JUNE 4, 2017 • NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
PROGRAM

4:00 • East Building Auditorium

Eclipse Chamber Orchestra

Abel Pereira, Music Director

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)

Concerto no. 3 in F Major, "Autumn," RV 293

Allegro

Adagio molto

Allegro

Malorie Blake Shin, solo violin

Astor Piazzolla

Primavera Portena

Jennifer Kim, solo violin

Antonio Vivaldi

Concerto no. 2 in G Minor, "Summer," RV 315

Allegro non molto

Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992)

Otono Porteno

Alexandra Osborne, solo violin

Adagio

Presto

Wanzhen Li, solo violin

Antonio Vivaldi

Concerto no. 4 in F Minor, "Winter," RV 297

Allegro non molto

Largo

Allegro

Susan Midkiff, solo violin

Astor Piazzolla

Verano Porteno

Regino Madrid, solo violin

Astor Piazzolla

Invierno Porteno

Jane Bowyer Stewart, solo violin

Antonio Vivaldi

Concerto no. 1 in E Major, "Spring," RV 269

Allegro

Largo

Allegro

Glenn Donnellan, solo violin

2 • National Gallery of Art

The Musicians

In 1992, conductor and horn player Sylvia Alimena, together with several of her National

Symphony Orchestra colleagues, founded Eclipse Chamber Orchestra (ECO). Now one

of the nation's premier chamber ensembles, the group presents exceptional performances

of diverse repertoire. In its twenty-five years, ECO has proudly premiered works by Mark

Adamo, Thomas Myron, David Teie, and Truman Harris. The group's enthusiastically

reviewed recordings include a collaboration with organist William Neil and two CDs on

Naxos: Late Victorians, featuring the music of Mark Adamo, and a collection of Florian

Gassmann's opera overtures, presented regularly on WETA-FM.

ECO takes great pride in spotlighting its members as soloists at every concert; our 

audiences enjoy hearing in intimate settings the artists they see only from afar at larger 

venues. The orchestra also showcases its musicians in a series of chamber music concerts

at the Lyceum in Alexandria.

Conductor Leonard Slatkin and violinist Joseph Silverstein (former Boston Symphony 

concertmaster) have each made guest appearances with ECO. Its second music director,

David Teie (2013-2016), premiered his own orchestration of Brahms's Piano Quartet in

C Minor, as well as his flute concerto and a musical setting of Walt Whitman poems. Abel

Pereira joins ECO in its twenty-fifth season as its third music director.

Abel Pereira came to the United States in 2014, when Christoph Eschenbach

appointed him principal horn of the National Symphony Orchestra. Born in Porto, Portugal,

into a family of fishermen, he began his musical studies at the age of ten and within a year

began a solo career with orchestras across Europe. Before joining the National Symphony,

Pereira played principal horn with the Porto Symphony, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe,

the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, the London Philharmonic, and the Berlin Philharmonic. His

international conducting career has included guest appearances in Spain, Italy, Lithuania, 

and Croatia. Having joined Eclipse as a guest conductor twice during the 2015 - 2016 season,

Pereira eagerly embraces his new role as music director.

75th Season • 3
Eclipse Chamber Orchestra

Violin

Natasha Bogachek

Eva Cappelletti-Chao

Jan Chong

Claudia Chudacoff

Anne Donaldson

Glenn Donnellan*

Joel Fuller

Jennifer Kim*

Wanzhen Li*

Regino Madrid*

Susan Midkiff*

Alexandra Osborne*

Joanna Owen

Malorie Blake Shin*

Jane Bowyer Stewart*

Viola

Philippe Chao

Eric deWaardt*

Chiara Dieguez

Mahoko Eguchi*

Tsuna Sakamoto-Nelson

Denise Wilkinson*

Cello

Eugena Chang*

Kacy Clopton*

Christina Davin

Jessica Nilles

David Teie

Kristen Wojcik

Double Bass

Richard Barber*

Paul DeNola

Flute

Carole Bean

Alice Kogan Weinreb

Oboe

Nicholas Stovall

William Wielgus

Clarinet

Paul Cigan

Theresa Wells Cigan

Bassoon

Truman Harris

Eddie Rumzis

Steve Wilson

Horn

Scott Fearing

James Nickel

Laurel Bennert Ohlson

Robert Reardon

Trumpet

William Gerlach

Steven Hendrickson

*ln today's performance 4 • National Gallery of Art

Program Notes

Vivaldi's Quattro Stagioni (Four Seasons) and Piazzolla's Las Cuatro Estaciones Portenas (Four

