With the Bard Music Festival (“Mozart and His World”) coming up this weekend at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, one thing I forgot to mention is that, if you’re unable to make the pilgrimage for whatever reason, concerts at Sosnoff Hall, in the campus’ Frank Gehry designed Fisher Center at Bard, will be available for livestreaming. This might be of particular interest to anyone hoping to attend opening night, as the concert appears to be sold out. (Of course, there’s always the possibly of lucking into standby tickets.)
“The Many Facets of Mozart” (Friday at 7 p.m. EDT) will feature an assortment of orchestral, vocal, and chamber performances, with old favorites such as the “Paris” Symphony, the Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola, and the Quintet for Piano and Winds (which the composer considered his best work), but also lesser-known pieces such as the Freemasonry influenced “Eine kleine deutsche Kantate” and the concert aria “Ch’io mi scordi di te?,” a very interesting work for soprano and orchestra with piano obbligato. The musical selections will be interleaved with commentary by conductor and co-artistic director Leon Botstein.
“Mozart and Prague” (Saturday at 7 p.m. EDT) will include the “Prague” Symphony, alongside works by the composer’s older Bohemian contemporaries Christoph Willibald Gluck and Josef Mysliveček. Simone Dinnerstein will be the soloist in Mozart Piano Concerto No. 18. As an added bonus, soprano Jana McIntyre, who I made such a fuss over when writing about her appearances at the Bard Berlioz festival, two years ago, and this summer’s production of Richard Strauss’ “The Egyptian Helen,” will sing the motet “Exsultate, jubilate” and an aria from Mysliveček’s opera “Il Bellerofonte.” It’s unclear to me whether the pre-concert talk, by Columbia University’s Elaine Sisman (at 6 p.m.), will be available as part of the livestream, but it has been the case when I’ve viewed some of these concerts in the past.
“Rivalries and Conspiracies (Sunday at 3 p.m. EDT) looks to be an especially fascinating program, illuminating the true nature of the relationship between Mozart and Antonio Salieri. Included will be a collaborative effort by the two composers, rediscovered as recently as 2015, “Per la ricuperate salute di Ofelia” (“For the recovered health of Ophelia”).
The second half of the concert will juxtapose selections from two operas – Mozart’s “Der Schauspieldirektor” (“The Impresario”) and Salieri’s “Prima la musica e poi le parole” (“First the music and then the words”) – which were first performed at opposite ends of an orangery AT THE SAME TIME, with the audience seated in the middle! The aim was so that the emperor, Joseph II, could determine which of the operas would delight the court more.
Both operas satirize the behind-the-scenes antics that occur during the creation of an opera. Between the meta-concept and its Ivesian realization, it all seems surprisingly modern. Also, the mad whim of a daffy ruler. I wonder if Hugo von Hofmannsthal had this in mind when he wrote the libretto for Richard Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos?” In the Strauss opera, a wealthy patron (the richest man in Vienna) decides that the two works he commissioned, a drama and a comedy, should performed simultaneously, so that the entertainment will conclude in time for a fireworks display!
The Sunday program will also include a piano sonata by another Mozart rival, Muzio Clementi, whom Mozart once faced down in a piano duel. The match was deemed a tie, when the Emperor backed Mozart, but the Grand Duchess Maria Fyodorovna of Russia chose Clementi. Regardless, it was Mozart who had the last laugh, when he used a passage from Clementi’s sonata as the germ for his overture to “The Magic Flute.”
The pre-concert talk, at 2:00, will be delivered by McGill University’s Dorian Bandy.
Livestreams will also be offered from the Fisher Center during the festival’s second weekend (“Beauty, Charity and Reason” on Friday, August 14, at 7 p.m., “Family, Friends and Students” on Saturday, August 15, at 7 p.m., and a semi-staged performance of “The Abduction from the Seraglio” on Sunday, August 16, at 3:00 p.m. EDT).
Sorry, but in order to enjoy the morning and afternoon programs and panels across campus at Olin Hall, you’ll actually have to be in attendance!
