35th Bard Music Festival
Martinů and His World
"Part boot camp for the brain, part spa for the spirit" —The New York Times
The Bard Music Festival returns with an intensive two-week exploration of Martinů and His World. In eleven themed concerts featuring its boldest and most adventurous programming to date, the festival’s 35th season examines the life and times of Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959), one of the most fascinating and prolific composers of the 20th century, whose music is nonetheless largely unfamiliar to U.S. audiences today.
Schedule Of Events:
5:00 pm - Bard Music Festival Opening Night Social
Celebrate the official start of the 35th Bard Music Festival at the magnificent and picturesque 1916 Ward Manor House. Enjoy a savory spread while taking in the expansive views of the Catskill Mountains ahead of Program One: A Career Beyond Borders, the opening night program of Martinů and His World.
Location: Manor House
7:00 pm - Program One - A Career Beyond Borders
Harnessing Bard’s unusual ability to integrate orchestral, vocal, and chamber works within a single event, this Opening Night Celebration is the first of three programs devoted exclusively to Martinů’s own music.
Although none of the featured works were composed in his homeland, all testify to its profound spiritual importance to him. Set to Czech folk texts, the nostalgic song cycle Petrklíč / Primrose draws on the modes and rhythms of Moravian dance. Czech folk influences likewise color the Fantasia, in which oboe and theremin function as dueling soloists, illustrating Martinů’s creative approach to timbre. Commissioned for The Cleveland Orchestra to celebrate Czechoslovakia’s 25th anniversary, his Second Symphony uses Czech motifs to achieve its pastoral lyricism. By contrast, the contemporaneous First Piano Quartet evokes the drama and turbulence of its wartime creation, and the Double Concerto for string orchestras, piano, and timpani, completed on the day of the Munich Agreement, seems to capture the tension of impending war. A concerto grosso whose dark-hued final movement concludes with an unresolved dissonance, this powerful work is one of the composer’s crowning achievements.
Program
7 pm - Performance with commentary by Leon Botstein: with Jana McIntyre, soprano; Taylor Raven, mezzo-soprano; Michael Stephen Brown, Erika Switzer, & Orion Weiss, piano; Luosha Fang, violin; Dorit Chrysler, theremin; the Balourdet Quartet; The Orchestra Now, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Nos. 2 & 5 from Etudes and Polkas, Book II, H308 (1945)
Petrklíč / Primrose, H348 (1954)
Fantasia, H301 (1944)
Piano Quartet No. 1, H287 (1942)
Double Concerto, H271 (1938)
Symphony No. 2, H295 (1943)
Location: Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater
