The National Gallery of Art’s Sunday evening concerts are among Washington’s favorite events. Avid devotees queue up patiently, no matter the weather, to await admission to the free concerts by renowned artists. This week, pianist Steven Spooner will celebrate Franz Liszt’s bicentennial by performing some of the composer’s masterworks. During the first half of the program, he will present the Washington debut of Mohammed Fairouz’s four-movement sonata titled “The Last Resistance.”
“I like contrasts, which is why I chose these two very different composers,” Spooner said. “I wish to present all aspects of Liszt’s work so listeners can re-evaluate him, but I try to avoid his chestnuts. Mohammed’s piece was commissioned by the Reach Out Kansas Foundation. I first performed it at the University of Kansas, where I’m on the faculty, and I’ll give the New York debut at Carnegie Hall in January.”
| Onstage |
| Steven Spooner |
| Where: National Gallery of Art |
| When: 6:30 p.m. Sunday |
| Info: Free to public on first come, first seated basis. Doors open at 6 p.m. |
Spooner grew up in New Orleans hating piano lessons until his teacher introduced him to Chopin. With Van Cliburn as his model, Spooner pursued his dream of studying in Russia by memorizing the International Tchaikovsky Competition prize winner’s book. Armed with training at Paris Conservatory, Moscow and Tbilisi conservatories, Spooner won all seven of the international competitions he entered.
Mohammed Fairouz, one of today’s most prolific young composers, writes symphonies, oratorios, operas, art songs, song cycles, chamber and solo works. As a New Yorker and an Arab-American who watched 9/11 transpire, he was inspired to take the title of this commission from Jaqueline Rose’s “The Last Resistance,” a collection of essays.
“The first movement is the prophesy of difficult times ahead,” he said. “It’s emotionally charged with idioms of hollow sounding, contrapuntal, percussive Arabic music. My source was a quote by Osama bin Laden prophesying a time ahead when a force would sweep evil from the peninsula. Did he refer to his homeland from which he was exiled, or Manhattan?
“The second movement is post-9/11 Manhattan filled with retro recollections and overly nostalgic concepts. It lampoons the era of Gershwin and Cy Coleman music, punctuated by big octaves that offset the high seriousness of the first movement. The third movement is a lamentation [“Freud Goes to Abu Ghraib”] played with one hand straight out, slow and eerily high before plunging to the piano’s lowest note, an A. It is asking how we can rebuild an image from this sorry state.
“The fourth movement is what I call a vicious finale, a musical portrait of men and women in dark times. I use over the top percussive sounds, octave displacement and counterpoint to show diversity and the musical cosmopolitanism of our time.”