“Mozart and His World” will take place at Bard College August 7-16. For more information, follow the link.
https://fishercenter.bard.edu/what-we-do/bard-music-festival/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23614040550&gbraid=0AAAAACyZZJveNzj1-YYl9V6bTicb364wl&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI1_HItIyMlgMVTkP_AR0-tRbFEAAYASABEgK4afD_BwE
Tag: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
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Livestreamed Content from the Bard Music Festival
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Mozart and Salieri at the Bard Music Festival
On this date in 1778, the world’s most famous opera house, Milan’s Teatro alla Scala (La Scala for short), was opened with “L’Europa Riconosciuta,” or “Europa Revealed,” a work composed especially for the occasion by Antonio Salieri. What better opportunity to remind you that this year’s Bard Music Festival, “Mozart and His World,” will commence this weekend at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY?
Playwright Peter Shaffer and his forebears (notably Pushkin) would have us believe that a rivalry between the two composers drove a jealous Salieri to scheme “the monster” into an early grave. But the actual relationship between the two was much more nuanced, with Salieri promoting Mozart’s works and even instructing one of his children (as well as Beethoven, Hummel, Czerny, Schubert, and Liszt). Mozart and Salieri even collaborated on a work, rediscovered in 2015, “Per la ricuperate salute di Ofelia” (“For the recovered health of Ophelia”), which will be heard at the festival.
In the theater and at the movies (and now television), there is no obligation for artists to adhere to historical fact in pursuit of their own dramatic ends. But I’m confident the scholars at Bard are not going to let the enduring Salieri legend slip past without comment.
Bard missed a trick in not reviving Salieri’s La Scala opera. Instead, the festival will conclude with the Mozart opera most performed during his lifetime – not “Figaro,” “Don Giovanni,” “Cosi,” or “The Magic Flute,” but “The Abduction from the Seraglio.”
Even so, while the focus is always on the music, the Bard experience is so much more. The programming – a careful juxtaposition of works and composers – is further illuminated by biographical, historical, and musicological context.
This year, there are a few more familiar selections than has been the custom (the subject is, after all, Mozart), but there are more than enough detours to maintain interest. And all the concerts are organized around a particular theme. It’s possible for one to go to Bard either for the deep dive, attending preconcert talks and panels and chatting up the resident scholars, or for the simple diversion and enjoyment of musicmaking at a very high level in two venues, on a pleasant, green campus situated in the Hudson Valley against the backdrop of the Catskills.
Some of Mozart’s well-known works will be presented to establish context, but there will be plenty of music I guarantee you will have never heard and composers you will only know perhaps from reading about them in music histories.
As more detailed information has become available, I am delighted to find that Princeton’s Scott Burnham will be among the visiting scholars, Byron Adams will deliver the pre-concert talk for this Saturday afternoon’s concert, “Fathers and Sons” (featuring music of Mozart’s dad, Leopold, and some by the Bach boys), and pianist Simone Dinnerstein will perform two Mozart concertos on Saturday night (alongside works by Christoph Willibald Gluck and Josef Myslivecek).
Salieri wouldn’t be the only one envious to attend.
“Mozart and His World” will be held at Bard College August 7-16. Here’s the complete schedule at a glance.
https://fishercenter.bard.edu/what-we-do/bard-music-festival/
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IMAGE: Illustration for Pushkin’s “Mozart and Salieri,” 1830 -
Bergman’s Enchanting “The Magic Flute”
From time to time, I guess even Ingmar Bergman needed a break from existential dread. How else to explain his delightful adaptation of “The Magic Flute?” Originally intended for television, Bergman’s playful and inventive 1975 film of Mozart’s 1791 singspiel had a lot to do with setting me on the path to become an opera lover.
The conceit, to set the action as a live performance in the historic Drottningholm Palace Theater (a reproduction, since there were concerns about the actual theater safely accommodating a film crew), is disarming and inspired. All the stagecraft is laid bare. The scenery is evidently painted plywood, the animals are all people in suits, and the characters pause from time to time to hold up little signs with moralistic aphorisms on them as they sing their arias.
