I was so self-indulgent in my last post with my impressions of Friday night’s opening concert of the Bard Music Festival (this year, “Martinů and His World”), impressions which somehow wound up being both comprehensive and a mite jejune, I realize that if I continue in that fashion I couldn’t possibly relate everything before the festival commences its second weekend. So for everyone’s sake, I should probably rein it in and restrict myself to the high points and otherwise notable features of this past Saturday and Sunday. It’s good sometimes to have to work within set limitations.
Saturday morning at Bard is devoted to scholarly panel discussions held at Olin Hall, Bard College’s 300-seat auditorium, where daytime chamber concerts are also performed. These sessions are not only informative, they are entertaining, with back-and-forth between the scholars and an audience Q & A. The better panels, as this one was, are full of wit and personality. The panel consisted of festival scholar-in-residence Michael Beckerman, Cambridge’s Marina Frolova-Walker, and festival co-artistic and music director Leon Botstein, who always manages to steal the show. The moderator was co-artistic director Christopher H. Gibbs. I wish I could share more – I took a lot of notes – but for reasons of concision, I will force myself to refrain.
With only an hour’s break before the afternoon chamber concert, preceded by the unmissable Byron Adams’ preconcert talk, I was pretty much nailed to the spot, forced to subsist on a Bard torture wrap from the refreshments table – not really horrible as those things go, but not great either. Definitely food on the run. Happily, I made another Bard friend over a chance conversation about American composers. (The festival’s focus in two years will be George Gershwin.) It’s not every day that you find someone who can speak knowledgeably about Ross Lee Finney’s Symphony No. 1 and can share not one, but TWO personal Walter Piston anecdotes. I look forward to speaking with him again this weekend. We’ve already struck up quite the email correspondence.
One of the high points on the Saturday afternoon chamber concert was the Bassoon Sonatine by Alexandre Tansman, a work that was new to me, really sold by Thomas English, a phenomenal bassoonist, with Danny Driver at the keyboard. Also Martinů’s Flute Sonata, always one of my favorite works by the composer, written on Cape Cod in 1945. This was performed by Brandon Patrick George, whom I remember from his fine performance of a riveting solo flute suite by Egon Wellesz during “Vaughan Williams and His World” in 2023. Again, Danny Driver was the pianist. The program also included attractive works by Josef Suk (an early Piano Quartet), Jaroslav Řídký, Albert Roussel, and one of the few repertory works to be heard during this year’s festival, Maurice Ravel’s Violin Sonata. If all the performers really were outstanding, is it possible to assert that any of them stood out? And yet they did. All of them. I am sorry not to have the space to credit them all here.
Saturday night’s orchestral program, at the 900-seat Sosnoff Theater in the campus’ Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, was dedicated to Martinů’s friend (the two escaped Europe together) and champion, Rudolf Firkušný, also a valued friend of the Bard Music Festival, appearing as he did as part of “Dvořák and His World,” back in 1993, and honored, following his death, at “Janáček and His World” in 2003. Saturday’s concert included a real rarity in Firkušný’s recently-rediscovered Piano Concertino, written when he was just 17. This was quite the enjoyable showpiece, conceived in a post-Romantic, almost proto-Hollywood idiom. I can understand why he shelved it, when even Rachmaninoff was being ridiculed for this kind of thing, but Firkušný certainly didn’t embarrass himself. The flamboyant Piers Lane reached into his psychedelic wardrobe for a blue sort of tie-dye jacket and what looked like glow-in-the-dark socks. You be you, Piers!
But even Lane seemed conservative next to Jeonghwan Kim, the gesticulating bleach-blond soloist who tackled Martinů’s fantastical Piano Concerto No. 4, one of several works the composer wrote for Firkušný, which on this occasion certainly lived up to its subtitle, “Incantation.”
The program opened with Erwin Schulhoff’s Symphony No. 2, full of jazzy inspiration, with solos for trumpet and saxophone, and also a part for banjo. All in all, another delightful Bard discovery.
The concert also included Martinů’s somber “Memorial to Lidice,” a commemoration of the village and its inhabitants wiped out by the Nazis in reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, “Hitler’s Hangman,” by operatives of the Czech resistance, and the Symphony No. 6, subtitled “Fantaisies-symphonique.” The 6th is the composer’s strangest symphony, with its interludes of roiling notes, which remind many listeners – and musicologists too – of swarming bees. Leon Botstein conducted his post-graduate group, The Orchestra Now. Great stuff!
Sunday’s chamber music concert, hosted by Bard’s scholars-in-residence, Michael Beckerman and Aleš Březina, consisted of works by Martinů and his student/lover Vítězslava Kaprálová. The highlight for me was Martinů’s “Les rondes” – not literally anything to do with rounds, as in “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” but rather an allusion to round-dances. It’s a folk-inflected work, filtered through a Stravinskyan neoclassicism. It’s scored for seven instruments: oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, two violins, and piano.
I also enjoyed Beckerman and Březina’s introductory attempt to lend authenticity to “Variations on a Slovak Theme,” one of Martinů’s final works, by singing a rough-edged folk duet.
