typical sonata. The first movement {Allegramente) is in sonata-allegro

form. The second movement (Tempo di passacaglia) is a typical Koppel

movement in which the cello sings beautifully and expressively, while

the third {Allegro giocoso) is a virtuosic romp for both cello and piano.

Koppel was one of the most important Danish composers of his

generation. He was an outstanding pianist and a member ofthe faculty at

the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music for many years. Influenced in

his youth by Carl Nielsen (1865-1931), Bartok, Stravinsky, and others of

the 1930s avant-garde, he later developed a very personal tonal language

and style. Koppel proved to be an ardent disciple of his contemporary 

models, composing seven symphonies, four piano concertos, chamber 

music for many different ensembles, operas, vocal works, and twentynine film scores, to mention only a part of his oeuvre.

Chopin’s Sonata in G Minor, Op. 65, was begun in the autumn of

1845 but not completed until the following year. It carries a dedication to

the noted French cellist Auguste-Joseph Franchomme (1808-1884). At

its first public performance on 16 February 1848 at the Salle Pleyel in

Paris, Chopin and Franchomme were the performers, playing only the

second, third, and fourth movements. The first movement was omitted at

that time because of a disagreement among Chopin’s closest friends as to

its compositional integrity. Ironically, Chopin did not live to revise the

sonata or perform it in its entirety. Shortly after the Paris performance he

became too ill to perform in public and died in October 1849.

The sonata, one of Chopin’s last works, gives no evidence of the

delicate state of his health while he was writing it. It is certainly his

grandest and most important work for cello and piano, full of virtuosic 

display for both instruments in the faster movements. About the slow

movement {Largo), the late Harold C. Schonberg wrote: “It is as songful

as anything he composed. The chromatic last movement is [the]

concentrated essence ofChopin.”

Programs notes by Elmer Booze

The use ofcameras or recording equipment during

the performance is not allowed. Please be sure that cell

phones, pagers, and other electric devices are turned off.

The Sixty-second Season of

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and

F. LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

Av. ;x vy**'?m*

L.jx

2473d Concert

ERLING BLONDAL BENGTSSON, cellist

NINA KKVTARWZE, pianist

Presented in honor ofthe Exhibition

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, 1783-1853

Sunday Evening, 23 November 2003

Seven O'clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Johannes Brahms

(1833-1897)

Program

Sonata No. 2 in F Major

Op. 99 (1886)

Allegro vivace

Adagio affettuoso 

Allegro appassionato 

Allegro molto

Claude Debussy

(1862-1918)

Sonata for Cello and Piano

(1915)

Prologue: Lent; sostenuto e molto risoluto

Serenade: Moderement anime

Finale: Anime

Herman D. Koppel

(1908-1998)

Ternio 

Op. 53b (1951)

Allegramente 

Tempo di passacaglia

Allegro giocoso

Intermission

Frederic Chopin

(1810-1849)

Sonata in G Minor for Cello and Piano

Op. 65 (1845-1846)

Allegro moderato

Scherzo: Allegro con brio

Largo

Finale: Allegro

The Musicians

Now enjoying the sixth decade of his career as a world-class cellist,

Erling Blondal Bengtsson has achieved the status of “favorite son”

among Danish musicians. He has appeared with most of the world’s

leading orchestras, including the Royal Philharmonic, Saint Petersburg,

English Chamber, Mozarteum, Detroit Symphony, and Royal Danish

Orchestra. A champion of works by Scandinavian composers as well as

contemporaries from other parts of the world, he has performed the

Scandinavian premieres of cello concertos by Britten, Barber,

Khatchaturian, Delius, Lutoslawsky, and William Walton. A consistent

recording artist with more than fifty albums to his credit, Bengtsson has

received recorded music awards from the American magazine Fanfare,

the Danish recording company Danacord, and the survey known as the

Guiness Classical 1000. He received the Manchester International Cello

Festival’s Award of Distinction and England’s Hyam Morrison Gold

Medal for cello. A member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music,

Bengtsson has been awarded the Knight, First Class, of the Order of

Dannebrog in Denmark and Grand Knighthood of the Order of the

Falcon in Iceland, his mother’s birthplace. A larger-than-life bronze

sculpture of Bengtsson by Olof Palsdottir stands in front of Reykjavik’s

University Concert Hall, a solid testimonial to the exalted esteem in

which this legendary cellist is held by all of Scandinavia.

Bengtsson was accepted at age sixteen at the famed Curtis

Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied under the

distinguished cellist Gregor Piatigorsky (1903-1976). A year later he

became Piatigorsky’s instructing assistant and the following year, at age

eighteen, was appointed to the faculty of that prestigious institution.

