Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Bohuslav Martinu

Martinu’s World at Bard Music Festival

As a longtime attendee of the Bard Music Festival, I recognize that the schedule is not quite as brutal as it once was. There aren’t as many concerts (at one time, there were three in a day) and they now try to rein them in so that they clock at around two-and-a-half hours; but the rigors of travel, living off coffee and wraps and sleeping in a strange place, can still beat the tar out of you. Even so, I’m having a blast. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Bohuslav Martinů is the sleeping giant of Czech music.

Leon Botstein, co-artistic artistic and music director of “Martinů and His World,” asserts that the composer’s star is on the rise. I certainly hope so. But if it is the case, I have yet to see it. I was happy to note the New York Philharmonic programmed the Cello Concerto No. 1 not too long ago, and I heard Steven Isserlis play the Cello Sonata No. 1 in Philadelphia this past season. Also, the Philadelphia Orchestra performed the Rhapsody-Concerto for viola, which I heard the orchestra for the first time some 40 years ago – in the mid-‘80s, the first Martinů piece I ever heard, as a matter of fact. It was love at first encounter.

Come to think of it, I guess that is a lot, compared to past seasons…

But a comment during yesterday morning’s panel Q&A got me thinking how many of Martinů works I have ever actually heard in person. I tallied eight, prior to the festival. So already, I’ve more than doubled my intake. I’ve gotten to know a portion of the composer’s prolific output (more than 400 works) mostly through recordings. And what varied and magnificent stuff it is! But I’ll have to go into all that in another post. The first concert begins this morning at 11:00 – a late morning at Bard, but a man’s got to eat breakfast and pack up.

This morning, I’m looking forward to hearing no less than four Martinů chamber works, along with a string quartet by his illicit sweetheart, Vítĕzslava Kaprálová. Later in the afternoon will be the jaunty suite from Martinů’s jazz ballet “La revue de cuisine,” the Piano Sonata No. 1, the Harpsichord Concerto (with Mahan Esfahani), and “Tre ricarcari,” in addition to Aaron Copland’s Sextet (a reduction of his then-deemed-to-be-unplayable “Short Symphony”) and Arthur Honegger’s neoclassical “Concerto da Camera.”

The 35th Bard Music Festival, “Martinů and His World,” will continue next weekend at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. According to Bard co-artistic director Christopher H. Gibbs, the festival will cover no less than 33 works by the composer on concerts presented over seven days.

Catch a rising star! For more information, visit

Bard Music Festival

Fisher Center at Bard

August 10, 2025
Martinů and His World Bard Music Festival

Here’s a little teaser about the 35th Bard Music Festival, “Martinů and His World,” which will take place at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, August 8-10 and 14-17.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1247374413423449

As a bonus, I’m also including links (below) to a few works that will be featured on this year’s concerts, to give you an idea what to expect. Of course, a lot of other composers’ music will be performed, as well. This is Martinů AND HIS WORLD, remember. The programs come pretty fast and furious at Bard. It’s a lot to take in, but you know I’ll do my best to report here on what I can.

If the promo’s music bed intrigues you, it’s from “The Frescoes of Piero della Francesca.” The audio is excerpted from an earlier Bard concert, but the work itself is not scheduled for this year’s festival. All the same, I’ll include a link to that too.

But first, more about the Bard Music Festival:

Bard Music Festival

Fisher Center at Bard

Nonet

Cello Sonata No. 3

“La revue de cuisine” (ballet about kitchen utensils!)

Symphony No. 6 “Fantaisies symphoniques”

“The Epic of Gilgamesh”

“Les fresques de Piero della Francesca”

August 3, 2025
Kipling’s Classical Connection

Many composers have been inspired by the writings of Rudyard Kipling, but few more so than Charles Koechlin.

Koechlin is probably better recognized these days as the orchestrator who assisted Fauré and Debussy than for any of his own music. He was fascinated by the movies and wrote works inspired by a number of cinematic celebrities. This yielded, among other things, his “Seven Stars Symphony,” with movements dedicated to Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and others. The figure he most adored is the now largely-forgotten actress Lillian Harvey, whom he admired from afar and honored with a number of compositions.

In addition, Koechlin was an amateur astronomer and an accomplished photographer. He became quite the athlete, in order to keep up his strength after a youthful brush with tuberculosis. As I know I’ve pointed out before, he also had one of the most enviable beards in all of classical music.

