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:
3:00 pm - Program Six - The Spiritual Quest
Featuring James Bagwell, the Bard Festival Chorale, and the renovated organ of the Rhinebeck Episcopal Church of the Messiah, this program intersperses organ solos with masterworks of the Czech choral tradition.
Two late Martinů works—Vigilie, his sole composition for organ, and The Mount of Three Lights, which sets texts from Czech folk song, contemporary travel-writing, and the New Testament—will be heard alongside the opening movements of Dvořák’s Mass in D, in which old church modes meet modern harmonies; the finale from Musica dominicalis, an organ symphony by the late Czech composer Petr Eben; three works for male voices by Leoš Janáček; and an organ solo from the same composer’s Glagolitic Mass, long recognized as a celebration of Slavic culture.
Schedule
The beautiful Church of the Messiah in Rhinebeck, NY, has limited capacity, so to best accommodate patrons, we will offer Program Six on both Thursday, August 14 at 7 pm as well as Friday, August 15 at 3 pm.
Program
Performance: Renée Anne Louprette, organ; Bard Festival Chorale, conducted by James Bagwell, choral director
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Vigilie, H382 (1959)
Leoš Janáček (1854–1928)
Veni Sancte Spiritus (1903)
Ave Maria (1904)
Constitues eos principes (1903)
Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904)
From Mass in D, Op. 86 (1887): Kyrie and Gloria
Petr Eben (1929–2007)
From Musica dominicalis (Sunday Music) (1958): Finale
Bohuslav Martinů
The Mount of Three Lights, H349 (1954)
Leoš Janáček
From Glagolitic Mass (1926): Postludium
Location: Church of the Messiah, Rhinebeck
7:00 pm - Program Seven - Faith and Folklore
The Festival’s second all-Martinů event opens with one of the composer’s greatest choral works. A Czech-language cantata written to honor the Czech volunteers who fought in the French army, Martinů’s Field Mass had him blacklisted by the Nazis. Set to texts by Jiří Mucha, passages from Bohemian folk poetry, and lines from psalms and the liturgy, this powerful anti-war protest anticipates such later works as Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem and Leonard Bernstein’s MASS. Folk poetry is also the basis for Martinů’s Brigand Songs, which use Moravian tales of feudal tyranny to address the Soviet invasion of Hungary. The program concludes with the world premiere of the original French version of Martinů’s one-act opera Mariken de Nimègue (“Mary of Nijmegen”). Based on a medieval Dutch miracle play, and better-known in the later Czech version for which he won the Czechoslovak State Prize for Composition, Martinů’s original is set to French text by Henri Ghéon and features different orchestration as well as extensive original musical material that has never previously been published or performed.
Program
6 pm - Preconcert talk: Michael Beckerman and Aleš Březina
7 pm - Performance: Anna Thompson, soprano; Tyler Duncan, baritone; Bhavesh Patel, Master of Ceremonies, Mariken de Nimègue; Bard Festival Chorale, James Bagwell, choral director; The Orchestra Now, conducted by James Bagwell; and others
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Field Mass, H279 (1946)
Brigand Songs, H361 (1957)
Mariken de Nimègue, H236/2 I (1933–34)
Location: Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater
