74TH SEASON 

OF CONCERTS

JANUARY 10, 2016 • NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
2 • National Gallery of Art

PROGRAM

3:30 • West Building, West Garden Court

Yael Weiss

Lera Auerbach (b. 1973)

Ludwig's Alptraum (2007)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Sonata in C Minor, op. 111

Maestoso —Allegro con brio ed appassionato

Arietta; Adagio molto semplice e cantabile

Intermission

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960

Molto moderato

Andante sostenuto

Scherzo; Allegro vivace con delicatezza — Trio 

Allegro rma non troppo — Presto
The Musician

Award-winning pianist Yael Weiss has been hailed by many of today's greatest musicians and

critics for visionary interpretations of surpassing depth, immediacy, and communicative power.

Weiss has performed across the United States, Europe, Japan, Korea, and South America at

such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Seattle's Benaroya Hall,

Moscow's Bolshoi Hall, and London's Wigmore Hall. Her New York recital debut was presented

by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Weiss has appeared as soloist with many international

orchestras, including the Prague Chamber Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Israel

Chamber Orchestra, Israel Camerata Orchestra, the Brazil National Symphony, the Seattle

Symphony, Santa Fe Symphony, Jacksonville Symphony, New Bedford Symphony, Sioux City

Symphony, and the Chautauqua Festival Orchestra, among others. She is also in demand at

international music festivals, such as Marlboro, Ravinia, City of London, Banff, Parry Sound,

Caramoor, and the Seattle Chamber Music Festival.

Yael Weiss's discography encompasses piano works by more than a dozen composers, 

with two releases, Robert Schumann: Piano Works and 88 Keys to Joy, on the Koch International

Classics label. Weiss is also devoted to chamber music and tours worldwide with violinist

Mark Kaplan and cellist Peter Stumpf as the Weiss-Kaplan-Stumpf Trio. The group's discography includes CDs of Brahms, Smetana, Chihara, and Lerdahl trios, as well as a 2014 release,

An American Tour, featuring world premiere recordings of compositions by American composers, all on the Bridge Records label.

Weiss's current touring schedule includes concerto and recital appearances in the

United States, Canada, Germany, and Israel. She is presenting performances of the complete cycle of Beethoven's thirty-two Piano Sonatas, as well as lectures and workshops

devoted to those masterpieces. Among her other special projects are performances of 

Beethoven's complete Piano Trios, world premiere performances with the Israel Camerata 

Orchestra of Grieg’s piano concerto in a new re-orchestration, and premieres of works by

Lera Auerbach, Joel Feigin, and Michael Gilbertson.

Having been a frequent guest on NPR's Performance Today, American Public Media's

St. Paul Sunday, the BBC in London, and multiple shows on New York's WQXR and WNYC, Yael

Weiss is known to radio and television audiences worldwide. She has appeared numerous 

times on Israeli television and presented a recital filmed live for NHK television in Japan.

4 • National Gallery of Art

Program Notes

Opening today's program is a short composition by Russian-American composer Lera

Auerbach: Ludwig's Alptraum (Ludwig's Nightmare). I've enjoyed working with Lera while

commissioning and recording her piano trio Triptych, and this solo piano work has a

similarly arresting power and expressivity. Written for the Second International Beethoven

Competition for Piano in Bonn in 2007, it uses as a departure point the opening measures 

of Beethoven's Sonata in E-flat Major, opus 27, no. 1.

Lera said about the piece: "When I finished the work it didn't yet have a title. 'Prelude,

Toccata, and Postlude' was my first thought, which I immediately discarded as conservative

and boring. But what should I call the piece? As often happens in dreams, the most random 

elements suddenly reveal common characteristics in 'Ludwig's Alptraum.' They seem to

belong together in a strange, distorted reality that has its own proportions, its own feeling of 

time and its own timelessness. All art arises from dreams and it is perhaps only in dreams 

that fate can reveal its hidden threads to us, the threads that connect each day with the next.

Dreams are full of symbols, even if they can only be found again in memories."

The program continues with two of the greatest masterpieces in the piano repertoire: 

the very last piano sonatas of Beethoven and Schubert. Beethoven's Sonata in C Minor, opus 111,

and Schubert's Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960. These two masterpieces share several similarities, the most important being the uncanny ability of both to transport us into a spiritual

realm; they are works that succeed in expressing through music the truth and depth of human 

experience. These works have other things in common as well: both were written in Vienna

only six years apart (Beethoven's in 1822 and Schubert's in 1828), and each is the final work in

a trilogy of its composer's late-period sonatas.

