About Tibetan Dance, composer Bright Sheng comments: “The

work is anchored on the last movement, the longest of the three. The first

two movements are reminiscent, as if one is hearing songs from a distant

memory, [while] the music [itself] becomes real in the last movement. Its

material is based on the rhythm and melodic motive of a Tibetan folk

dance from Qinghai, a Chinese province by the border of Tibet, where I

lived during my teenage years.” Sheng has lived in the United States

since 1982. Among the composers with whom he studied are Leonard

Bernstein, Chou Wen-chung, Mario Davidovsky, George Perle, and

Hugo Weisgall. He has enjoyed status as composer-in-residence with

several American institutions, including the Seattle Symphony and the

Lyric Opera of Chicago. His dramatic musical portrait of the Chinese

Cultural Revolution, H’un (Lacerations): In Memoriam 1966-1976, has

been performed by the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland

Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic, and the symphony orchestras of

Baltimore, San Francisco, Honolulu, Milwaukee, and Kansas City. His

work has been recognized by awards from the National Endowment for

the Arts, the American Academy of the Arts, the Naumburg Foundation,

and the MacArthur Foundation.

Program notes by the Verdehr Trio

Edited and adapted by Elmer Booze

For the convenience of concert goers

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:30 pan.

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.

The Sixty-first Season of

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and

F. LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

2443d Concert

THE VERDEHR TRIO

WALTER VERDEHR, violin

ELSA LUDEWIG-VERDEHR, clarinet

SILVIA ROEDERER, piano

Sunday Evening, 19 January 2003

Seven O’clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission free
Program

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Sonata in B-flat Major, K. 358

(1756-1791) Arranged for violin, clarinet, and piano

by James Niblock

Allegro

Adagio

Molto presto

Fanny Mendelssohn

(1805-1847)

Two Romances

from “Three Pieces for Piano Four Hands”

Arranged for violin, clarinet, and piano

by Armand Russell

Allegro

Allegro molto

Joan Tower

(b. 1938)

*Rainwaves

(1997)

Intermission

Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky Entr’acte from “Sleeping Beauty”

(1840-1893) (1889)

Gernot Wolfgang

(b. 1957)

Arranged for violin, clarinet, and piano

by Armand Russell

^Reflections for Violin. Clarinet, and Piano

(1999)

Bright Sheng

(b. 1955)

Prelude

Song

Tibetan Dance

*Tibetan Dance

(2000)

*Commissioned by the Verdehr Trio and Michigan State University

Musicians

An acknowledged leader in the field of new music, the Verdehr Trio has

thirty years’ experience in molding and detining the personality of the

violin-clarinet-piano trio. A handful of trios by Bartok, Stravinsky,

Milhaud, Khachaturian, Berg, and Ives formed the early repertoire for

this grouping of instruments. Thanks to the commissioning activity of the

Verdehr Trio, there are now more than 150 works in this genre. The violinclarinet-piano trio has become a viable chamber music mediumjoining the

ranks of the piano trio, woodwind and brass quintets, and the piano quartet.

In completing its repertoire of classical and romantic works, the Verdehr

Trio has rediscovered and transcribed several eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury pieces for inclusion in its concert programs.

The Verdehr Trio has performed throughout the country and the

world, including sixteen European nations, the former Soviet Union,

North, South, and Central America, Asia, and Australia. Among the major

venues where the trio has appeared are the Kennedy Center, Lincoln

Center, the Library of Congress, the Brahmssaal in Vienna, the Dvorak

Hall in Prague, the IRCAM Centre in Paris, the Sydney Opera House, and

London’s Wigmore Hall. The trio has participated in the Spoleto Festival,

the Prague Spring Festival, the Vienna Spring Festival, and the Grand Teton

Music Festival. The Verdehr Trio is in residence at Michigan State

University in East Lansing, Michigan.
Violinist Walter Verdehr was born in Gottschee, Yugoslavia, and

received his first violin instruction at the Conservatory of Music in Graz,

Austria. As a student at the Juilliard School of Music, he was the first

violinist to receive its doctor of music degree. Further studies took him to

the Vienna Academy of Music as a Fulbright Scholar. He was a member 

of the International Congress of Strings faculty for several summers and

chairman of the string department at Michigan State University, where he

is currently a professor of music.

Clarinetist Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr studied at the Oberlin

Conservatory of Music and at the Eastman School, from which she

received a performer’s certificate and the doctor of musical arts degree.

She has performed at the White House, lectured and given master classes

at numerous national and international clarinet congresses, and

participated in the Marlboro Music Festivals and their touring groups. As

a member of the Richards Wind Quintet, she has played in many cities in

the United States and Canada. Recently, she was awarded a distinguished 

faculty professorship at Michigan State University.

Although she was born in Argentina, pianist Silvia Roederer

began her musical training in the United States. Upon completing her

undergraduate degree with honors at the Eastman School of Music, she

continued her studies at the University of Southern California under John

Perry, where she completed her doctorate. A winner of several important

competitions, including the Joanna Hodges International Piano 

Competition, she has appeared as soloist with the Denver Symphony

Orchestra and the Santa Monica Symphony. A professor of music at

Western Michigan University, she lives in Kalamazoo with her husband

and three children.

Program Notes

The first work on this program is a transcription by James Niblock of

Mozart’s Piano in Sonata B-flat Major, K. 358, originally for piano four 

hands. The sonata dates from 1774 and is one of four that Mozart wrote

for duet performance by himself and his sister, Maria Anna (Nannerl).

The orchestral characteristics of the sonata are immediately apparent in

the unison octaves of the opening movement {Allegro), while the delicate

beauty and refinement of the second movement (Adagio) mimic the slow

movement of a concerto. The sparkling finale (Molto presto) is full of

rapidly moving “string” figures for the clarinet and violin, solo piano

melodies, and other elements that can easily be imagined as coming from

a concerto for piano and orchestra.

Joan Tower has been composing since the early 1960s and her

works have been winning prizes since 1974, among them National

Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell Colony, and Guggenheim

Fellowships, the Grawemeyer Award, and commissions from the St.

Louis and Kansas City Symphonies, Absolut Vodka, and Carnegie Hall.

Regarding Rainwaves, which she wrote for and dedicated to the Verdehr

Trio, Joan Tower explains: “[It] explores the motion of a waveform.

Starting with a pointillistic ‘rain-type’ pattern, the notes float upwards and

downwards in increasing intensities. In the less [staccato] and more

flowing sections, there is a sense of a ‘wind’ pushing the notes into

longer and wider arched patterns, perhaps like the undulating sheets of

rain created in a light southern tropical rainfall.”

Gernot Wolfgang’s Reflections for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano

was commissioned by the Verdehr Trio, as were the works by Joan

Tower and Bright Sheng. Born in Austria, Wolfgang is a graduate of

Berklee College of Music in Boston and the University of Southern

California and has studied and taught at the University of Music in Graz,

Austria. He is active in the fields of jazz and music for film and

television. He writes: “Without any actions there would be nothing to

reflect on. One could say that Reflections is an evolutionary piece, a

piece about how we develop as human beings. The violin is doing the

‘acting’ and the clarinet is constantly developing individual, and

ultimately joint, statements, while the piano periodically ‘reflects’ on

these statements, evaluates [them, and] brings them in order before the

next ‘actor’ comes into the picture.... [This] is a twelve-minute piece in

one movement, which stylistically—like all my other chamber music

pieces—contains a good measure ofjazz spirit, paired with harmonic and

structural elements of twentieth-century concert music.”