Debussy was inspired to compose L’isle joyeuse (The Joyful Island) by

Antoine Watteau’s (1684-1721) famous painting, Pelerinage a Cythere

(The Pilgrimage to Cythera). Commencing with a brilliantly conceived 

cadenza, L’isle joyeuse is not for the faint-hearted pianist. With his

customary self-deprecation, Debussy wrote of the work: “This piece 

seems to embrace every possible manner of treating the piano,

combining strength with grace, if I may presume to say so.”

Ravel borrowed the title for Gaspard de la nuit from an eponymous 

collection by Aloysius Louis Bertrand (1807-1841), an exponent of

chimerical poetry who was held in awe by Baudelaire and Mallarme.

Bertrand attributed the poems in the collection to the devil, alias

Gaspard. Ravel creates in this music the satanic elements inherent in all

three poems: Ondine, a water nymph with her contemptuous laughter; Le

gibet, a bell tolling at sunset as a corpse hangs from the gallows (Ravel’s

paraphrase); and Scarbo, a goblin appearing as a frightening apparition. 

Ravel’s stated intention was to “write a piano piece that is even harder 

to play than Mily Balakirev’s oriental fantasy, Islamey.” Each of the

three pieces teems with Herculean requirements: double notes that are

effervescent and unrelenting (Ondine); repeated bell-like notes, requiring 

extraordinary control (Le gibet); and forward-surging runs, creating an

inexorable charge (Scarbo).

Program notes by Elmer Booze

The use ofcameras or recording equipment during

the performance is not allowed.

For the convenience ofconcert goers

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:30 p.m.

Selectionsfrom concerts at the Gallery

can be heard on the second Sunday ofeach month

at 9:00 p.m. on WGMS, 103.5 FM.

The Sixtieth Season of

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and

F. LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

■HT'HM -

Z L' —X—~

• •; -v-c-; •:

2395th Concert

ALAIN JACQUON, pianist

Sunday Evening, 4 November 2001

Seven O'clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission free
PROGRAM

Franz Liszt

(1811-1886)

Claude Debussy

(1862-1918)

Maurice Ravel

(1875-1937)

Valse caprice No. 6 (d’apres Schubert)

from Soirees de Vienne (1852)

Venezia e Napoli, from Annees de pelerinage

No. 1: Gondoliera

No. 3: Tarantella

Isoldes Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde

(1867)

Mephisto Waltz No. 1

(1860)

INTERMISSION

Reflets dans l’eau, from Images, Book One

(1905)

L’isle joyeuse

(1904)

Gaspard de la nuit

(1908)

Ondine

Gibet

Scarbo

“[AlainJ Jacquon played [the] Mephisto Waltz like the devil: dancers

whirled to a satanic fiddle, innocent girls were compromised, stars fell,

nightingales sang in the bushes, lovers sank into the ocean of their own

lust...and everybody went home happy” (Susan Larson, The Boston

Globe). “[He] knows how to go into the score to highlight every precious

detail of the music with clarity and accuracy. A major discovery in the

French music domain” (Jean Hamon, Repertoire). “[He] has made a

strong impression on the public with his transcendent technique and his

affirming temperament: we will have to remember his name”

(/’Express). Such accolades have been the standard for French pianist

Alain Jacquon, who was born in Lyons in 1959. He began the study of

piano at age four at the conservatory of his native city and was admitted

to the Paris Conservatory at a young age. In addition to being awarded a

first prize in the class of Lucette Descaves at the Conservatory at age

sixteen, he won first prizes for chamber music, harmony, counterpoint,

fugue, orchestration, analysis, and accompaniment.

After earning laureate recognition at the Busoni Competition in 1980 

and winning the Long-Thibaud Competition in 1981, Jacquon went on to

win awards in other international events, including the Viotti, the Pozzoli,

and the Pretoria Competitions. Alain Jacquon has performed in some

of the world’s leading festivals, among them The Yokohama Piano

Festival, The Hawaii International Festival, The Chopin Festival in Paris,

The Chopin Gesellschaft in Vienna, The Festival ofthe Hamptons, and The

Newport Music Festival, where he has performed every summer since

1994. His orchestral engagements have included performances with The

Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio-France, The Johannesburg Symphony,

The Pretoria Symphony, The Brittany Orchestra, The Kiev Radio-TV

Orchestra, The Pasdeloup Orchestra, and l’Orchestre Jean-Fra^ois

Paillard. Alain Jacquon was assistant director of the Paris National

Conservatory from 1987 until 2000, when he was appointed director of

the Montpellier National Conservatory, a position he currently holds.
Franz Liszt included the Soirees de Vienne in his last concert in July

1886. According to the eminent Liszt scholar Alan Walker, “This was

not only the last time that Liszt played [publicly], but it may also have

been he last time that he ever touched the keys of a piano.” Illness

overcame the composer a few days later and he died on 31 July 1886.

