Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

The Washington, DC, premiere of a new work by John Musto

Later the Same Evening: an opera inspired byfive paintings ofEdward Hopper

University of Maryland School of Music Opera Studio

National Gallery Orchestra

December 2, 2007

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

East Building Auditorium

For the convenience of concertgoers 

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:00 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 East 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-sixth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,647th Concert

The ArcoVoce Ensemble

with

Rosa Lamoreaux, soprano

Wolodymyr Smishkewych, tenor

Yonit Kosovske, harpsichord

Presented in cooperation with the Center for Musical Studies

and the Giunta Regionale della Campania

November 25, 2007

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

“The Eighteenth Century Rediscovers the Ancient World”

Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725)

Correa nel seno amatto

Rosa Lamoreaux and members of ArcoVoce

A. Scarlatti

Poi che riseppe Oifeo

Wolodymyr Smishkewych, Yonit Kosovske, Douglas McNames 

A. Scarlatti

Toccata no. 1 in G Major

Yonit Kosovske

Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757)

Lasciami piangere

Duet from Tetide in Sciro

A. Scarlatti

Piu non tomo il vemo ingrato

Rosa Lamoreaux, Wolodymyr Smishkewych,

Yonit Kosovske, and members ofArcoVoce

Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704)

Sonata duo decima for violin and continuo

Nina Falk and Steven Silverman

Giovanni Pergolesi (1710-1736)

Orfeo

Rosa Lamoreaux and members ofArcoVoce

The Musicians

ARCOVOCE

The ArcoVoce ensemble, now in its eleventh year, offers a unique approach

to music, specializing in both period and modern instruments and the 

regular inclusion of vocal music in its concerts. The ensemble is noted for

augmenting its already large repertoire of early music by rediscovering 

and presenting the modern premiere performances ofworks by seventeenthand eighteenth-century composers. In addition to Rosa Lamoreaux, whose 

biography appears below, the members of ArcoVoce performing in tonighfs

concert are Elizabeth Field, baroque violin; Nina Falk, baroque violin; Karine

Rousseau, baroque viola; and Douglas McNames, baroque cello.

Violinist Elizabeth Field is much in demand for performances of early

chamber music, having performed and recorded extensively with American

Ballet Theater, the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, the Handel and

Haydn Society of New York, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, among

others. She holds a doctorate in historical performance practice from

Cornell University.

Nina Falk attended the Juilliard Preparatory Division in her native New

York City, where she studied the violin with Christine Dethier. She completed her undergraduate and graduate music training at the Oberlin College

Conservatory of Music, the University of Iowa, and the Accademia musicale

Chigiana in Siena, Italy, where she was a Fulbright scholar. Falk performs

with Apollo’s Fire, the Folger Consort, the Smithsonian Chamber Players,

and numerous other early music ensembles.

Violist Karine Rousseau studied at the Conservatoire de Musique de

Quebec, where her principal teachers were Francois Paradis and Darren

Lowe. She is currently pursuing a doctor ofmusic arts degree at the Peabody

Institute of Music at Johns Hopkins University, under the tutelage of

Victoria Chiang. A former soloist with the Orchestre Symphonique and

the Orchestre du Conservatoire de Musique de Quebec, Rousseau has per3
formed with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the National Philharmonic

Orchestra, the Theater of Early Music, the Washington Bach Consort, the

Washington National Opera, and the Violins du Roy.

Douglas McNames is the cellist ofthe award-winning Delos Quartet, a

regular substitute player for the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the principal

violinist ofthe Carmel Bach Festival in California. He plays with Brandywine Baroque, the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, and Pro Musica Rara,

among other ensembles.

Harpsichordist Steven Silverman has performed at the Amherst Baroque

Academy, the Boston Early Music Festival, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and

The Phillips Collection. Active as a pianist as well as a harpsichordist, he

holds bachelor and master of music degrees from the University of Michigan.

His former teachers include Eugene Bossart, Charles Crowder, Arthur Haas, 

Ann Schein, and Andrzej Wasowski.

ROSA LAMOREAUX

The Washington Post praised soprano Rosa Lamoreaux for her “wonderfully 

rich timbre and an amazingly flexible voice.” An award-winning vocalist

with a busy international career, she has a diverse repertoire that ranges

from the music of Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) to that of Dmitry 

Shostakovich (1906-1975). Lamoreaux has sung in Carnegie Hall, the 

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Library ofCongress, and the John F. Kennedy

Center for the Performing Arts. She has been a soloist with the Atlanta and

Cincinnati Symphony Orchestras, and has won critical acclaim for her performances at Bach festivals in both the United States and Europe. In addition 

to her work with ArcoVoce, she sings with the Folger Consort and Hesperus

and has toured with the Musicians from Marlboro. In 2004 Lamoreaux was

appointed artistic director ofthe National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble.

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WOLODYMYR SMISHKEWYCH

Wolodymyr Smishkewych specializes in medieval solo song and chant and 

contemporary classical music. His broad repertoire also spans baroque

opera, lieder, and oratorio. As a member of Sequentia Ensemble for Early

Music and Theatre ofVoices, he has recorded for the Sony/BMG-Classical

and Harmonia Mundi labels as well as for DaCapo and Ex Cathedra records.

