Upcoming Events of the SeventySixth Season of The William

Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot

Belin Concerts

Unless otherwise noted, all programs

take place in the West Building,

West Garden Court.

ETHEL

Blue Dressfor String Quartet

Music by contemporary

women composers

March 4, 3:30

Janoska Ensemble

Classical music with jazz, gypsy, tango,

Latin, and a dash of pop

March 11, 3:30

The Canales Project

Hear Her Song

A celebration of the choices of

extraordinary women

March 18, 3:30

Benedetto Lupo, piano

Featuring solo piano works by Debussy

Celebrating Cezanne Portraits

March 25, 3:30

6821 Quintet

Presented in conjunction with the

National Cherry Blossom Festival— 

music commissioned for previous

opening ceremonies of the National

Cherry Blossom Festival 

March 26 / 12:10

East Building Large Auditorium

Richard Stoltzman, clarinet

Mika Stoltzman, marimba

Duo Cantando

Music by Bill Douglas, Chick Corea,

Toru Takemitsu, and John Zorn

April 1, 3:30

Heinavanker Ensemble

Featuring ancient Estonian songs 

and folk hymns

Celebrating Michel Sittoiv: Estonian Painter

at the Courts ofRenaissance Europe

April 8, 3:30

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.

The department of music produced

these program notes. Copyright © 2018

Board ofTrustees, National Gallery of

Art, Washington

Concerts are made possible in part

through the generosity of donors to

the National Gallery ofArt through

The Circle. Reserved seating is available

in recognition oftheir support. Please

contact the development office at

(202) 842-6450 or circle@nga.gov for 

more information.

Cover Keith Anden Achepohl, Capriccio

VII (detail), 1995, National Gallery ofArt,

Washington, Gift ofthe Artist

nga.gov/music

76TH SEASON OF CONCERTS

FEBRUARY 25, 2018 / NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
Program

Narek Hakhnazaryan, cello

Noreen Cassidy-Polera, piano

FEBRUARY 25, 2018/3:30

WEST BUILDING, WEST GARDEN COURT

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

Adagio andAllegro, op. 70

Adagio. Langsam, mit innigem Ausdruck

Allegro. Rasch und feurig-Etwas ruhigert-Tempo I

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Cello Sonata no. 2 in F Major, op. 99

Allegro vivace

Adagio affettuoso

Allegro passionate

Allegro molto

Intermission

Sulkhan Fyodorovich Tsintsadze (1925-1991)

Five Pieces on Folk Themesfor Cello and Piano

“Villain’s Song on a Carriage”

“Tchonguri”

“Sachidao”

“Nana”

“Dance Tune”

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Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909)

Asturias

Rodion Konstantinovich Shchedrin (b. 1932)

ImitatingAlbeniz

Jules Massenet (1842 -1912)

“Meditation” from Thai's

Caspar Cassado (1897-1966)

Requiebros
The Musicians

NAREK HAKHNAZARYAN

Since winning the Cello First Prize and Gold Medal at the International Tchaikovsky 

Competition in 2011 at the age of twenty-two, Narek Hakhnazaryan has performed

with major orchestras across the globe to establish himself as one ofthe finest cellists

of his generation. Hakhnazaryan has earned critical acclaim, with the Strad magazine

describing him as “dazzlingly brilliant” and the San Francisco Chronicle hailing his

performance as “nothing short of magnificent.” In 2014, he was named a BBC New

Generation Artist and in August 2016 made his highly distinguished and critically

acclaimed BBC Proms debut.

Phis season, Hakhnazaryan tours North America with more than a dozen

performances of diverse orchestral and recital repertoire. Highlights include two 

concerts of Tchaikovsky’s Nocturnefor Cello and Orchestra and Variations on a Rococo

Theme with the St. Louis Symphony; a tour with the Moscow State Symphony

Orchestra performing Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto in A Minor at several

university stops; and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto no. 2 with the Erie

Philharmonic. Additional events include a live radio broadcast on the Dame Myra

Hess Concert Series in Chicago and several recitals with pianist Noreen CassidyPolera with San Francisco Performances and the Peoples’ Symphony Concerts in

New York. Internationally, Hakhnazaryan presents recitals at the Konzerthaus in 

Vienna and Wigmore Hall in London; makes his debut with the Royal Liverpool

Philharmonic and Norway’s Stavanger Symphony and at the Dresden Music Festival;

and returns to perform with Ireland’s RTE National Symphony Orchestra.

