Bard Music Festival

Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

http://fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/

August 7-16, 2015

by Michael J. Moran

Fisher Center, Bard College

Over two weekends every August for the past 26 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 2015 festival, “Carlos Chavez and His World,” presented eleven concerts, three

panel discussions, and several film showings on the Bard College campus. 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.

Besides a generous sampling of Chavez, Mexico’s greatest composer, Weekend Two featured a variety of American and other Latin American composers who worked with him as a musician and educator. One concert focused entirely on percussion instruments, where rarely heard works by Lou Harrison, performed by the Catskill Mountain Gamelan ensemble, and John Cage, played by a group including several Bard students, were particularly engaging. In a program celebrating Chavez’s New York connections, soprano Sarah Shafer sang Biblical settings by Virgil Thomson and lynching blues set by fellow Mexicans Chavez and Silvestre Revueltas with poignant beauty.

Highlights of a concert showcasing music from post-World War II Latin America included a knockout performance by Orion Weiss of Ginastera’s demanding first piano sonata and sensitive accounts of two short Piazzolla works by an ensemble featuring bandoneon player Raul Jaurena. A fascinating Sunday morning program by the versatile Bard Festival Chorale surveyed “sacred and secular choral music from five centuries,” from Hernando Franco to Aaron Copland.

Two symphonic programs made the deepest impression. One featured the sumptuous cantata “Forest of the Amazon,” by Brazilian master Heitor Villa-Lobos, in which soprano Nicole Cabell sang radiantly, and the large orchestra was a riot of color. The other presented the complete Ginastera ballet “Estancia,” which baritone Timothy Mix and the percussion-dominated ensemble brought to repeated climaxes of thrilling passion. These musicians present much unfamiliar repertoire in performances of unfailing polish and conviction.

With a packed schedule at the festival, time to see nearby attractions like the historic town of Rhinebeck and the homes of Hudson River School artists Thomas Cole and Frederic Church can be scarce, but the natural beauty of the Hudson Valley rewards all visitors.

Bard Music Festival

Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

http://fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/2014

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.

Bard Music Festival

Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

http://fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/2013/

August 9-18, 2013

by Michael J. Moran

Fisher Center

Over two weekends every August since 1990, 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 2013 festival, “Stravinsky and His World,” presented 11concerts, three panel discussions, and two film showings on the Bard College campus. 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 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.  

While the “Rite of Spring” centennial was duly observed in Weekend One, a highlight of Weekend Two was a live ASO performance of Hanns Eisler’s modest score for Resnais’ watershed Holocaust documentary “Night and Fog,” projected behind the orchestra (in a rare political statement, Stravinsky defended the Communist Eisler against the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948). The festival climaxed with a double bill of Stravinsky’s pastoral melodrama “Persephone” and his shattering opera-oratorio “Oedipus Rex,” both imaginatively semi-staged by Doug Fitch.

To hear these pieces in the context of other work by major influences (Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov) and contemporaries (Bartok, Varese), lesser-known colleagues (Tansman, Lourie), and the variety of Stravinsky’s own invention, from solo piano miniatures (“Madrid”) to serial chamber music (the Septet) and austere choral music (“Requiem Canticles”) was to appreciate anew Stravinsky’s protean talent.

Performances by ASO musicians and their guests were consistently fine. Of special note were mezzo-soprano Jean Stilwell as Persephone, tenor Gordon Gietz as Oedipus, and pianist Piers Lane, who turned Antheil’s knuckle-busting “Sonata Sauvage” into a showstopper. James Bagwell led the Bard Festival Chorale in a stunning choral concert that ranged from a glowing “Beatus Vir” by Monteverdi to a lovely, if challenging, lamentation by Krenek, of which Bagwell wryly noted, quoting Ringo Starr, “it don’t come easy.”

With a packed schedule at the festival, time to visit such nearby attractions as the historic town of Rhinebeck and museums in Hyde Park celebrating the Roosevelt and Vanderbilt families can be scarce, but the natural beauty of the Hudson Valley rewards all visitors to the area.