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Tag: Bard Music Festival

Bard SummerScape: Henry VIII Opera

Bard SummerScape once again makes history, with the first major U.S. production of Camille Saint-Saëns’ grand opera “Henry VIII.”

A seven-week arts festival consisting of opera, dance, theater, film, music, and cabaret, Bard SummerScape is held every year on the idyllic campus of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.

In common with all of Bard’s operas, “Henry VIII” is rarely staged. In fact, you’re unlikely to encounter any of Saint-Saëns’ operas other than, of course, “Samson and Delilah.” I was lucky enough to hear this one, also at Bard, in a concert performance during a festival devoted specifically to Saint-Saëns in 2012.

This year’s fully-staged production, held at the Sosnoff Theater in the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, opened on Friday. Remaining performances will take place at the following times:

TODAY AT 2 PM
JULY 26 AT 2 PM
JULY 28 AT 4 PM
JULY 30 AT 2 PM

Livestreams will also be made available on July 26 AT 2 PM and July 29 AT 5 PM.

Eleven of Bard’s past operas – again, many of them U.S. premieres – are now available for streaming, free, and can be accessed on YouTube through the festival’s archive at the link below.

2022 – Richard Strauss, “Die Schweigsame Frau” (“The Silent Woman”)

2021 – Ernest Chausson, “Le roi Arthus” (“King Arthur”)

2019 – Erich Wolfgang Korngold, “Das Wunder der Heliane” (“The Miracle of Helen”)

2018 – Anton Rubinstein, “Demon”

2017 – Antonin Dvořák, “Dmitrij”

2016 – Pietro Mascagni, “Iris”

2015 – Ethel Smyth, “The Wreckers”

2014 – Carl Maria von Weber, “Euryanthe”

2013 – Sergei Taneyev, “Oresteia”

2012 – Emmanuel Chabrier, “Le roi malgré lui” (“The King in Spite of Himself”)

2011 – Richard Strauss, “Die Liebe der Danae” (“The Love of Danae”)

https://fishercenter.bard.edu/explore-learn/summerscape-opera/?utm_source=wordfly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2023-07-21-OperaOpeningNight&utm_content=version_A

Arguably, the crown jewel of Bard SummerScape is the Bard Music Festival (August 4-13), two weeks devoted to a specific composer and his or her world – their contemporaries, those they were influenced by, and those they influenced. This year (its 33rd) the focus is on none other than Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Highlights will include performances of “Job, A Masque for Dancing,” the “Sinfonia Antartica” [sic], the Symphonies Nos. 4 & 8, the Concerto for Two Pianos, the Concerto Accademico for violin and orchestra, “Flos Campi” for viola, chorus and orchestra, and a concert performance of the Falstaff opera “Sir John in Love,” alongside old favorites like “The Lark Ascending,” the “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis,” “Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus,” and the “Serenade to Music.”

With the composer largely neglected in the United States during his sesquicentennial year, all I can say is… it’s about bloomin’ time!

Of course, there will be works by many other composers, as well, though all of the music will be connected in one way or another with RVW.

The Bard Music Festival is an intensive regimen of concerts, panels, and pre-concert talks. One basically gets out of it whatever one puts into it. If total immersion is what you desire, there’s no place like Bard for a scholarly crash course. But if you prefer to cherry-pick, and just go and casually experience some worthwhile, often rarely-heard music, you can do that, too. One thing’s for certain: the lavish program book will keep you busy for days after the festival’s end. There is also always a tie-in book of scholarly essays and many recordings available for purchase.

For more information on Bard SummerScape and the Bard Music Festival, visit here:

https://fishercenter.bard.edu/whats-on/programs/summerscape/

If you’re an opera lover and you’ve got a lazy Sunday afternoon or evening ahead, consider streaming one of the operas today!

Fisher Center at Bard

PHOTO: Still from Bard’s “Henry VIII”

July 23, 2023
Bard Music Fest Focuses on Rachmaninoff

He was a visiting scholar at the Bard Music Festival in 2018, an event devoted to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and “his world.” A mere blip in Taruskin’s career, but he was awarded an honorary degree from the college’s president, and the festival music director, Leon Botstein. Rachmaninoff will be the focus of this year’s festival, August 5-14. For more information, follow the link (in no way associated with Taruskin’s obituary).