It is possible to say that these two monumental works are both studies in silences,

and that silence is indeed one of the crucial elements that lead us to the otherworldly, to the 

sublime. The second and final movement of Beethoven's sonata, titled "Arietta," surrenders 

itself to silence. It is, as pianist Alfred Brendel has put it "a prelude to silence." Hans von

Bulow, one of the first nineteenth-century pianists to perform Beethoven's works extensively,

referred to it as "Nirvana," thereby emphasizing the essential contrast with its counterpart,

the "Samsara” first movement. The two movements of Beethoven's final sonata paint a

picture of earth and heaven, of struggle followed by complete and eternal serenity.

In Schubert's sonata silences abound — there are long fermatas that suspend time,

and on many occasions the music simply stops, the dramatic silences allowing us to reflect

on where we are. Schubert also makes generous use of the unusual dynamic marking

pianississimo (ppp), creating an unreal world that is neither quite here nor there, hovering

above earth and stopping the movement of time. In the same way that silence, or emptiness, can be so meaningful and powerful, another element —the trill, normally a secondary

and merely decorative device — is brought to the foreground of the musical experience in

both sonatas.

74th Season • 5
Schubert's trill, first appearing immediately following the opening melody of the first

movement, is a low murmur —trembling, dark, mysterious, and unsettling. The pianist

Andras Schiff calls it "the most extraordinary trill in the history of music!" All appearances 

of this trill are to be played very softly, pp or even ppp — with one startling exception: the

trill makes an unexpected appearance during the measures leading to a repeat of the 

opening section of the movement, and this time we hear it in full force, fortissimo iff). In a

recent New Yorker magazine article Alex Ross refers to this as "the trill of doom." Many

musicians debate whether or not this repeat should be performed. Without the repeat, we

do not play the ff statement of the trill, and some musicians eliminate the repeat precisely 

to maintain the otherwise serene quality of the whole; however, others play the repeat,

feeling that, despite the movement's unusual length, the trill in its loud version is essential 

to conveying Schubert's complete emotional range. In the second movement of Beethoven's

sonata, the long continuous trills that gradually take over are a key element in giving the

work its sense of stillness. In exact opposition to Schubert's use of the trill, Beethoven's trills

are in high register, shining, shimmering, and weightless. They are a symbol of infinity.

Beethoven and Schubert had quite different approaches to their final sonatas when 

it comes to the organization of the musical material. Beethoven's is a motivically concise,

two-movement work whereas Schubert's is a large, four-movement structure of symphonic

scope. While Beethoven's sonata emphasizes the tonal center of C throughout (C minor

for the first movement, C major in the second), Schubert's sonata traverses a wide range

of keys, enjoying a wealth of modulations and colors without any hurry to let the gravity

of harmony pull the music in any one decisive direction. Here we have a great example of 

what Schumann referred to as Schubert's "Heavenly Length.'' Strikingly, while Beethoven

challenges life in the first movement and transcends it in the second, Schubert on the other

hand, after two otherworldly movements, decides to return to the joys of the real world in

the third and fourth movements, offering an affirmation of life here and now.

Program notes by Yael Weiss

6 • National Gallery of Art

Upcoming events of the SeventyFourth Season of The William

Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot

Belin Concerts

Fisk Jubliee Singers

Spirituals

January 17, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

Aspen String Trio

J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations

January 24, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

National Gallery of Art Vocal Ensemble

Songs inspired by mythology. Presented

in honor of Power and Pathos: Bronze

Sculptures of the Hellenistic World

January 31, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

Cantus

The Four Loves

February 7, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

General Information

Admission to the National Gallery of Art

and all of its programs is free of charge,

except as noted.

The use of cameras or recording equipment

during the performance is not allowed.

Please be sure that all portable electronic

devices are turned off.

Concerts are made possible in part 

through the generosity of donors to the 

National Gallery of Art through The Circle.

Reserved seating is available in recognition 

of their support. Please contact the 

development office at (202) 842-6450 or

circle@nga.gov for more information.

www.nga.gov

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The department of music produced these

program notes. Copyright © 2016 Board of

Trustees, National Gallery ofArt, Washington

Cover Anonymous, Concert of Birds (detail),

1660/1670, National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Gift of John Dimick

Back cover West Building, East Garden

Court, Photo by Rob Shelley, National Gallery

of Art, Washington