins/Newman duo uses the

version of Falla’s Suite populaire for violin and piano that was created in

1922 by the Polish violinist Paul Kochanski (1882-1934).

The third, fourth, and fifth decades ofthe twentieth century brought

many refugees to the United States from Europe, among them numerous

composers. The list includes Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957),

Max Steiner (1888-1971), Franz Waxman (1906-1967), and Miklos Rozsa.

All ofthe composers mentioned here eventually made Hollywood their

main base of operation and worked in the heyday of music for films

5
(1920-195°)- Rozsa wrote his Duofor Violin and Piano, op. 7, during his 

last year in Europe (1931), when he was still a student at the music conservatory in Leipzig. Even in this neoclassical work his Hungarian roots are

evident, as he uses material from that country’s folk songs and dances. He

is best remembered for his outstanding scores to the popular Hollywood

films Spellbound, Ben Hur, The ThiefofBaghdad, and The Lost Weekend.

Program notes by Sorab Modi

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