Program One: Erich Wolfgang Korngold: From Viennese Prodigy to Hollywood Master

7:30 pm Preconcert Talk: Leon Botstein
8 pm Performance: Stephanie Blythe, mezzo-soprano; Marjorie Owens, mezzo-soprano; Erica Petrocelli, soprano; Nicholas Canellakis, cello; Piers Lane, piano; Parker String Quartet; Bard Festival Chorale, James Bagwell, choral director; The Orchestra Now, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957)
All-Korngold program, works to include:
Selections from Der Schneemann (1908–9)
Piano Quintet in E Major, Op. 15 (1921–22)
Overture to The Sea Hawk (1940) 
The Passover Psalm, Op. 30 (1941)
Tomorrow, Op. 33 (1944)
Cello Concerto in C Major, Op. 37 (1946)

Anchored by The Orchestra Now, and exploiting Bard’s unusual ability to integrate orchestral, choral, solo, and chamber works within a single event, this opening concert offers a broad overview of the composer’s multi-faceted career. It was Korngold’s ballet-pantomime, Der Schneemann, that first made him a sensation; completed when the composer was just eleven, the work is already a masterly marriage of tight construction and Viennese charm. Excerpts will be heard alongside a selection of songs; the virtuosic Piano Quintet in E, one of his early-adult successes; the Overture to The Sea Hawk, the last and best of his wartime Errol Flynn swashbucklers; Tomorrow, the tone poem he wrote for The Constant Nymph; and his Cello Concerto, an uncharacteristically modern work that began life as the climax of the Bette Davis vehicle Deception, before being expanded for concert performance in the composer’s final decade.