For the convenience of concertgoers 

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:oo pm.

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.

Please note that late entry or reentry of

the West Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

Mailing address

200ob South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-fifth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,625th Concert

National Gallery Orchestra

George Manos, guest conductor

June 3, 2007

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Overture: The Hebrides (“Fingal’s Cave”) (1830)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Symphony no. 7 in A Major (1811-1812)

Poco sostenuto; vivace

Allegretto

Presto

Allegro con brio

INTERMISSION

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Symphony no. zinD Major, op. 73 (1877)

Allegro non troppo

Adagio non troppo

Allegretto grazioso

Allegro con spirito

The Musicians

NATIONAL GALLERY ORCHESTRA

The National Gallery Orchestra was founded in 1943 and initially consisted

of approximately twenty-five players drawn from the National Symphony

Orchestra. Gradually growing in numbers, the Gallery orchestra eventually

reached the size and status of a large chamber orchestra. The ensemble has

undertaken the full range of chamber and symphonic repertoire and has

frequently presented first performances ofworks by American composers,

most notably the 1953 premiere ofCharles Ives’s Symphony no. 1 under the

direction of Richard Bales and the 1990 premiere of Daniel Pinkham’s

Symphony no. 4 under George Manos.

GEORGE MANOS

Conductor, composer, and pianist George Manos headed the music program

at the National Gallery and conducted the National Gallery Orchestra from

1985 to 2004. Under his direction, the orchestra presented ten concerts each 

season, performing masterpieces of all the important schools oforchestral

music as well as world premieres ofworks by John La Montaine, Daniel

Pinkham, and Robert Ward. Manos also founded the Gallery's resident vocal

and chamber ensembles and served as their artistic director. A native of

Washington, DC, he was already organizing and conducting orchestras and

choirs here at the age ofseventeen. First among them was the Washington

Sinfonietta, followed in later years by the Hellenic, Washington, and National 

Oratorio societies and the National Association ofAmerican Composers and

Conductors Chamber Orchestra. Manos oversaw this last ensemble’s presentation of new works by American composers.

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As a student at the Peabody Institute ofthe Johns Hopkins University, 

he studied composition under Henry Cowell, chamber music under William 

Kroll and Oscar Shumsky, piano under Austin Conradi, and conducting

under Ifor Jones. Manos’s career as a teacher included several years on the

faculty ofThe Catholic University of America, where he taught piano,

conducting, and chamber music, and directorship ofthe Wilmington School

of Music in Delaware, where he presented an annual jazz festival and clinic.

Manos founded and for ten years directed Ireland’s renowned Killarney

Bach Festival, which received repeated acclaim from Irish and international

media. He has conducted numerous other chamber and symphonic orchestras in Europe, the United States, and South America and was the music

director ofthe 1992 Kolding International Music Festival in Denmark.

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Program Notes

Felix Mendelssohn sketched ideas for a Hebridean overture during a trip to

England and Scotland in 1829. The day before visiting sea caves on the island

of Staffa, he wrote the B-minor main theme for an “Overture to a Lonely Isle,”

as he called the first version, which he completed in Rome the next year and

presented to his father as a birthday present. The work received two more

revisions at Mendelssohn’s hand and was published in 1835 as “Fingal’s Cave.”

The first performance of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony no. y in A

Major was conducted by the composer in 1813 as a benefit for Austrian and

Bavarian soldiers who had been wounded in the Napoleonic Wars of 1805

to 1812. By this time, Beethoven’s deafness was far advanced, and performances under his direction were severe trials, both for him and for the

players. The work opens with a slow introduction, marked poco sostenuto,

but the mood changes abruptly when the tempo accelerates to vivace. A

syncopated theme is accompanied by rhythms derived from Sicilian dance

music. The audience at the symphony’s first performance particularly loved 

the second movement (Allegretto); they applauded vigorously until the

movement was repeated, which was not uncommon at the time but was a

reaction usually reserved for fast and loud movements. The Presto seems

to reach the pinnacle ofrhythmic energy and joy only to be surpassed on

both counts by the final movement, Allegro con brio.

Never a precipitous composer, Johannes Brahms labored over his first

symphony for twenty years. By comparison, his Symphony no. 2 in D Major,

op. 73, was a snap, completed in just fourteen months. The bright and youthful second symphony also contrasts with the dark and sometimes draconian

first symphony in mood. The first movement ofthe former opens with a

three-note figure in the cellos and basses, followed by a sublime phrase from

the French horns. All ofthe ideas that are germinating within the opening

theme are elaborated by the cellos and violas and subsequently repeated by

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the flutes, after which a waltzlike melody enters as the second theme. Following an expansive development section, both themes return in a recapitulation.

The crowning glory ofthe movement, however, is the coda, in which the

French horn has an exquisite solo, and the woodwinds bring the music to an 

ethereal close.

Two themes also dominate the second movement (Adagio non troppo).

The first is bucolic and is aired by the cellos and woodwinds. The second

is similar but features a contrasting tone color, provided by the flutes and

oboes. The movement is in aba form, with the middle section (b) set in

a lilting 12/8 meter and marked L’istesso tempo ma grazioso (In the same

tempo but gracefully).

The third movement (Allegretto grazioso) is one of Brahms’s most

inspired creations. The scoring presents the intimacy of a small orchestra.

Maintaining the traditional role ofthe third movement in classical symphonies as the minuet, Brahms provides two trios, creating the format abaca.

Each trio has its own time signature (the first is in 2/4 time, the second

in 3/8) and special character.

In the fourth movement (Allegro con spirito), Brahms shows his indebtedness to Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), whom he acknowledged as a mentor,

even though Haydn died twenty-four years before Brahms was born. Both

the lucent melody and its subsequent development are Haydnesque. The

movement prompted Brahms biographer Peter Latham to write: “Never are

Haydn and Brahms so close [as they are here]...and that, no doubt, is why, at 

the end ofthe exposition...we catch a brief allusion to the finale of Haydn’s

“London” Symphony [no. 104 in D Major].

Program notes by Stephen Ackert

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Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

Ney Salgado, pianist

Mozart, Rondo in D Major

Schubert, Sonata in A Minor, op. 143

Villa-Lobos, Preludio; Introdugao and Valsa da dor

Ravel, Une Barque sur Xocean

Chopin, Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp Minor, op. 66

Liszt, Mephisto-Walzer

June 6, 2007

Wednesday Afternoon, 12:10 pm

East Building Auditorium

co

Eddie Daniels and Ensemble

Benny Goodman -style jazz concert

Presented in honor ofthe centenary of Paul Mellon’s birth

June 10, 2007

Sunday Afternoon, 3:00 pm

East Building Atrium

and

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

East Building Auditorium