Hakhnazaryan has been a featured soloist with the symphony orchestras of

Detroit, Chicago, Seattle, Milwaukee, T oronto, London, Sydney, Tokyo, and Stockholm; the Los Angeles, Rotterdam, Czech, and Seoul Philharmonics; and l’Orchestre

de Paris, among others. An eager chamber musician and recitalist, he has performed

worldwide, notably in New York’s Carnegie Hall, Chicago’s Harris Theatre, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Paris’s Salle Pleyel, Berlin’s Konzerthaus, Vienna’s Konzerthaus, Tokyo’s Oji Hall, and Shanghai’s Concert Hall. Fie has also played at esteemed

festivals such as Ravinia, Aspen, Piatigorsky, Mecklenburg-A’orpommern, Kissinger

Sommer, Beethovenfest Bonn, Pau Casals, Lucerne, and Verbier.

Hakhnazaryan has received scholarships from the Rostropovich Foundation

and the Russian Performing Arts Fund, and his awards include First Prize at the

2006 Aram Khachaturian International Competition in Armenia and the 2006

Johansen International Competition for Young String Players, as well as First

Place at the 2008 Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York.

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Hakhnazaryan was born in Yerevan, Armenia, into a family of musicians: his father

is a violinist and his mother a pianist. Mentored by the late Mstislav Rostropovich, 

Hakhnazaryan received an artist diploma from the New England Conservatory of

Music in 2011, where he studied with Lawrence Lesser. Prior to this, he studied at the

Moscow Conservatory with Alexey Seleznyov and at the Sayat-Nova School ofMusic

in Yerevan with Zareh Sarkisyan. Hakhnazaryan plays the 1707 Joseph Guarneri cello

and F.X. Tburte and Benoit Rolland bows.

NOREEN CASSIDY-POLERA

Pianist Noreen Cassidy-Polera ranks among the most highly regarded and diverse 

chamber artists performing today. Her career has taken her to major music centers

within the United States and abroad, with key appearances in Hong Kong, Shanghai,

Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo. Recent performances have been at Carnegie Hall and the

92nd Street Y in New York,Jordan Hall and the Gardner Museum in Boston, the

Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and the Louvre in Paris, as well as at the Casals

and Piatigorsky festivals. She has been a guest at the Caramoor, Bard, Grand Teton,

and Cape Cod Chamber Music Festivals, as well as at the Chamber Music Society

of Philadelphia and the La Jolla Music Society. She has recorded for Sony, EMI,

Audiophon, and Centaur Records.

In addition to her regular partnerships with cellists Amit Peled and Narek

Hakhnazaryan, Cassidy-Polera has appeared with Matt Haimovitz, Carter Brey,

Antonio Meneses, Aurora-Natalie Ginastera, Yo-Yo Ma, and Leonard Rose. Winner

of the Accompanying Prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2014,

she regularly collaborates with laureates ofthe Queen Elizabeth, Tchaikovsky, and 

Naumburg international competitions.

Cassidy-Polera’s mastery and affection for the complete standard cello-piano

repertory is well-known, as is her attention and dedication to the works ofliving

composers. In recent seasons, she performed Elliott Carter’s Sonata for Cello and

Piano on tour in Paris, New York, and Philadelphia, along with new works by Lowell 

Liebermann, Benjamin C.S. Boyle, and Kenji Bunch to critical acclaim. Her CD

recording, Sound Vessels, with cellist Scott Kluksdahl, features the recording premiere

of Richard Wernick’s Duo, and works of Robert Helps, Augusta Read Thomas, and 

Elliott Carter. Cassidy-Polera has a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in music from

the Juilliard School, where she studied with Martin Canin.

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Program Notes

Robert Schumann was born in Zwickau, Germany, the son of a clergyman. Although

gifted musically, he originally studied law in Leipzig. Discovering that his true passion

lay in music, he devoted himself to piano and composition. In 1834, Schumann became 

founder and editor ofNeue ZeitschriftfirMusik, which provided him with income and 

success as a music critic. He later married Clara Wieck, a highly regarded piano 

virtuoso and the daughter of his music teacher, Friedrich Wieck.