With his characteristic genius for improvising in a highly distinctive 

manner, Liszt transformed Schubert’s once forgotten dances into a

memorable experience that prompted writer David Wright to state:

“Some...may prefer to listen to Schubert’s waltzes as he composed them

in the 1820s; but if you want to hear ‘authentic performance practice’

circa 1850, [listen to] the Soirees de Vienne.”

Gondoliera and Tarantella are the first and third, respectively, of the

compositions that make up the 1859 revised version of Venezia e Napoli,

a supplement to the second (Italian) volume of Liszt’s Annees de

pelerinage (1837-1849). Based on a popular Venetian song identified as

Canzone del Cavaliere Peruchini, Gondoliera is a typical Italian

barcarolle, the melody and rhythm of which Liszt renders in his colorful 

manner. The Tarantella paints an elaborate canvas that centers on the

theme from Canzona napolitana by Guglielmo Cottrau (1797—1847). It

effervescent, vacillating mood swings give an indication of Liszt’s

inexhaustible supply of musical ideas. True to its origins in folk

dance, the Tarantella is a highly spirited dance in perpetual motion.

Among the dozens of transcriptions Liszt made from Wagner’s operas,

Isoldes Liebestod (Isolde s Death), from Tristan und Isolde, is one of the

most luxuriant and impassioned. A brief passage extracted from the duet

of the second act leads into a reiteration of Isolde’s aria that “manages to

convey not just Wagner, but Liszt’s total admiration of the music which

he thought to be the greatest of its time” (Leslie Howard). In spite of the

pianistic elaboration, Wagner’s historic masterpiece retains its

enchantment in Liszt’s arrangement.

The popularity among composers of the legend of Faust as a musical

subject is well documented. Among the many examples are the opera

Mefistofele by Arrigo Boito (1842-1918), the Eighth Symphony of

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), the opera Faust by Charles Gounod (1818—

1893), and Liszt’s own Faust Symphony, which is based on Goethe’s

chefdroeuvre. Moreover, Liszt went so far as to compose four Mephisto

Waltzes for solo piano at four different times in his life. Alain Jacquon 

plays the first of the four, which is the most popular and the most often

performed. Liszt wrote it initially for orchestra and later transcribed it

brilliantly for solo piano. The Mephisto Waltz, also known as The Dance

in the Village Inn, is based on the first of two episodes in Nicolaus 

Lenau’s (1802-1850) poem, Faust. Liszt calls forth the image of Faust

and Mephistopheles, disguised as a hunter, arriving at a village inn

where a wedding is in progress. Faust is preoccupied with the beauty of a

.lovely maiden, but too timorous to ask her for a dance. Mephistopheles, 

laughing at Faust’s timidity, snatches a fiddle from one of the musicians 

and, in a seductive and intoxicating manner, inspires everyone to dance

wildly. Taking advantage of the moment, Mephistopheles dances with

the maiden out of the village and into the forest. We hear the sound of

the fiddle growing fainter and fainter, as it mixes with the songs of the

nightingales. In his description of the Mephisto Waltz, the American

musicologist James Huneker (1857-1921) wrote: “In addition to its

biting, broad humor and satanic suggestiveness, [it] contains one of the

most voluptuous episodes outside of [Wagner’s] Tristan score.”

Debussy wrote two books of Images, each containing three pieces.

“Reflets dans I’eau” is from Book /. In his essay, An Introduction to the

Piano Music of Claude Debussy, James Goodfriend says: “A symbol is

something that is there not to be translated, but to point out or suggest

something that perhaps cannot be put into words.” He continues by

surmising what Debussy might be telling us: “There is a certain musical

quality in the reflection of a tree in the water, in the inverted mirroring of

the chateau in the lake, in the distortions of vision by the ripples in the

pool, not an evanescent thing...an essential characteristic, non-verbal 

and visual, but expressible in music, and that expression is this music.”

Debussy, who was devotedly attached to both books of Images, wrote to

his publisher about Book I, saying: “I think I may say, without undue

pride, that I believe these three pieces will live and will take their place

in piano literature...either to the left of Schumann...or to the right of

Chopin....”