Like Percy Grainger, Koechlin harbored a lifelong affection for Kipling’s “The Jungle Book,” and returned to the subject often throughout his career – beginning with some song settings in 1899 and running through the symphonic poem “The Bandar-Log,” completed in 1940.

This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear his symphonic poem, “The Law of the Jungle.” Then we’ll turn to the ballet, “The Butterfly that Stamped,” by the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů.

Like Koechlin, Martinů was prolific by anyone’s standards. And like Koechlin there is so much Martinů nobody has ever heard. In addition to six symphonies, which at least get some play, he wrote concertos of every stripe, as well as 15 operas, a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works, and – believe it or not – 14 ballets.

“The Butterfly that Stamped” was inspired by a tale from Kipling’s “Just So Stories.”

Get ready to go wild! It’s a Kipling double-bill. Join me for “Kipling Coupling,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

A reminder that there will be lots more Martinů at this year’s Bard Music Festival, “Martinů and His World,” to be held at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, August 8-10 and 14-17. Take a gander at the complete schedule here:

Bard Music Festival

Fisher Center at Bard

August 2, 2025
Fisher Center at Bard: Martinu Documentary Find

I’ve been looking all over the internet for “My Life with Bohuslav Martinů,” a 2021 “feature documentary” (it’s only an hour long and looks more like a dramatization), and I’ve finally found it – in Czech!

There are no English titles, so if you’re interested and you’re not a native speaker, you’ll have to employ an external program for translations. I haven’t watched it yet, but I’m looking forward to doing so before this year’s Bard Music Festival, devoted to “Martinů and His World.”

https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/11670494623-muj-zivot-s-bohuslavem-martinu/

Here’s the trailer:

“Martinů and His World” will be held over two weekends, August 8-10 and 14-17, at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. More about it here:

Bard Music Festival

I’ll be heading up there today, departing within the hour, as a matter of fact, to “Czech out” the first fully-staged U.S. production of Bedřich Smetana’s 1868 opera “Dalibor.” I previewed it more extensively in another post earlier this week.

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1608573393395051&set=a.883855802533484

Remaining performances will take place at Bard College’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts today at 2 p.m., July 30 at 2 p.m., and August 1 at 4 p.m.

If it sounds enticing, but you can’t make it, the July 30 matinee will be available for livestreaming, in real-time, with an encore broadcast on August 2 at 5 p.m. You can learn more here:

https://fishercenter.bard.edu/events/dalibor/

No time to smooth this. Gotta run!

Fisher Center at Bard

July 27, 2025
Byron Adams on Vaughan Williams & the Bard Music Festival

It’s summer and a Sunday. As I continue to work on my appreciation of conductor Roger Norrington (who died on Friday), which hopefully I will have in satisfactory shape soon, I thought I’d share this interview with musicologist Byron Adams, conducted by Andrew Green of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society.

Adams, whose comments on this page are invariably illuminating (and always welcome), has been a passionate and lifelong advocate of Vaughan Williams, Elgar, and other British composers. If you ever attend concerts of the Philadelphia Orchestra, pay attention to who wrote the program notes. There’s a possibility it could be Byron!

Adams is also a composer himself, a retired professor of music at the University of California, Riverside. The conversation at the link rightly emphasizes his contribution to the Bard Music Festival, especially in the editing of a tie-in volume of critical essays for the 2023 festival, devoted to “Vaughan Williams and His World,” published by University of Chicago Press. But you may also learn a thing or two about Vaughan Williams’ experiences in America and certainly more about the Bard Music Festival.

Another one of Byron’s enthusiasms and areas of expertise is French music. He’ll be introducing a concert to be performed at Bard on the afternoon August 9 for a program he helped curate, titled “The French Connection,” designed to illuminate the experiences in Paris of – and French influences on – the subject of this year’s festival, the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů. The concert will also include music by Alexandre Tansman, Albert Roussel, Maurice Ravel, and Josef Suk.

Adams is a Bard stalwart, having for many years served on the program committee for the festival.

Here’s a link to the complete schedule for “Martinů and His World,” which will take place at Bard College over two weekends, August 8-10 and 14-17.

Bard Music Festival

Watch the interview to find out which essay in his book drove him to drink!

Fisher Center at Bard

July 20, 2025

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