Perhaps now would be a good time to mention clarinetist Yoonah Kim, who emerged as an artist of real grace and subtlety. She shone not only in “Les rondes” (it was a pleasure to hear here alongside bassoonist Thomas English and oboist Alexandra Knox) but also in Aaron Copland’s Sextet – the composer’s reduction of his “Short Symphony,” undertaken by Copland after it was deemed unplayable by Serge Koussevitzky and Leopold Stokowski (only to have Carlos Chávez prove them wrong), which was among the works featured on the concluding program, back at the Sosnoff. There, Kim sat center stage, before the piano (Piers Lane donning another flashy jacket) and flanked by members of the dynamic Balourdet Quartet.
Everything about that concluding concert was a joy. The program opened with the suite from Martinů’s “La revue de cuisine,” a 1927 ballet about love and intrigue among the kitchen utensils. Scored for a sextet of clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, violin, cello, and piano, the inner numbers are based on popular dances and flanked by a jaunty, syncopated march. This is fun music. How many ways can I say that all the musicians were superb? It was evident not only here, but in their other appearances throughout the festival.
Unfortunately, in one of the very few snafus of the weekend, violinist Yuoshang Fang must have gotten her foot tangled up in her dress, or her electronic tablet just didn’t read the signal from her Bluetooth page-turner, and one of the “La revue” movements had to be started over again. This is the 21st century equivalent of when the sheet music used to fall off the stand, and I’ve been waiting for it to happen since these screens have proliferated. That said, it’s the first time I’ve actually witnessed it. It was easily remedied, with a quip from Thomas English and the musicians taking it from the top. Everyone played, and the audience gratefully received it, as if nothing had ever happened.
This final program had a high ratio of excellent and enjoyable pieces. Orion Weiss played Martinů’s Piano Sonata No. 1. In a bit of luxury casting, Mahan Esfahani was the soloist in Martinu’s Harpsichord Concerto. I’m wondering if this is the first 20th century harpsichord concerto I’ve ever heard live? It can’t be, can it? (Yes, I have heard harpsichords live in Baroque music.) Anyway, I was struck, having learned so much of this repertoire from recordings, how quiet an unamplified harpsichord can be, in relation to the more modern instruments. It was not inaudible. The balance was just unanticipated, as recording engineers are forever boosting the levels. Another fine performance, by the way.
As the presence of a harpsichord would suggest, there was neoclassicism in abundance. The program also included Arthur Honegger’s delightful “Concerto da Camera,” with Keith Bonner, flute, and Alexandra Knoll, oboe – a pastoral diversion devoid of expressive dissonances of a kind heard in some of the composer’s other pieces (including even his “Christmas Cantata”).
The last word was given to Martinů and his “Tre ricercari,” its Baroque affinity suggested right there in the title. In all, this was a winning program, again well exceeding the projected two-hour running time.
The festival has been a little light on the merch this time around. Ordinarily there are tables of CDs offered by Rhinebeck’s Oblong Books, but on the first weekend, anyway, there were no shiny jewel cases to entice the crows. And no, I don’t think it’s because the compact disc is an outmoded format. If you were there in past years, you would know that the inventory gets whittled down quite a bit over the two weekends. I wonder if there was an issue with the store getting stuck having to handle too many returns to the distributors or having to absorb the unsold material into their own inventory. I imagine under normal circumstances, Martinů is not exactly flying off the shelves!
However, there is still the festival-related book, “Martinů and His World,” edited by scholars-in-residence Beckerman and Březina, which this year includes not only essays about the composer and his works (there’s a healthy section on his operas), but also a recently-rediscovered personal diary and interviews with those who knew him during his American years.
And of course, there’s the “Martinů and His World” t-shirt, sporting one of the composer’s humorous doodles (really self-caricatures). It’s a keeper, bound to be a conversation-starter (albeit a one-sided conversation). Amaze and zombify your friends!
What am I especially looking forward to hearing this weekend? “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” for one, with tenor John Matthew Myers, who sang Smetana’s Dalibor last month at Bard (and knocked my socks off as Strauss’ Guntram, also conducted by Botstein, at Carnegie Hall in June), alongside Martinů’s Violin Concerto No. 2, both highlights on Saturday night. Michael Beckerman revealed during this past Saturday’s panel that it was a chance encounter with the slow movement of the concerto on a recording that turned him on to the composer and determined the direction of his life.
On Saturday afternoon’s chamber music program, I am looking forward to hearing Martinů’s Cello Sonata No. 3 and one of my personal favorites, the Nonet (No. 2). Of the other composer’s works, I eagerly anticipate David Diamond’s Flute Quintet, Witold Lutoslawski’s “Dance Panels,” and Joan Tower’s “Petroushskates.” And to conclude the festival on Sunday afternoon, Martinů’s opera “Julietta,” in a semi-staged production.
Okay, I ran long again. Kind of like one of Bard’s programs. At least I managed to cram in the rest of the information I wanted to convey. The Bard Music Festival continues this weekend at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. For more information, visit:
Fisher Center at Bard