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

July 3, 2022
Staying Home with Nadia Boulanger at Bard

I confess, when it comes to my health, I’m a bit of a milquetoast.

At this point, even though I’m vaccinated, I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea of sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in an enclosed auditorium with folks who can’t be counted on to wear their masks over their noses, or at all for that matter.

While I very much enjoyed the livestream of Ernest Chausson’s opera “Le Roi Arthus” from Bard College last week, it was clear I had made the right decision – for me, anyway – to stay at home, as there were at least five people within the line of sight who were not masked, despite a mandatory masking policy. Sure, everyone had to provide proof of vaccination and temperatures were taken at the door. But I just don’t want to deal with getting sick, to whatever degree, if I can possibly avoid it, and I certainly don’t want to be responsible for conveying illness to my family or friends, many of whom are considerably older than myself.

It’s not just the Sosnoff Theater (where the opera was performed, and in which many of the orchestral concerts take place), which is cavernous, and I’m sure well-ventilated; it’s also the LUMA Theater (where the chamber concerts and panels are presented), a much more intimate venue, and the crowded lobbies, concession stands, and above all, restrooms, which are like cattle chutes even under the best of circumstances.

So for as much as I love the Bard Music Festival, I’ll be keeping my distance this year, in the hope that next year will be better.

THE GOOD NEWS is that because of the extraordinary circumstances – a festival held in time of pandemic – many of the programs will be livestreamed at a reduced price. Admittedly, streaming is rather thin brew next to the experience of attending live music, but it does allow the muted pleasure of experiencing lots of unusual and neglected repertoire in the context of intelligently curated programs.

And this year promises to be an especially good one, since the focus will be “Nadia Boulanger and Her World.” Boulanger, of course, was one of the great musical pedagogues of the 20th century. Her influence was incalculable. She was particularly important to the artistic development of innumerable American composers, from Aaron Copland to Philip Glass. So the festival’s repertoire will be notably diverse and, as always, intriguing.

Also of significance, Boulanger is the first woman to be selected as a focal point of the summer event (though Grazyna Bacewicz was the subject of a satellite festival in San Francisco, Bard Music West, in 2019, and works by women composers – including Nadia’s sister, Lili – have been represented as a matter of course through Bard’s characteristically diverse programming).

This year’s Bard Music Festival will take place over two weekends, August 6-8 and August 12-15. It’s a great opportunity to experience a lot of music you would otherwise probably never get to hear in concert. If you’re interested in out-of-the-ordinary programming, definitely take a few minutes to see what it’s all about. For more information, visit https://fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/

Mme Boulanger once expressed disdain for students who missed her classes, because they didn’t want to get caught up in rioting in the streets of Paris in 1934. She felt they weren’t taking music seriously enough. In opting for the safety of these at-home livestreams, I can practically feel the withering glare through her pince-nez.

August 6, 2021
Bard Music Festival: Rediscoveries Online

I know I have a tendency to talk a lot about Bard College. But it deserves to be talked about! Always a lot of interesting things happening there, on its bucolic campus within sight of the Catskills.

Yesterday, in conjunction with Nadia Boulanger’s birthday, I mentioned its summer music festival, which is a mecca, or should be, for anyone interested in live performance of rarely-heard, largely forgotten, and totally worthwhile music, presented over an immersive fortnight of concerts, lectures, and panels. Ordinarily, there’s a lot else going on, on Bard campus, all summer long.

“Nadia Boulanger and Her World” was to have been the focus of this year’s festival. Because of COVID, that has been postponed until next summer. But as you know, Nature abhors a vacuum (even as she may adore a pandemic), so in the meantime Bard has stepped up with some very enticing virtual programs, which it is presenting under the title “Out of the Silence: Bard Music Festival Rediscoveries.”

This series of live-streamed concerts includes works by classic, though underexposed, Black composers, alongside musical staples for string orchestra by Dvořák, Mendelssohn, Bartók, and Tchaikovsky. These are performed by the college’s resident ensemble, The Orchestra Now (TŌN), under the direction of Leon Botstein and his associates. Botstein is music director of the American Symphony Orchestra and president of Bard College.

