Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Vaughan Williams at the Bard Music Festival

When Byron Adams caught sight of me during intermission at the opening concert of this year’s Bard Music Festival, he took my hand and said, “Well, we finally did it!” – suggesting we had been co-conspirators. Which in a sense is true. I knew immediately what he meant, as we had both been lobbying for Vaughan Williams to be the focus of the festival for years.

For his part, Byron, a longtime scholar of English music, had the ear of his colleague, festival co-artistic director Leon Botstein. For my part, I made it a point to suggest the composer whenever I happened to see or interview Botstein.

Byron paid me a terrific compliment when he told me that it was I that had made this year’s Bard Music Festival possible. I asked him why, and he said it was because of an email I had written. However, when I inquired if my name specifically had been mentioned, he confessed it had not – but it was because of people like me, who presumably pushed for it, that Vaughan Williams was made the subject of this year’s festival. Well, okay, I’ll take that, even if it’s manufactured glory. It will give me my moment to humble brag about it on Facebook.

Byron, emeritus professor of musicology at University of California, Riverside – as well as scholar in residence and regular advisor at the Bard Music Festival – is co-editor (with Daniel M. Grimley of Oxford University) of this year’s tie-in book of essays, “Vaughan Williams and His World,” published by University of Chicago Press.

Last week, Byron was interviewed about the festival for WAMC Northeast Public Radio. He beautifully encapsulates who Vaughan Williams was, and the composer’s significance, and manages to give a concise overview of the festival in only 11 minutes! Kudos also to host Sarah LaDuke for this intelligent conversation:

https://www.wamc.org/podcast/the-roundtable/2023-08-03/the-33rd-bard-music-festival-vaughn-williams-and-his-world?fbclid=IwAR15hcZLgsxLOXoDvDtkd3MYeLU_g-rtd6jLQQgAbPlCwq69XR2KHDi9JYU

The Bard Music Festival will resume this weekend at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, with a couple of special supplementary events taking place at Church of the Messiah in Rhinebeck on Thursday evening and Friday afternoon. Some of the concerts will be livestreamed. The complete schedule is posted here:

https://fishercenter.bard.edu/whats-on/programs/bard-music-festival/

Fisher Center at Bard

August 9, 2023
Bard Music Festival Friends & Vaughan Williams

Always an unexpected pleasure of attending the Bard Music Festival: chance encounters with old, likeminded friends.

Here I am, between concerts on Saturday, with two of my former WWFM colleagues: Marjorie Herman, creator of “Sounds Choral” and music director of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Princeton, and Israel “Buzz” Herman, creator of “On the Wind” and music director of the Bloomfield Symphony Orchestra. Note that they are wearing the official t-shirt of last year’s festival, “Rachmaninoff and His World.” By Sunday, they had switched to the official Vaughan Williams T, with its lark ascending.

“Vaughan Williams and His World” will resume this weekend at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, with a couple of special supplementary events taking place at Church of the Messiah in Rhinebeck on Thursday evening and Friday afternoon. Some of the concerts will be livestreamed. See the complete schedule here:

https://fishercenter.bard.edu/whats-on/programs/bard-music-festival/

Fisher Center at Bard

August 8, 2023
Bard Music Festival: Vaughan Williams Immersion

Here’s some of the merch from this year’s Bard Music Festival. Of course, I already own most of the CDs. A particularly nice showing for those on Albion Records, the recording branch of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society. Attractive design for the festival t-shirt, with a lark ascending, naturally, against a background of sky blue. I’m not a t-shirt guy, but I picked one up for the archive. Reading Eric Saylor’s Vaughan Williams book now. Saylor is one of this year’s resident scholars.

Of this past weekend’s concerts, Saturday night was the clear champion, with The Orchestra Now (TŌN) performing “Job, A Masque for Dancing” (with projections of the Blake illustrations), the Concerto for Two Pianos (with Danny Driver and Piers Lane the soloists), and the Symphony No. 4. Co-artistic director Leon Botstein conducted. “Job,” in particular, was sublime. Orchestras in the United States should hang their heads in shame for not programming this music.

Friday evening too had its rewards. I never much cared for Vaughan Williams’ “Concerto Accademico” on record, but hearing it played in person, with Grace Park the violinist, made me a convert. The “Serenade to Music” was luminously transcendent. The vocal soloists were all excellent, but soprano Brandie Sutton took it to the next level. What a presence, and what a voice!

It was also an inspired idea to open the festival with a communal singing of Vaughan Williams’ hymn “Down Ampney” (“Come Down, O Love Divine”), as one of the composer’s great achievements was his revitalization of the “The English Hymnal.” The man truly left his imprint on every musical facet of his time.

