For the convenience of concertgoers 

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:oo 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 West 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

2,682nd Concert

National Gallery Chamber Players String Quartet

Claudia Chudacoff and Teri Lazar, violin

Osman Kivrak, viola

Diana Fish, cello

June 29, 2008

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

String Quartet in B-Jlat Major, op. 64 no. 3 (1790)

Vivace assai

Adagio

Menuetto: Allegretto

Finale: Allegro con spirito

Chia Patino (b. 1967)

Wild Swans

INTERMISSION

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

String Quartet in A Minor, op. 29, no. 1, D. 804

Allegro, ma non troppo 

Andante

Menuetto: Allegretto

Allegro moderato

The Musicians

NATIONAL GALLERY CHAMBER PLAYERS STRING QUARTET

The National Gallery Chamber Players String Quartet has performed

regularly at the Gallery since its debut in 1995. In addition to standard

quartet repertoire, the group presents rarely heard masterpieces of chamber

music. The musicians also perform under the name Sunrise Quartet, and

in that capacity they have been recognized with a Chamber Music America

residency at the Duke Ellington School ofthe Arts as well as with residencies at the Concerts at the Beach in Delaware and the Davies Concert Series

in Camp Springs, Maryland. With perfectly matched skills, the first and

second violinists are able to change places, a practice that is rare among

string quartets.

Violinist Claudia Chudacoff appears frequently as soloist and chamber

musician in the Washington/Baltimore area. In addition to her position as

the newly-appointed concertmaster ofthe u.s. Marine Band’s White House

Chamber Orchestra, Chudacoffis the concertmaster ofthe Alexandria

Symphony and the National Gallery Orchestra. A member of both the 

Sunrise Quartet and the National Gallery Quartet, she has performed

regularly in numerous venues and concert series in Washington, DC, including the Contemporary Music Forum, the Embassy Series, the Fessenden

Ensemble, the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and National Musical Arts.

She is featured on an Albany Records cd of chamber music by Erich Korngold, and was recently seen in a broadcast for West Virginia public television

with the Sunrise Quartet. She has also been heard a number oftimes on

National Public Radio’s Performance Today.

3
Violinist Teri Lazar has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in

the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. She is the concertmaster of

the Virginia Chamber Orchestra and performs with the Richmond Chamber

Players and in Currents, a chamber music series also based in Richmond. She

earned a doctor ofmusic degree from The Catholic University ofAmerica and

teaches violin at American University, where she is a musician in residence.

Lazar has recorded chamber music for the Albany, Centaur, Klavier, and North/

South Consonance labels and has been heard on npr’s Performance Today.

Violist Osman Kivralc is a winner ofthe National Scholarship Competition

in Turkey and the Baltimore Chamber Music Awards. He has performed at

the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, and has toured Italy and

other parts of Europe as a chamber musician. He performs with the Richmond Chamber Players and in Currents, and teaches at American University

as a musician in residence. A graduate ofThe Catholic University ofAmerica,

where he earned a doctor ofmusic degree, Kivrak is a composer as well as a

performer. His compositions were recently recognized with awards from the

Maryland State Arts Council and the Maryland-National Capital Parks and

Planning Commission.

Cellist Diana Fish came to Washington, DC, in 1994 to become a member ofthe Marine Chamber Orchestra of “The President’s Own” United

States Marine Band, in which she currently serves as assistant principal

cellist. She graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied

with Orlando Cole, and continued her work at the graduate level at Indiana

University, where she studied with Janos Starker. Fish has been the principal

cellist of Concert Artists of Baltimore, with whom she performed as soloist

in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto for piano, violin, and cello. She has also 

appeared as soloist with the Marine Chamber Orchestra in Victor Herbert’s

Cello Concerto in E Minor. A charter member ofthe Sunrise Quartet and the

National Gallery Chamber Players String Quartet, Fish has been performing

with both ensembles for the past thirteen years.

4

The Program

Franz Joseph Haydn can be called the father ofthe modern string quartet,

having developed it from its obscure and tentative beginnings to a definite

form with a specific compositional technique. Only two composers after

him, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) and Bela Bartok (1881-1945), came

close to his mastery and prolific output ofthe genre. Written in 1790, the

six quartets of opus 64 came just as Haydn’s thirty-year service as staff'

composer and conductor for the Esterhazy family was ending. The dedication ofthese quartets as well as those of opp. 54 and 55 to Johann Tost, a

Viennese merchant and amateur violinist, provides evidence that Haydn

was making the transition from court musician to freelance composer.

Each quartet in opus 64 is a masterpiece in its own right, and in op. 64,

no. 3, Haydn reaches a pinnacle of natural refinement in his writing. With

the design of a perfectly executed sonata form, the first movement has two 

completely contrasting themes. The first is broad in scope, with concentration on dynamic contrast, and the second is a tour de force ofinsistent

sixteenths. The second movement (Adagio) is set in a symmetrical A-B-A

song form, and the minuet and trio, with their folk-like dance qualities,

prepare the way for the rollicking finale.

