conceive musical ideas and phrases with split-second accuracy in

anticipation of one another while performing Herculean technical feats.

Program notes by Elmer Booze

The use ofcameras or recording equipment

during the performance is not allowed. Please be sure that cell phones,

pagers, and other electronic devices are turned off

The Sixty-second Season of

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and

L. LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

2469th Concert

ANI KAVAFIAN, violin

IDA KAVAFIAN, violin and viola

JONATHAN FELDMAN, piano

Presented in honor ofthe 25th anniversary ofthe East Building

ofthe National Gallery of Art

Sunday Evening, 26 October 2003

Seven O’clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Bohuslav Martinu

(1890-1959)

Sonata for Two Violins and Piano

H 213 (1932)

Allegro poco moderato

Andante—Allegretto—Allegro

Moritz Moszkowski

(1854-1925)

Suite for Two Violins and Piano in G Minor

Op. 71 (c. 1900)

Allegro energico

Allegro moderato

Lento assai

Molto vivace

Intermission

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Duo for Violin and Viola in G Major

(1756-1791) K. 423 (1783)

Allegro

Adagio

Rondo: Allegro

Augusta Reed Thomas Rumi Settings

(b. 1964) (2001)

Commissionedfor Ani and Ida Kavafian by Arizona Friends

ofChamber Music

Pablo de Sarasate

(1844-1908)

Navarra for Two Violins and Piano

Op. 33 (1889)

Lento: 11 modo di recitativo

Allegro

Presto

The Musicians

Violinist Ani Kavafian was bom in Turkey of Armenian parents. She

began her musical studies at the piano at the age of three. When she was

nine years old, her family moved to the United States, and she began

violin studies with Ara Zerounian. At the age of sixteen she won first

prizes in both the piano and the violin competitions at the National

Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan. Two years later, she began her

undergraduate music studies at the Juilliard School of Music under the

tutelage of Ivan Galamian, and she later received a master’s degree in

performance from Juilliard, with honors.

A prestigious award-winning artist, Ani Kavafian has performed

with virtually all of America’s leading orchestras, including the New

York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Cleveland

Orchestra. As a chamber musician, she has appeared in many venues

with her sister, violinist and violist Ida Kavafian. For the past six years,

Ani Kavafian has been the artistic director, along with cellist Carter

Brey, ofthe New Jersey chamber music series “Mostly Music.” She is an

artist-member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, touring

with them throughout the United States and Canada and performing in

their regular series at New York’s Alice Tully Hall. Her recordings can

be heard on the Nonesuch, RCA, Columbia, and Musical Heritage

Society labels. She plays on a 1736 Muir McKenzie Stradivarius violin.

Currently a member ofthe faculty of McGill University in Montreal, Ani

Kavafian resides in northern Westchester County, New York, with her

husband, artist Bernard Mindich, and their son, Matthew.

With a vast repertoire and impressive versatility, violinist and

violist Ida Kavafian has gained for herself a unique position in the

music world. Both nationally and internationally, she has been acclaimed

as one of the few artists to excel on the violin as well as the viola. Her

repertoire is as diverse as her talents, and she has electrified recital stages

throughout North America, the Far East, and Europe. She was the

violinist of the renowned Beaux Arts Trio for six years. Since her

founding membership in the legendary and innovative group TASHI
nearly thirty years ago, Ida Kavafian’s chamber music appearances have

included many renowned festivals, among them the Santa Fe,

Tanglewood, Ravinia, Mostly Mozart, and Spoleto Festivals, the latter in

both Italy and Charleston, South Carolina. Ida Kavafian recently cofounded the Opus One Piano Quartet with pianist Anne-Marie 

McDermott, violist Steven Tenenbom, and cellist Peter Wiley. Ida

Kavafian performs on a J. B. Guadagnini violin made in Milan in 1751

and on a viola that was made in 1978 by Peter and Wendela Moes. Like

her sister, Ida was born in Istanbul, Turkey, and immigrated with her

family to the United States, where Detroit became their new home. She

began her studies at age six with Ara Zerounian, continuing with Mischa

Mischakoff and ultimately earning a master of music degree, with

honors, from the Juilliard School of Music, where she was a student of

Oscar Shumsky. Ida Kavafian resides in Connecticut and Philadelphia,

where she and her husband, violist Steven Tenenbom, breed, raise, train,

and show prize-winning champion Vizsla dogs. (The name of their

kennel is Opus One Vizslas.)

Pianist Jonathan Feldman has performed on four continents

with some of the world’s greatest instrumentalists and is recognized by

his colleagues and critics alike as an extremely accomplished ensemble

player and accompanist. In addition to his collaboration with Ani and Ida

Kavafian, he has played with such renowned musicians as Nathan

Milstein, Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Zara Nelsova, and Kyung Wha

Chung. Feldman also enjoys an active solo career, performing in recitals

throughout the United States and Europe and with orchestras such as the

Boston Pops and the Orchestra da Camera, among others. He has

performed with the New York Philharmonic Chamber Ensembles during

their tours of South America, the Far East, and Europe. A dedicated

teacher, Feldman has given master classes throughout the United States

and has lectured at the University of Maryland’s International Piano

Festival and William Kapell Competition in a presentation called “The

Collaborative Pianist.” Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, and Jonathan

Feldman appear at the National Gallery by arrangement with Herbert

Barrett Management, Inc., ofNew York City.