Bergman’s film begins outside the actual theater and then enters the hall during the overture to register the facial expressions of a audience members as they anticipate the curtain rising. Most especially the camera lingers on the eager face of an impressionable young girl. It’s evident that the director would like us to experience it all from her perspective, through a lens of innocence.
By contrast, we’re also taken backstage, to glimpse Papageno, fallen asleep and nearly missing a cue, Sarastro between acts studying the score to “Parsifal,” and one of Monostatos’ minions reading a Donald Duck comic book.
Sure, there are moments of despair even here, as a couple of the characters contemplate suicide (we also get a memorable vision of hellfire), but it’s all dispelled in a decisive victory of good over evil, an endorsement of universal brotherhood, and a resolution of unalloyed joy.
It was Mozart’s librettist, Emanuel Schikaneder, who suggested during rehearsals that Papageno stammer in excitement at the recognition of his desired Papagena, in their famous duet. Here’s what Bergman does with it.On Mozart’s birthday anniversary, I think it’s time to revisit this film.
Behold! Here it is on YouTube.
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Pietro Nardini 300th Birthday
What, is no one celebrating the 300th birthday of Pietro Nardini?
Nardini was pupil of violinist Giuseppe Tartini, who found employment at the court chapel in Stuttgart for a few years in the 1760s. Then he returned home to become Kappelmeister to the Grand Duke of Tuscany in Florence.
Nardini met the teenage Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on one of his trips to Italy in 1770-71. This was on the same tour during which Mozart liberated Allegri’s “Miserere” from the Sistine Chapel in Rome, copying it down from memory, though it was forbidden for the music to be distributed elsewhere. (The Pope let it slide.)
If we’re to believe Mozart’s father, Leopold, an accomplished violinist himself, Nardini played his instrument beautifully, but struggled in more difficult passages. A poet, then, if not a virtuoso. He was also criticized for his lack of depth. Hey, we can’t all be Tartini.
Still time to pick up a card and some flowers. It’s 300 candles on Nardini’s ice cream cake. Buon compleanno!
Sonatas for strings
Violin concertos
String quartets
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Mozart’s Many Names Unveiled Happy Birthday!
What’s in name? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart went by many in his lifetime.
He was baptized on January 28, 1756 (the day after his birth), as “Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart.”
Following the custom of the Catholic Church, the first two names represent his saint’s name (“Chrysostomus” meaning “golden mouth”). “Wolfgangus” is the Latin form of “Wolfgang” – “walks with wolves” – the name of Mozart’s maternal grandfather. “Theophilus” is from the Greek – “lover of God.” In German, this would be “Gottlieb,” and in Latin “Amadeus.”
Later in life, Mozart would refer to himself using the Italian (“Amadeo”) or the French equivalent, which is why you will sometimes encounter the pedantic “Amadè” in concert program notes.
Admittedly, after 1777, Mozart himself did seem to have a preference for “Amadè,” although he played a little fast and loose with the French accent (variously “Amadè,” “Amadé,” or just plain “Amade”).
He did use “Amadeus,” albeit facetiously, when signing some of his letters, in mock-Latin (“Wolfgangus Amadeus Mozartus”). But it was only after his death that this form really gained traction, employed even by the composer’s widow. This was taken up by biographers, critics, and musicians and became prevalent by the early 19th century.
In more recent times, Peter Shaffer’s play and its now-classic film adaptation have cemented “Amadeus” in the public consciousness.
But Mozart by any other name would smell as sweet. And with his scatological sense of humor, I’m sure he would have something to say about that!
Enjoy a bouquet of Mozart on his birthday, as WWFM – The Classical Network celebrates one of music’s greatest masters. It will be all-Mozart through 7 pm EST. Support classical music on the air waves and via internet streaming with your gift by calling today at 1-888-232-1212 or contributing online at wwfm.org. Thank you for your generous support!
However it is you choose to cut his cake, the “art” was there right from the start. Happy birthday, Moz-ART!
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