Born in Quito, Ecuador in 1967, composer Chia Patino is also a freelance opera stage director whose work is seen throughout the world. She 

attended the University of Louisville, where she studied piano with Doris

Keyes and composition with Claude Baker. Her string quartet, Wild Swans,

was inspired by the eponymous poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, from her

collection Second April (1921).

Wild Swans

I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over.

And what did I see I had not seen before?

One question less or a question more;

nothing to match the flight ofwild birds flying.

5
Tiresome heart, forever living and dying, 

house without air, I leave you and lock your door.

Wild swans, come over the town, come over 

the town again, trailing your legs and crying.

Franz Schubert was repeatedly frustrated in his attempts to get his

string quartets published, but he found a publisher almost immediately

for his String Quartet in A Minor, D. 804, thanks to the involvement ofthe

renowned violinist and quartet leader Ignaz Schuppanzigh (1776-1830). In

1824 the composer met the violinist, who had just returned from a sevenyear sojourn in Russia. Schuppanzigh convinced Schubert that he should

return to the medium ofthe string quartet, which he had avoided for several 

years. Schubert composed a lyrical and introspective work, which he dedicated to Schuppanzigh. It bears the nickname “Rosamunde” because the

second movement contains a theme from Schubert’s incidental music to a

play ofthe same name.

The work opens with a mournful theme in the violin, accompanied by

the viola, which quivers on its lowest notes. Although the movement modulates to major keys and becomes livelier at some points, it returns to the

pensive and downcast mood with which it began. The Rosamunde theme

begins the second movement (Andante), but it is more mournful that it was 

in the incidental music. Schubert quotes himself again in the third movement (Menuetto: Allegro), as he recalls the melody to which he had earlier set

the Schiller text: “Beauteous world, where art thou? Come again, O lovely

age of Nature’s blossoming” (Die Gotter Griechenlands, D. 677). The movement is inordinately somber, despite being marked Allegro. Only in the

finale (Allegro Moderato) does Schubert change the mood, playing the major

mode against the minor and arriving at a positive conclusion. The work

passes through three movements of doubt and despair to finally emerge in a

finale of peaceful resignation, effectively symbolizing Schubert’s frame of

mind as he suffered through his final years, in which his illness (syphilis)

and loneliness became increasingly more acute. He died at age thirty-one.

6

The Sixty-seventh Season ofConcerts

at the National Gallery ofArt

October-December 2008

All concerts in the West Building, West Garden Court*

OCTOBER NOVEMBER

3 Frederic Yonnet, harmonica player

Music for jazz harmonica and small

ensemble

• Friday at 5:30 pm and 7:15 pm

Sculpture Garden

5 )musica(aperta

Spanish music and art from 1500 to the

present. Presented in honor of Hispanic

Heritage Month

12 Gilles Vonsattel, pianist

Music by J. S. Bach, Liszt, Muhly, Rorem,

and Schubert. Presented in connection

with the Swiss cultural festival

15 Michele Campanella, pianist

Music by Domenico Scarlatti 

Presented in honor of Pompeii and the

Roman Villa: Art and Culture around the

Bay ofNaples

• Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

19 Festival Strings Lucerne

Music by Brahms, Mendelssohn, and

Sarasate. Presented in connection with

the Swiss cultural festival

22 Brazilian Guitar Quartet

• Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

26 Vienna Piano Trio

Music by Haydn, Schubert, and Smetana

29 Musica ad Rhenum

Music for recorder, cello, and harpsichord

Presented in honor ofJan Lievens: A Dutch

Master Rediscovered

• Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

2 National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble

Music by seventeenth-century composers

Presented in honor ofJan Lievens:

A Dutch Master Rediscovered

9 The Coast Orchestra

Live music for the film

In the Land ofthe Head Hunters

Presented in honor of George de Forest

Brush: Indian Paintings

16 Euclid String Quartet

Quartets by Ades, Beethoven, 

and Chernin

23 The Singers’ Companye

Samuel Gordon, conductor

Music by Native American

and other American composers

Presented in honor of George de Forest

Brush: Indian Paintings

30 Verge Ensemble

Music by Elliott Carter and

Jeffrey Mumford

DECEMBER

7 Till Fellner, pianist

Beethoven Sonata Cycle

14 New York Opera Society and

Soloists from Norway

Presented in connection with the Norwegian Christmas Festival at Union Station

21 Alessandra Marc, soprano

With the National Gallery Strings

Christmas Concert

28 National Gallery Orchestra

Manfred Knoop, guest conductor

New Year Concert

* unless otherwise indicated