Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
August 8-17, 2014
by Michael J. Moran
Over two weekends every August for the past 25 years, the
Bard Music Festival has focused on a single composer, along with predecessors,
contemporaries, and successors who influenced or were influenced by that
composer. What distinguishes Bard from other music festivals is the annual
publication by Princeton University Press of an accompanying book with essays
contributed by scholars who also participate as speakers and panelists at
festival programs.
The 2014 festival, “Schubert and His World,” presented 14
concerts, two panel discussions, and several film showings. Most evening
concerts featured orchestral music played by members of the American Symphony
Orchestra, conducted by Bard President and ASO Music Director Leon Botstein in
the acoustically excellent 900-seat Sosnoff Theater of the distinctive Richard
B. Fisher Center designed in 2003 by Frank Gehry. Daytime concerts offered
mainly chamber and instrumental works in the 200-seat Olin Humanities Building
auditorium, where the panels were also held.
The highlight of weekend #2 was a concert presentation of
Schubert’s rarely performed 1823 opera “Fierrabras,” whose title character, a
brave and selfless Moorish knight, survives political conflict at the hands of
Charlemagne and a romantic rivalry for his daughter. The gorgeous music,
trimmed from its original “heavenly length” to just over three hours, was
thrillingly rendered by Botstein and his forces. All the vocal soloists were
good, but tenor Joseph Kaiser brought special conviction and beauty of sound to
the title role.
Another festival highlight was a “Schubertiade,” or “evening
of music making and socializing with friends,” genially hosted by pianist Piers
Lane as Schubert’s friend and host of many Schubertiades, Josef von Spaun. Lane
not only introduced a revolving cast of singers and instrumentalists but made
amusing and informative comments on the music, some of which he also played at
the keyboard. His titanic account of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in A Major, D959,
in a different concert was particularly moving.
Other performances of special distinction were a sensitive
unabridged reading of Schubert’s second Piano Trio by the young Horszowski
Trio, and the ASO’s lively playing of Luciano Berio’s imaginative Rendering, a
post-modern “restoration” of another “unfinished” Schubert symphony. Among the
many singers who performed, baritone Andrew Garland and mezzo-soprano Teresa
Buchholz were standouts. But the protean Bard Festival Chorale under James
Bagwell seemed especially tireless and omnipresent.
With a packed schedule at the festival, time to visit such
nearby attractions as the historic town of Rhinebeck and the homes of Hudson
River School artists Thomas Cole and Frederic Church is often scarce, but the
natural beauty of the Hudson Valley is its own reward.