The Saturday morning panel, “Composer and Nation,” was also very special, with Saylor, Botstein, and Princeton University’s Deborah Nord participating. The discussion was moderated by Richard Aldous. The Bard Music Festival rewards on many levels, paying dividends on however much one decides to invest in it. If you’re there to take in some concerts of largely underexposed music, there’s plenty to enjoy. But if you want to dig a little deeper, the panels and pre-concert talks can be both absorbing and rewarding, and Saturday morning’s was among the best I’ve attended.

The daytime chamber concerts brought many pleasures, including exemplary performances of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet (with clarinetist Todd Palmer) and Herbert Howells’ Piano Quartet (with pianist Danny Driver). Nicholas Phan was on hand yesterday afternoon to sing Vaughan Williams’ “On Wenlock Edge” (with pianist Piers Lane). All three works featured members of the Ariel Quartet, surely the hardest-working chamber ensemble at this year’s festival.

Next weekend’s concerts are primed to be a series of “Holy Grails” for fans of the composer. Featured highlights will include a concert of English string classics, RVW’s Symphony No. 8 and “Sinfonia Antartica” [sic], and the Falstaff opera “Sir John in Love.” Of course, there will be plenty of chamber music during the day. This year, there will also be a couple of supplementary concerts held at the Church of the Messiah in Rhinebeck on Thursday evening and Friday afternoon (including a performance of the Mass in G minor).

“Vaughan Williams and His World” continues at Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, through August 13. You’ll find the complete schedule at the link.

https://fishercenter.bard.edu/whats-on/programs/bard-music-festival/

More photos tomorrow!

Fisher Center at Bard

August 7, 2023
Bard Music Festival Vaughan Williams Photos

Over the coming days, I’ll be posting some photos from the Bard Music Festival, including a few with some surprise guests and of course plenty of RVW swag.

Here I am with Ralph Vaughan Williams, outside the 400-seat Olin Hall, where daytime panels and chamber music concerts are held. Evening concerts are held across campus in the 800-seat Sosnoff Theater at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Last night’s blockbuster program of “Job, A Masque for Dancing,” the Concerto for Two Pianos, and the Symphony No. 4 was a notable highlight, as was a gorgeous performance on Friday of the “Serenade to Music.”

“Vaughan Williams and His World” will continue at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, through August 13. Select concerts are being livestreamed. Next weekend’s evening programs are especially strong. For streaming information, check here:

https://fishercenter.bard.edu/whats-on/programs/upstreaming/?fbclid=IwAR1S5x_nXSMKozIRBMgY0NYP_dfMudQ9Ks2dA3G56MB-MQRhajoxrFpBxe8

The complete schedule:

https://fishercenter.bard.edu/whats-on/programs/bard-music-festival/

Don’t begrudge me Bard, as it’s really my only vacation, albeit a working one. But you know what they say: do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.

Fisher Center at Bard

August 6, 2023
Hans Gál Tragedy and Triumph on the Lost Chord

He was a remarkable figure, who weathered much to create works of lasting beauty. This week on “The Lost Chord,” it’s the tragedy and triumph of Hans Gál.

Gál was born outside Vienna in 1890. He studied with, among others, Eusebius Mandyczewski, lifelong friend of Johannes Brahms. Gál himself became a serious Brahms scholar, co-editing the master’s complete works, in cooperation with Mandyczewski, in ten volumes. He edited other scholarly volumes on Brahms, as well.

It was while Gál was director of the Mainz Conservatory of Music that the Nazis came to power. Forced out of his position, he returned to Austria. Then the Anschluss drove him to Great Britain.

There, he made friends with the musicologist Donald Francis Tovey. Tovey, also a friend of Brahms, was based at Edinburgh University. Though Gál would be held in an internment camp during the war, Tovey eased the way for his subsequent employment at Edinburgh. Gál flourished there, becoming a respected member of the faculty and an influential teacher. He remained in Scotland for the rest of his very long life. He died there in 1987 at 97 years-old.

Gál composed in nearly every genre. He was lauded by many of the greatest musicians of his day. Yet somehow his music and reputation haven’t really pervaded the wider musical consciousness.

We’ll hear two works by this neglected composer, issued on the Avie label, which has done much to document Gál’s orchestral, chamber and instrumental music.

First, we’ll have the Piano Sonata, Op. 28, from a complete, 3-CD set devoted to Gál’s output for the keyboard. Gál was about 37 years-old at the time of the sonata’s composition. It’s sobering to think he yet had 60 years of life ahead of him!

Then we’ll hear his Cello Concerto, from 1944. Gál’s mother died in 1942. Shortly after, his aunt and sister took their own lives to avoid deportation to Auschwitz. Unable to bear up under the strain, the composer’s youngest son also committed suicide at 18 years-old. For all the turbulence and tragedy in Gál’s life, he managed to craft a rewarding and mellifluous work, which on occasion offers glimpses of his beloved Brahms. The concerto is elegiac, lyrical and deeply personal.

I hope you’ll join me for “Gál’s Worthy,” worthwhile music of Hans Gál, on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Keep in mind, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

August 5, 2023

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