Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana was born out of his love and

affection for his beloved Clara Wieck. Schumann based the work on a

fantastic tale by the German writer and composer E.T.A. Hoffmann

(1776-1822). Hoffman’s story is entitled Johannes Kreisler, des

Kapellmeisters musikalische Leiden. Johannes Kreisler is portrayed as a

disorderly genius; Schumann apparently viewed Kreisler as his alter ego

and instinctively bonded with the character. Schumann wrote several

letters to Clara Wieck on the subject of Kreisleriana. In one of them he

asks her to “play my Kreisleriana occasionally. In some passages there is

to be found an utterly wild love that is your life and mine.”

The kaleidoscopic range of Schumann’s frame of mind, 

wandering from ethereal poetry to blazing passion, is eloquently

expressed by the tempo indications of the eight movements: 

1. Vivacissimo (Very lively and brisk): these characteristics were the

glorified ideal of Kreisler; 2. Andantino con molto sentimento (Slowly,

with much feeling): with the addition of two unique frisky intermezzi; 3.

Allegro molto appassionato (Fast and very impassioned); 4. Lento

cantabile (Slow and in a singing style): a moment of Kreislerian 

introspection; 5. Vivo molto (Very lively): Kreisler returning to a state of

restlessness and animation; 6. Adagio molto (Very gently): a

contemplative melody of exceptional beauty; 7. Allegro molto (Very

fast): Kreisler’s mood changes to agitation in this movement, which has a

diversified coda; and 8. Allegro scherzando (Fast and playful): Kreisler

appears to be liberated, but, as musicologist Geoffrey Crankshaw

observes, “Just as we think we are really coming to grips with this

kaleidoscopic being, the visage becomes veiled in esoteric humor—and

silence.”

Program notes by Elmer Booze

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.

For the convenience of concertgoers

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

The Sixty-first Season of

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and

F. LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

2464th Concert

PEDJA MUZIJEVIC, pianist

Sunday Evening, 22 June 2003

Seven O’clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission free
Domenico Scarlatti

(1685-1757)

Program

Sonata in F Minor, K. 519

Sonata in F Major, K. 17

Sonata in C-Sharp Minor, K. 247

Sonata in A Major, K. 24

Conlon Nancarrow Tango?

(1912-1997) (1983)

Enrique Granados Coloquio en la reja, from Goyescas, Part /

(1867-1916) (1909-1910)

Intermission

John Cage

(1912-1992)

Robert Schumann

(1810-1856)

In a Landscape

(1948)

Kreisleriana, Op. 18

(1838; rev. 1850)

1. Vivacissimo

2. Andantino con molto sentimento;

Intermezzo I; Intermezzo II

3. Allegro molto appassionato

4. Lento cantabile

5. Vivo molto

6. Adagio molto

7. Allegro molto

8. Allegro scherzando

The Musician

Bosnian-born Pedja Muzijevic has distinguished himself as a pianist of

great versatility. Praised for his interpretations of the standard literature

and for his imaginative programming, he has toured extensively as

soloist with orchestras and as recitalist throughout Eastern and Western

Europe, Great Britain, Canada, the United States, South America, and

Asia. Muzijevic made his New York recital debut in Lincoln Center’s

Alice Tully Hall as a recipient of the Juilliard School’s coveted William

Petschek Award. He has since given solo recitals in the Frick Collection

in New York City, the Phillips Collection in Washington, and the

Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal. His many honors include top

prize in the Busoni International Piano Competition, a finalist diploma in

the Naumburg International Piano Competition, and special prizes from

the Chopin Society of Warsaw and the Gulbenkian Foundation of

Lisbon.

The press has been unstinting in its praise of Pedja Muzijevic’s

musical gifts. “Pedja Muzijevic, a young [Bosnian] resident in America,

is a virtuoso with formidable fingers and a musician with fiercely

original ideas about the music he plays” (Financial Times, London).

“Pedja Muzijevic passed the final test of a performer: | he] understands

the composer’s language and plays not only the written music but [also]

the personality behind it. It was Schubert in person—tune after tune, full

of lift and sparkle” (Chicago Tribune). “A truly stunning performance....

Mr. Muzijevic combines intellectual forces with grace, untrammeled

virtuosity with poetic instinct....It was a deeply moving performance”

(East Hampton Star).