Program Notes

Bohuslav Martinu’s Sonata for Two Violins and Piano, H 213, has only

two movements, yet it is a work of substance, lasting approximately 

twenty minutes. Born in East Bohemia, Martinu was one of the most

prolific composers of the twentieth century. His works are extensive,

diverse, and still largely unpublished. The recipient of a scholarship to

study in Paris in 1923, he found life outside his home country so much to

his liking that he remained in Paris after the scholarship expired,

subsisting in extreme poverty. With the German invasion of Paris in

1940, Martinu was forced to flee with his wife to the United States,

where his work came to the attention of Serge Koussevitsky, then

conductor of the Boston Symphony. Life in America did not appeal to

Martinu, however, and after teaching for short periods at Princeton

University and the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, he returned to Europe

and spent the remainder of his life in France and Switzerland.

Moszkowski’s Suite for Two Violins and Piano, Op. 71, is one of

the most engaging and well-crafted of his chamber works, which also

include Konzertstiicke for Violin and Piano, a Scherzo for Violin and

Piano, and Three Pieces for Cello and Piano, Op. 29. The suite is noted

not only for the clever contrapuntal writing of the third movement, but

also for the meaningful role played by each instrument as an equal

partner, each having assertive parts to perform throughout the work. The

opening movement (Allegro energico) bravely announces its first theme

in G minor, with both violins performing double stops over a shortstanding organ point, heard in the lower register of the piano, that is

based on the two notes G and D. Although the movement sets out in

sonata-allegro form, it is extended with a coda of equal length, which

allows for previously heard materials to be reintroduced through a clever 

developmental process that makes them appear almost as if they were

newly presented. The second movement (.Allegro moderato) is a

charming minuet in G major that emphasizes the two violins in a duet,

with minimum interplay from the piano. The third movement (Lento
assai) is the climax to the contrapuntal outreach that began in the first

movement. Here the violins are in canonic interaction at the seventh,

while the piano exercises an unrestricted contrapuntal passage, allowing 

the three matching instruments to shine brilliantly. The fourth and final

movement (Molto vivace) is a tour-de-force ofsustained virtuosity that is

given a reprieve in its central section with a chorale-like entry, marked

con calma e cantabile, in which the piano plays the prominent role. After

the return of the opening theme, a climactic frenzy ensues, leading to a

demonic closing coda that is breathtaking in its delivery.

Mozart’s Duo in G Major, K. 423, and its mate, Duo in B-flat

Major, K. 424, aie indelibly linked to Michael Haydn, who was ordered

in 1783 by Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg to compose six duos, of

which he completed only four because of illness. The archbishop was a

hard taskmaster and not inclined to accept illness as a reason for delay or

incompletion on the part of a composer. Upon hearing of his friend’s

plight, Mozart, without telling Haydn, composed two duos, added them

to Haydn’s four, and arranged for delivery of all six to the archbishop. It

is believed that Haydn never published the six duos, perhaps because

Mozart’s were far superior to his own. As critic Erik Smith wrote: “In

Mozart’s hands...they became music as rich as a quartet when he

wanted, full of virtuosity and counterpoint, with an equal share for each

instrument, and, as with most media that Mozart touched, [they

represent] the last word that ever need be said.”

The Duo in G Major, K. 423, boasts a more equal partnership 

between the two instruments than is found in K. 424. This becomes

obvious in the opening and closing movements, where the themes are

interchanged from one voice to another. The opening movement 

(Allegro) has a capricious, fun-loving first theme and a more mellifluous

second theme that is subsequently exploited in the development section.

The second movement (Adagio) enters seamlessly without a break,

bearing a capacious theme that is treated with variations, with each

instrumental entry gracefully ornamented. The third movement 

(Rondeau: Allegro) is frisky and centered around two sharply delineated

episodes that juxtapose the keys of E minor and G major, an unusual

circumstance for Mozart.

Augusta Reed Thomas was born in 1964 in New York. She is a

professor of composition at Northwestern University and serves on the

board of directors of the American Music Center. She previously taught

at the Eastman School of Music and was a composer-in-residence with

the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She studied at Northwestern 

University, Yale University, and the Royal Academy of Music in

London. Seven years after graduating from the Royal Academy, she was

elected an associate ofthe Royal Academy, the equivalent of an honorary

degree. In 1998 she received the Distinguished Alumni Association

Award from St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire. Thomas’

chamber opera, Ligeia, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, was

commissioned by Mstislav Rostropovich and Rencontres Musicales

d’Evian and was premiered by Maestro Rostropovich in the 1994 Evian

Festival. The work on this program, Rumi Settings, received its world

premiere performance in March 2002 at the Tucson Winter Chamber 

Music Festival in Tucson, Arizona.

Navarra, the birthplace of Pablo Sarasate, is a region in northeast

Spain that was once an independent kingdom. Sarasate’s violin duo by

the same name prominently features a rhythmic dance of Navarra, known

as the gaitas. Sarasate, whose professional career began when he was

fifteen years old, was a brilliant violinist with an impeccable technique

who toured the world to great acclaim. His virtuosic skills were

legendary and have become axiomatic for every aspiring violinist who

has studied his much beloved and celebrated works. Among the most

famous are Zigeunerweisen, Op. 20 (1878), Spanische Tanze, Op. 21 (in

four books, 1878-1882), and the Carmen Fantasy, Op. 25 (1883).

Navarra, Op. 33, although not as well known, encompasses all the

technical wizardry found in the aforementioned works, including

spacious harmonics and portside (left-hand) pizzicatos. Sarasate has

compounded the difficulty of this work by requiring two violinists to