Seasons) together comprise eight colorful and innovative landscapes. Today we showcase

eight violin soloists while alternating between the two sets, which span more than two

hundred years and an ocean. Vivaldi's vivid tonal paintings, pictorial enough for any art

museum, provide sonic specifics of the seasons, from chirping bird calls to whistling winter

winds. Piazzolla's virtuosic tango-infused pieces evoke more general atmospheric sketches

of the seasons as experienced in Buenos Aires.

Antonio Vivaldi (1678 -1741), violin virtuoso and ordained priest, never got to

celebrate Mass, as he suffered from severe bronchial asthma. Fortunately for us, he found

his voice asa composer. Astoundingly prolific, he holds the world record for concerto

writing, with more than five hundred such solo vehicles to his name. In his native Venice,

he achieved fame as the orchestra director at an all-girls orphanage, where his job descrip­

tion also required him to create two new concertos every month. His Quattro Stagioni, part

ofa larger collection of ten concertos published in Amsterdam in 1725, represents an "extra"

burst of fresh invention.

Vivaldi paired his celebrated set of four seasonal concertos with four sonnets, possibly

products of his own pen. The words of poetry and the notes of music often match, though

the composer wrote additional, specific intentions directly into the score; the delightful details

range from the violas' barking dogs to the violins' pizzicato raindrops. Chattering teeth,

breaking ice, cuckoos, flies, wasps, and even drunkards make an appearance.

Astor Piazzolla, born of Italian immigrants, grew up in Argentina and New York City. 

Like Vivaldi he was an instrumental virtuoso before emerging asa composer; he excelled at 

the bandoneon,a relative of the concertina (or accordion) integral to Argentinian folk music.

In France, the legendary composition teacher Nadia Boulanger encouraged him to developa

personal style based on his passion for tango; the result,a fusion of tango, jazz, and classical,

with seductive rhythms and dissonance-laced harmonies, became known as "nuevo tango."

Piazzolla did not specifically set out to pay homage to Vivaldi's beloved Seasons. Over

the course of several years in the 1960s, he wrote four Estaciones Portenas (estacion means

season and porteno refers to natives of the port city of Buenos Aires) for folk ensemble, not

for the grouping heard today. In the 1990s, Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer commissioneda

Russian film composer, Leonid Desyatnikov, to arrange the Piazzolla pieces for solo violin

and string orchestra (the version we play today). The arranger cleverly incorporates literal

references to Vivaldi, but witha trans-hemispheric twist. Because winter in Argentina is sum­

mer in Italy, snippets of Vivaldi's summer weather show up in the Buenos Aires December air.

Listeners familiar with the Vivaldi set may enjoy spotting the fleeting references.

75th Season•5
The Piazzolla Seasons comprise single movements, as opposed to the fast-slowfast, three-movement structure of a baroque concerto. However, variety abounds when 

the string players employ unusual percussive effects, such as striking the strings with

the wooden part of the bow, plucking so hard that the string snaps back against the 

fingerboard (an effect known as the Bartok pizzicato), and scraping the bow very near

the bridge to emulate the sound of the guiro (a hollow, notched gourd instrument).

Our performance today culminates, appropriately enough, with summer. Alas,

Vivaldi's forecast promises languorous heat and violent thunderstorms.

Program notes by Jane Bowyer Stewart

6 • National Gallery of Art

The Seventy-Fifth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and

F. Lammot Belin Concerts

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.

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The department of music produced these

program notes. Copyright © 2ory Board of

Trustees, National Gallery ofArt, Washington

Cover Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Four Seasons in

One Head (detail), c. 1590, National Gallery of

Art, Washington, Paul Mellon Fund

Back cover West Building, Constitution

Avenue entrance, viewed from Sixth Street NW,

1941, National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Gallery Archives