The sleeping giant of Czech music gets his own festival!
Why is Bohuslav Martinů not better known? It’s one of the questions, I’m sure, that will be explored at the 35th annual Bard Music Festival, “Martinů and His World,” to be held largely on the campus of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, August 8-17.
Over two weekends, conductor and Bard president Leon Botstein will oversee orchestral, orchestral/choral, and opera performances, at the helm of the American Symphony Orchestra and presumably Bard’s own The Orchestra Now (TŌN). Evening concerts will take place at the Sosnoff Theater, the state-of-art concert hall housed in the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.
Daylight concerts and panels will be held across campus in the more intimate surroundings of the 300-seat Olin Hall. Performers will include superb musicians and ensembles from the faculty of the Bard Conservatory, guests, and visiting artists with long relationships with the festival.
Part of the Martinů problem is surely that he was so prolific, it’s difficult to summarize his significance by ferreting out the important works. For the uninitiated, getting one’s head around the composer’s output can be disorienting and overwhelming. Yet Martinů’s music is immediately appealing, generally easily digestible, and often a great deal of fun.
Some of the works have a strong Czech national flavor, revealing a spiritual descent from the line of Dvořák and Smetana; others are evidently modernist, full of churning flywheels and motor rhythms, characteristic of a mechanized age; others still flirt with popular styles, especially jazz. He’s a unique mash-up of Bohemian, French, and American influences. His “modernism,” such as it is, is seldom at the expense of broadening passages of great lyrical beauty.
I’m happy to see a few of my favorites represented: the Nonet, the Cello Sonata No. 3, the Flute Sonata, and the jazz sextet “La revue de cuisine.” Among the larger works will be the Symphonies Nos. 2 & 6, “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” and a semi-staged performance of his opera “Julietta.”
This being Bard, there will be plenty of fascinating rarities by other hands, including a string quartet by Martinů student (and mistress) Vítězslava Kaprálová and a piano concertino I didn’t even know existed by his friend and champion Rudolf Firkušný.
Also featured will be works by Iva Bittová, Aaron Copland, David Diamond, Antonín Dvořák, Petr Eben, Karel Husa, Leoš Janáček, Jaroslav Ježek, Arthur Honegger, Kryštof Mařatka, Jan Novák, Maurice Ravel, Jaroslav Řídký, Erwin Schulhoff, Josef Suk, Alexandre Tansman, Joan Tower, and Frank Zappa.
For more information about “Martinů and His World,” visit
The festival is the crown jewel in the diadem of Bard SummerScape, Bard’s annual celebration of the arts, which will take place July 27- August 17. Fans of Czech music will also eagerly anticipate a fully-stage production of Bedřich Smetana’s “Dalibor,” that will precede the Martinů festival, July 25-Aug 3.
https://fishercenter.bard.edu/whats-on/programs/summerscape/
Some of the events, including one of the performances of “Dalibor” will be available for livestreaming.
The sleeping giant stirs. Set your alarms for Martinů!
Fisher Center at Bard
Leave a Reply