The programs are presented on Saturdays at 5:30 pm EDT, with preconcert panels offered an hour before. Since it is not always the best hour for me to be listening, I am delighted to find that past concerts in the series are being archived online.

Here’s Program Two, with an introductory composers’ round table, featuring Adolphus Hailstork, Jessie Montgomery, Alvin Singleton, and Joan Tower. The music-making – which includes Montgomery’s “Strum,” Singleton’s “After Choice,” Hailstork’s “Sonata da Chiesa” (highly recommended), and Dvořák’s “Serenade for Strings” – begins around the 58-minute mark.

As you can see, they’ve figured out a way to present these concerts safely, outdoors, with strings appropriately distanced, and no potential for airborne contagion by way of plumes from wind or brass instruments.

Again, the next program in the series will be presented this Saturday. Here’s a link for free reservations for the remaining concerts:

https://tickets.fishercenter.bard.edu/2392/2396

Since the coronavirus shutdown, Bard has been extraordinarily generous with its archival material, sharing video of orchestral and opera performances from past festivals. In many of these, Botstein conducts the ASO. You’ll find much to choose from here:

https://fishercenter.bard.edu/upstreaming/

Times are tough for artists, as they are for everybody else. If you enjoy these offerings, or any of the virtual streams posted by other musicians and organizations, please consider supporting them with your contribution. Even a little bit means something, if everybody chips in.

Masked and distanced: The Bard musicians in rehearsal

Fisher Center at Bard

September 17, 2020
Nadia Boulanger: Influential Music Teacher
Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) has been described as the most influential teacher since Socrates.

Her students included everyone from Dinu Lipatti to Igor Markevitch, from Aaron Copland to Elliott Carter, from Astor Piazzolla to Philip Glass, from Michel Legrand to Quincy Jones, from Leonard Bernstein to “What Makes It Great?” radio host Rob Kapilow.

Her influence on American music, in particular, has been incalculable. Hopefuls flocked to her American Conservatory at Fontainebleau, where she accepted applicants from all backgrounds, provided they were determined to learn. It was Virgil Thomson who quipped, “She was a one-woman graduate school, so powerful and permeating that legend credits every United States town with two things: a five and dime and a Boulanger pupil.” The five and dimes may have faded, but not so the legacy of the “Boulangerie.”

This summer, Boulanger was to have been the focus of “Nadia Boulanger and Her World,” a two-week celebration of her music and influence, at the Bard Music Festival, held on the campus of Bard College in upstate New York, since sensibly postponed to next year, because of COVID concerns. The concerts, talks, and panels will examine not only Boulanger’s own contributions, but also those of her sister, the tragically short-lived composer Lili Boulanger, and representative works by her innumerable students and contemporaries.*

In the meantime, I stumbled across this fascinating documentary a few months back. It’s full of great stuff – first-hand accounts, historical footage, and terrific insights. Bernstein is interviewed in French, beginning around the 7-minute mark:

Beneath those grey hairs and pince-nez lurked an iron will that brooked no nonsense, yet Boulanger was surprisingly accepting, astonishingly objective, and generally dead-on in her assessments. When asked if a hierarchy could be established among composers – Beethoven being more important than Max Bruch, for instance – she suggests the pointlessness of such comparisons, stating it is like comparing the Himalayas to Montmartre.

She accepts the philosophical breadth of her pupils as a matter of course: “It’s very different to confront a work you don’t know yet, or a work in which you have to recognize some worth, while secretly saying to yourself, ‘that’s a trend I would never follow.’ That’s a matter of personal taste. Cannot culture allow us to go beyond personal taste and see the beauty of an object? I may not want to buy it, but I can see that it’s beautiful.”

Clearly, she was an extraordinary person. Happy birthday, Nadia Boulanger!
- There’s always something interesting going on at Bard. Check out the Bard Music Festival “Rediscoveries” series, featuring underplayed works by classic Black composers on the same programs with beloved masterpieces for string orchestra by Tchaikovsky and Bartók, now streaming on Saturdays:
https://fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/

Fisher Center at Bard
September 16, 2020

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