His radio and film credits include Antena 3 National Spanish Radio, Danmark Radio, MDR-German Radio, National Public Radio, Public Radio

International, Radio Suisse Romande, and Universal Pictures. He has been 

a guest lecturer on contemporary music, early music, and world music at

universities in Europe and North America, and recently returned to the 

United States with his partner, harpsichordist Yonit Kosovske, after holding 

a 2005-2006 Fulbright fellowship in Spain, where he studied the history of

the zanfona (vielle a roue) on the Iberian Peninsula. He is a candidate for the

doctor ofmusic degree in voice at Indiana University.

YONIT KOSOVSKE

Keyboard soloist and collaborative artist Yonit Kosovske has performed on

harpsichord, piano, and organ throughout the United States and in Hong

Kong, Israel, and Spain. She recently returned to Bloomington, Indiana,

after a year abroad with her partner, tenor Wolodymyr Smishkewych. While

in Spain, she made two solo recordings of early virginal repertoire: Livefrom

Leon: Solo Harpsichord Music ofJan Pieterzsoon Sweelinck and Fitzwilliam

Favorites. Kosovske has an active career as a solo performer and private

teacher and is a candidate for the doctor ofmusic degree at Indiana University, where she studied with Elisabeth Wright. She has numerous radio

broadcasts to her credit, including programs on the National Public Radio’s

early music program Harmonia. She has performed in the early music festivals of Berkeley, Bloomington, and Boston, and is currently collaborating 

with numerous musicians, playing both modern and historical instruments.

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Program Notes

This concert celebrates a newly-established collaboration between the music

department at the National Gallery ofArt, and the Amalfi Coast Music and

Arts Festival. Now in its fourteenth year, this international summer festival

is produced by the Washington-based Center for Musical Studies and takes

place in Campania, one ofthe most spectacular regions ofItaly. The National

Gallery and the Center for Musical Studies acknowledge the cooperation of

the Regional Government ofCampania, which has sent a special delegation 

from Italy in honor ofthis concert.

The primary historical sites in Campania are Pompeii and Naples, the 

region’s capital. The era known as “the golden age ofthe Kingdom of Naples”

(1735-1800) was a time ofbreathtaking archeological discoveries and important early research into life in the ancient Roman Empire. The Center for

Musical Studies and the Amalfi Coast Music Festival will present further

musical events and exhibitions throughout the coming year. “The Eighteenth

Century Rediscovers the Ancient World” will highlight the glories ofthe

Neapolitan Golden Age. Having explored this theme, concertgoers and

festival participants will be well prepared to appreciate the National Gallery

exhibition Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture around the Bay of

Naples, which will open in October 2008.

Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, father and son, were both major

figures in Naples when it was nearing the end ofits subservience to Spain

and Austria and was emerging as a power to be reckoned with, both economically and culturally. Alessandro Scarlatti was appointed maestro di

cappella at the court in Naples in 1685 by the Duke of Maddaloni, who was

the viceroy in charge of Naples and who spent much ofhis time in Rome,

where he heard and admired Scarlatti’s operas and church music. Like his 

contemporaries in the literary and artistic world, Scarlatti was fascinated 

with stories and legends of ancient Greece and Rome and turned to them

for subject matter when composing operas and secular cantatas. Domenico 

was born while Alessandro was in service in Naples, so that city’s musical

culture was his first nurturing environment. He excelled at an early age,

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especially as a performer on the harpsichord, so much so that his father

came to see him as an unwelcome rival and used his influence to get

appointments for him in other places. The problem was finally resolved

when Domenico was hired as maestro di cappella by the King of Portugal.

That appointment led initially to his transfer to Lisbon and later to Madrid,

when the daughter ofthe King of Portugal, Maria Barbara, married the 

crown prince of Spain and could not bear to leave the maestro (who was

also her harpsichord teacher) behind in Lisbon.

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was another composer whose career peaked 

while Naples was just emerging from subservience to Spain and Austria. He 

enjoyed a very brief but stellar career that began in 1731, when he received

his first opera commission, and ended with his untimely death in 1736 at

the age oftwenty-six. In that short time, he managed to compose ten operas, 

two oratorios, two masses, nine choral cantatas, twelve solo cantatas, including Orfeo, numerous arias and duets, and six instrumental works. He accomplished all this in spite ofhandicaps—contemporary accounts report that he 

had symptoms that subsequent generations would call tubercular and that

he walked with a severe limp.

Isabella Leonarda lived in the province of Novara, in northwest Italy.

Christened Anna Isabella Leonardi, she entered the Collegio di Santa Orsola

in Novara in 1636 at age sixteen. A document of 1658 identifies her as the 

music instructor as well as the “mother and clerk’ for her congregation. By

1676 she had attained the rank ofmother superior. Leonarda was a skillful,

versatile composer whose approximately 200 compositions include examples of nearly every sacred genre. Leonarda’s instrumental works (published 

in 1693 as op. 16) are the earliest published sonatas by a woman. Her sonata 

for solo violin and continuo is conservative in its technical demands, but

harmonically advanced for its time.

Program notes by Leslie Hyde and Stephen Ackert

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