All good things must come to an end – but Bard isn’t going without a fight!
Yet to come on this year’s Bard Music Festival at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: a Sunday morning chamber music concert, “Martinů’s Legacy,” which will include works by Alexander Tcherepnin, Iva Bittová, Chou Wen-chung, Witold Lutoslawski, Frank Zappa (!), Jaroslav Ježek, and Joan Tower, with two pieces of Martinů himself (“Four Songs on Czech Folk Poetry” and the Quartet for Oboe, Violin, Cello, and Piano, first performed by Mitch Miller, later of “Sing Along with Mitch” fame). Then, this afternoon, Martinů’s surrealist opera “Julietta,” in a semi-staged production – all blessed three hours and 15 minutes of it (with two intermissions).
Friday night was a rough one, but educational. The first half of the program featured Martinů’s music for men’s chorus, including his “Field Mass,” composed for forces (baritone solo, wind instruments, field organ, piano, and percussion) that made performance literally in the field by stationed troops possible (if unlikely). The Czech-language text, by Jiří Mucha (father of artist Alphons Mucha) combines the Lord’s Prayer with soldierly interpolations, supposedly in the style of psalms – I guess if King David would have been moved to write about the hardships of trench warfare and homesickness. On the other hand, appeals for divine assistance in the smiting of one’s enemies is timeless. I concede this work is necessary to experience in order to comprehend the full, wide-ranging variety of the composer’s character and accomplishments.
But in the company of some not-very-swaggering “Brigand Songs,” in which freebooters (?) seemingly spend more time reflecting on their inevitable fate at the gallows than they do on any kind of carousing, and then part two from “The Prophecy of Isaiah” (Isaiah always good for a few laughs), the cumulative effect was somewhat stupefying. For proper brigandage, give me Szymanowski’s “Harnasie” or even Shostakovich’s “The Execution of Stepan Razin” – with its defiantly laughing severed head – any day. For Isaiah, Walton’s “Belshazzar’s Feast” still reigns supreme (while toppling its blasphemous king).
The second half was better, or at any rate, more interesting. “Mariken de Nimègue” is the French version of a mystery play that’s part “Faust” and part “Little Red Riding Hood,” with the Devil in the role of Big Bad Wolf. Baritone Tyler Duncan, a Bard staple, is a natural Devil. Soprano Anna Thompson effectively portrayed the conflict and anguish of Mariken, a good girl who sacrifices purity and piety for the simple pleasures of being bad in the big city. In the meantime, there’s a parallel drama between Jesus (bass-baritone Ben Strong), who’s had enough of humanity’s ingratitude and iniquity and is about to break out the divine broadsword, but fortunately is talked down by compassionate Mary (mezzo-soprano Isabelle Kosempa). Actor Bhavesh Patel narrated the action with clear, commanding diction.
The Bard Festival Chorale, prepared by James Bagwell, was great, as always, and Zachary Schwartzman conducted a mean “Mariken,” but cumulatively, the whole thing just left me feeling wrung out.
Last night’s concert, on the other hand, was awesome in every sense of the word. Leon Botstein was back on the podium for a mostly-Martinů program. I confess the prospect of Jan Novák’s “Ignis pro Ioanne Palach,” inspired by the self-immolation of student Jan Palach in protest against the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, was not exactly cheering; but in execution, it was actually quite good. The music – another work for chorus and orchestra – was direct, powerful, and worthwhile.
Then mezzo-soprano Taylor Raven took the stage for an aria from Martinů’s one-act opera “Ariane,” which elicited an ecstatic ovation – hard-earned with its high notes – as Raven is a formidable talent.
Soloist Itamar Zorman played Martinů’s Violin Concerto for all that it was worth. Perhaps more. It was a recording of the slow movement of this piece that inspired festival scholar-in-residence Michael Beckerman to take up study of the composer. I agree with him in that the songful slow movement, marked andante moderato with a virtuosic central section, is the most compelling part of the work, an absolutely gorgeous Czech arioso that pulls the listener in. As always with Martinů, moods shift, but the movement is comparatively untroubled territory, a paradise I wouldn’t mind revisiting.
But it was the second half of the program that really knocked me back on my heels, as I was totally unprepared for the power of Martinů’s “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” a Mesopotamian blockbuster with women’s and men’s choruses and lots of surprising touches in the orchestration. Martinů’s libretto, based on an English translation of the ancient epic by Reginald Campbell Thompson, focuses on Gilgamesh’s bromance with former rival Enkidu (they bond after a fight so fierce that doors are splintered and walls crumble). Enkidu’s death, precipitated by the gods to humble the hubristic king, leads to an extended denouement in which vocal soloists and chorus attempt to process the concept of mortality. But the work is so inventively scored and the dual choirs so brilliantly employed that it does not outstay its welcome.
Bard’s performance was enhanced by tasteful projections that did not at all distract from the drama, and in fact put me in the mind of the superb performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Job” that was given in that space a few seasons ago. (That production employed projections based on the William Blake illustrations.)
More along the lines of RVW’s “Sinfonia antartica” (Italian spelling, with only one “c”), Taylor Raven engaged in a wordless lament. The men, especially baritone Norman Garrett, were left to cycle through loss, disbelief, and fear of the inevitability of death. Bhavesh Patel again narrated.
This is great work, and I don’t understand why it’s not heard more often. I’ve had a recording of it on my shelf for years, but somehow I’d never gotten around to listening to it. I’m all the happier to have snapped up from the merch table earlier in the day a CD issued by the Bohuslav Martinů Foundation and Institute that includes a 1959 recording of the work, featuring Marilyn Horne and Walter Berry, conducted by Martinů patron Paul Sacher. Something to listen to tonight on the ride home!
Following another informative panel yesterday morning, with Beckerman, NYU’s Larry Wolff, and artist-in-residence Aleš Březina, that also posited all sorts of interesting ideas, the highlights of yesterday afternoon’s chamber music concert were Martinů’s “Three Madrigals,” with violinist Shannon Lee and violist Luosha Fang (who has left some memorable impressions in her multiple appearances on this festival on her other instrument, the violin), and the Cello Sonata No. 3, with cellist Nicholas Canellakis and pianist Michael Stephen Brown. The program also included David Diamond’s Flute Quintet and Martinů’s Nonet, but the former pieces came off best in yesterday’s performances.
Chamber music concerts are held in the intimate space of Olin Hall and the larger pieces at the Sosnoff Theater in the campus’ Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.
Okay, I’ve got to run! If this reads as if it was written in haste, it was. I’ll touch it up tomorrow, adding diacritical marks to the Czech names, and post a few other anecdotes and impressions, as I nurse myself back from two weeks’ worth of intensive immersion in the music of this neglected Czech master!
Fisher Center at Bard
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