Since 1990 he has been a professor of cello at the University of Michigan

in Ann Arbor. Erling Blondal Bengtsson appears at the National Gallery

by arrangement with Maxim Gershunoff Attractions, Inc., of Fort

Lauderdale, Florida.

Born in Moscow, pianist Nina Kavtaradze began her musical

studies there at the age ofsix at the Central Music School ofthe Moscow

Conservatory. By the age of eight, she had already performed in the
Colonnade at the House of the Union, one of Moscow’s prestigious

venues. At nineteen, she entered the Moscow Conservatory, joining the

class of the eminent pianist Lev Oborin, who later wrote of her: “She is a

musician who possesses talent of the very highest order, with

considerable artistic depth and brilliant individuality.” Kavtaradze has

given concerts throughout Russia and the other countries of the former 

Soviet Union, the United States, and many European countries. Included

in her vast repertoire of familiar and lesser known piano compositions 

are the complete piano works of Richard Wagner, which she recently

recorded on the Kontrapunkt label. She and Erling Blondal Bengtsson

formed their duo in 1986 and have toured extensively in this capacity.

Program Notes

While Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) and Soren Kierkegaard

(1813-1855) are the most famous names in Danish culture in the early

nineteenth century, the period is also known as the “Golden Age” of

Danish painting. The Danish artists and composers who flourished

during that period are not widely known outside that country, but their

works are loved and respected by those who are familiar with them.

Christoffcr Wilhelm Eckersberg (1783-1853), whose paintings are the

focus of an exhibition that opens today at the National Gallery, is

considered the father of the “Golden Age” of Danish painting. He was

not only a master portrait and landscape artist but also a professor at the

Copenhagen Academy, and as such a primary influence in Denmark at a

time of intense artistic activity. One of his most noted portraits is that of

the Danish sculptor and musician Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844),

whose circle of admirers included Felix Mendelssohn, Gaetano

Donizetti, and Gioacchino Rossini. No notable compositions by

Thorvaldsen survive, but three of his contemporaries, Christoph Ernst

Friedrich Weyse (1774-1842), Friedrich Kuhlau (1786-1832), and

Johann Peter Emilius Hartmann (1805-1900), wrote operas on texts by

Hans Christian Andersen and contributed worthy cantatas, concertos,

chamber music, and piano sonatas to the repertoire of works in classical

style. The exhibition Christoffcr Wilhelm Eckersberg, 1783-1853, is

organized by the National Gallery of Art in collaboration with the Statens

Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, and the Royal Danish Embassy,

Washington. It remains on view until 29 February 2004.

Four of Brahms’ most intricate and demanding chamber works,

the Sonata No. 2 in F Major for Cello and Piano, Op. 99, the Violin

Sonata in A Major, Op. 100, the Piano Trio in C Minor, Op. 101, and the

Violin Sonata No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 108, were begun and nearly

completed during the summer of 1886, while Brahms was ostensibly on

vacation in Thun, a city southeast of Bern, Switzerland. The Cello

Sonata, Op. 99, is an example of the compact style honed by Brahms in

his mature period. The sonata is tightly drawn, with an explosive

disposition. In addition, Brahms gives more attention to the idea of equal

partnership between the two instruments than he did in his first cello

sonata, thus placing an assignment of great difficulty on the pianist in the

fugal final movement. According to writer and critic James Lyons, “The

mature Brahms liked his instruments to do battle....However, he knew

how to make them sing together as well.”

In 1914 Debussy, who was in failing health, planned a series of

six small sonatas for various instruments. Only three were completed

before his death in 1918, one of which is his Sonatafor Cello and Piano,

his only published work in this genre. The Prologue takes its inspiration

from medieval music. A melismatic vox principalis (a voice that carries

the melody in the flowing style of Gregorian chant) is assigned to the

cello, while the piano imitates an accompanying vox organalis (a

medieval innovation that features two voices singing in parallel fifths).

The Serenade can be heard as a forlorn love song to the moon on the part

of Pierrot, a comic character from ancient French pantomime, as he

accompanies himself on a mandolin. (Debussy’s original subtitle for the

sonata was Pierrot Angry> with the Moon.) The Finale, following without

a break, reiterates material from the Serenade and the work’s opening

movement. Gregor Piatigorsky, who premiered the sonata in 1919 and

played it throughout his long career, pronounced the work “exciting,

original, and...challenging....I still marvel at its subtle descriptiveness, 

compactness of form, and translucent beauty.”

Composed in 1951, Herman Koppel’s Ternio was written for

Erling Blondal Bengtsson. The term Ternio refers to a work in three

movements, which, in this case, resembles a concerto more than the