The Adagio andAllegro, op. 70, originally written for horn and titled Romanze

andAllegro, was composed in 1849—a productive and healthy period in Schumann’s

life—and published with viola and cello parts by Schumann. This work embodies

Schumann’s struggles between conflicting emotions; the tenderness of the Adagio 

movement, followed by the ecstatic happiness of the Allegro, shows Schumann at 

his most romantic.

Johannes Brahms’s Cello Sonata no. 2 in F Major was composed in the summer

of 1886 for Robert Hausmann, the cellist of the Joachim String Quartet. Brahms 

had adopted a pattern of composing during the summer and concertizing during

the winter, and beginning in 1886, he made Hofstetten on Switzerland’s Lake 

Thun his summer home for three years. It was here that Brahms began the Ydolin

Sonatas no. 2 in A Major and no. 3 in D Minor, as well as today’s Cello Sonata no. 2,

hence the common reference to these works as the “Thun” sonatas.

“In the Cello Sonata, passion rules, fiery to the point of vehemence, now defiantly

challenging, now painfully lamenting,” the critic Eduard Hanslick wrote in a review 

of early performances. “How boldly the first Allegro theme begins, how stormily the

Allegro flows! It is true that the passion subsides into quiet mourning in the Adagio 

and fades away, reconciled, in the finale. But the beating pulse of the earlier sections

still reverberates, and pathos remains the determining psychological characteristic of

the whole.”

Born in the Soviet Union, Sulkhan Fyodorovich Tsintsadze was one of Georgia’s

foremost composers. Skilled in many genres—operas, ballets, symphonies, and

concerti—his familiarity with Georgian folklore is ever present in his music. Beginning as a cellist, Tsintsadze studied at the conservatories in Tblisi and Moscow, 

including composition with Semyon Semyonovich Bogatyrev. In the 1940s, he

performed with the Georgian State String Quartet. His compositions are based on

traditional forms, but also include the styles of Shostakovich and Shebalin.

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Composed in 1950, Tsintsadze’s Five Pieces on Folk Themesfor Cello and Piano

opens with a slow, pensive “Vdlian’s Song on a Carriage,” which explores the full

range ofthe cello. An energetic and driving pizzicato feature with cello alone follows.

The third piece, “Sachidao,” is a light romp, strongly flavored with folk harmonies

and techniques that are subsequently tempered by “Nana”—a beautiful dialogue

between the cello and piano filled with warmth and expression. The composition

concludes with a full-bodied, fiery dance.

Asturias was originally written for solo piano in the early 1890s by Catalan

composer Isaac Albeniz. Despite its title—the name of a region in northern

Spain—the piece brings to mind the distinctive flamenco music of the southern

region ofAndalusia. Asturias is perhaps Albeniz’s most frequently performed work. 

Written while he was living outside his homeland, it was intended to invoke the

atmosphere ofAlhambra, the land ofthe Moorish monarchs of Granada. The

composition has two main melodies. First comes a determined, driving theme that

builds in energy, followed by a more melancholy middle section, with a return of

the opening melody to end the piece.

Renowned Russian pianist and prolific composer Rodion Shchedrin has written

hundreds of compositions across the musical range that have garnered numerous

awards worldwide. His works have gained popularity in the West, mainly through

recordings made by Rostropovich. There are several versions of his composition

ImitatingAlbeniz, and the one performed today is a short musical gem that captures

the passion and zest ofits namesake.

Written by French composerJules Massenet, “Meditation” is a symphonic

intermezzo from the opera Thais. Although originally written for solo violin and 

orchestra, the work has been adapted for a variety ofsettings and is considered

to be one of the great encore pieces in modern classical music. Following a short

introduction, a simple, longing melody is played twice, after which the mood

becomes increasingly animated and passionate. The tension at the apex is calmed

by a short cadenza-like passage, and the main theme returns twice more before

the piece quietly dissolves to silence.

Gaspar Cassado was a cellist and composer from the Catalan region of Spain.

A protege of cellist Pablo Casals, he also studied composition with Maurice Ravel

and Manuel de Falla. Cassado’s works include nearly seventy transcriptions for 

cello and piano, the most popular being the Intermezzo from the opera Goyescas

by Enrique Granados. He also wrote original works for cello, string quartet, and

piano; his best-known pieces for cello and piano are the Suite for Solo Cello and

the Requiebros.

Program, notes by Kathleen Chau, Music Program Coordinator, National Gallery ofArt

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