Pedja Muzijevic graduated from the Academy of Music in Zagreb

and continued his studies at the Curtis Institute of Music and at Juilliard,

where he received the master of music degree. The teachers who have

had the greatest influence on his artistic development include pianists

Joseph Kalichstein and Vladimir Krpan, violinist Robert Mann, and

harpsichordist Albert Fuller. Pedja Muzijevic appears at the National

Gallery by arrangement with Jecklin Associates of Davenport, Iowa.
Program Notes

In 1720 Domenico Scarlatti moved from Rome to Lisbon, where he took

up the position of court musician to King Joao V. One of his favorite

pupils at the Portuguese court was Princess Maria Barbara, who married

the heir apparent to the Spanish throne in 1729. At the princess’ fervent

request, Scarlatti moved with her household to Madrid, where he spent

the rest of his life. As a teacher of the harpsichord, Scarlatti wrote music

to help his students overcome certain technical difficulties. Expressly

intended as harpsichord studies, Scarlatti’s sonatas are in a single

movement binary format, as opposed to the three-movement sonata form

that evolved in the late eighteenth century. Scarlatti wrote more than five

hundred such studies that explore the gamut of the harpsichord’s

potential and, according to Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Music

and Musicians, “His sonatas reveal his gifts as one of the foremost

composers in the ‘free style’ (a homophonic style with graceful

ornamentation, in contrast to the former contrapuntal style). He also

obtained striking effects by the frequent crossing of hands, tones repeated

by rapidly changing fingers, etc.” The four sonatas on tonight’s program

highlight the brilliance of Scarlatti’s technique, particularly Sonata No.

24 in A Major, with its coruscating left-hand scales and runs, and Sonata

No. 519 in F Minor, a spectacular tarantella with a series of imposing

arpeggios.

Conlon Nancarrow was born in Texarkana, Arkansas. He learned

to play the trumpet at the Western Military Academy in Illinois and later

attended the national music camp at Interlochen, Michigan. He briefly

attended the Cincinnati College Conservatory, where he was exposed to

Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which sparked a lifelong interest in

rhythmic complexity. In 1934 he moved to Boston and studied privately

with Roger Sessions, Walter Piston, and Nicolas Slonimsky. In 1937 he

joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade went to Spain to fight on the

republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Upon his return to the United

States in 1939, he found that his citizenship had been revoked. He moved

to Mexico City in 1940, became a Mexican citizen in 1956, and remained

there until his death.

Nancarrow composed in almost total isolation until the late

1970s, when Peter Garland began publishing his scores in Soundings and

some of his works were recorded. In 1983 the MacArthur Foundation

awarded him its prestigious “genius” award. Nancarrow’s piano works

have had a tremendous impact on young composers owing to their almost

unparalleled fusion of visceral excitement and structural elegance.

Susan Feder wrote the following notes for a recorded

performance of Tango? by American pianist Ursula Oppens: “The

innocence of Conlon Nancarrow’s Tango? [written for pianist Yvar

Mikhashoff] with its light texture, block dynamics, and clear changes of

register, disguises the complexity of its notation: three staves, with three

different (and periodically altering) meters.”

Coloquio en la reja (Dialogue at the Lattice) is the second

characteristic piece in the piano suite that Granados entitled Goyescas.

The entire suite represents Granados’ reproduction in music of the

romantic ambiance of the Madrid that Goya passionately portrayed in his

paintings and tapestries. In Coloquio en la reja, Granados creates

through music the aura of a romantic conversation between a man and a

woman who are forced to speak to each other through bars attached to

her window, as Granados saw the scene in Goya’s painting.

John Cage, an icon for twentieth century American music,

became known as a renegade early in his career. His innovative ways of

expressing himself, both in music theory and in the use of multimedia

sources, won for him an honored place in the pantheon of American

composers. Piano music constituted a large part of Cage’s output and this

genre assumed a new percussive sound in his hands. Instructing the

player to place various objects judiciously between the piano strings, he

created what came to be known as music for “prepared piano.” Writer 

Ivan Moody calls attention to the fact that not all of Cage’s piano

music was percussive: “This reputation [of Cage as an iconoclast] may

obscure the fact that much of his music, and in particular his piano

music, is characterized by a fragile, porcelain beauty....In a Landscape is

like the willow pattern: an unchanging image of idyllic beauty that

reveals patterns of intricate subtlety the closer the eye moves to it.”