Bard Music Festival
Program Six • Sacred Music in France
August 15–16
Bard Music Festival
August 15–16
Following the success of last season’s first foray off-campus, the Bard Music Festival returns to nearby Rhinebeck for Program Six. Once again featuring the renovated organ of the Episcopal Church of the Messiah, this program presents a range of religious works in the ecclesiastical environment for which they were written.
Organ pieces by masters of the genre Alfred Lefébure-Wély, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Olivier Messiaen will be interspersed with short choral works by Berlioz, Cherubini, Meyerbeer, Fauré, and Dmitry Bortniansky, a Ukrainian who served at the court of Catherine the Great.
The program showcases two Romantic compositions that were first presented to the public as rediscoveries from the past: a faux-Renaissance hymn by Pierre-Louis Dietsch and the purportedly 17th-century La fuite en Égypte. Heard here in the original version for tenor, chorus, and chamber orchestra, this was in fact by Berlioz, who later incorporated it into his oratorio L’enfance du Christ.
The beautiful Church of the Messiah in Rhinebeck, NY, has limited capacity, so to best accommodate patrons, we will offer Program Six: Sacred Music in France on both Thursday, August 15 at 7 pm as well as Friday, August 16 at 3 pm.
With Renée Anne Louprette GCP ’19, organ; Maximillian Jansen VAP ’21, tenor; members of the Bard Festival Chorale and The Orchestra Now, conducted by James Bagwell
César Franck (1822–90)
From Three Pieces for Organ (1878)
Pièce héroïque
Dmitry Bortniansky (1751–1825)
Adoramus Dei (“Chant des chérubins, de Bortniansky”) (arr. Berlioz, 1850)
Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842)
Antifona sul canto fermo, ottavo tono (1778) (trad.)
Hector Berlioz (1803–69)
Veni creator (c. 1860–68) (trad.)
Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864)
Pater noster (1857)
Pierre-Louis Dietsch (1808–65), after Jacques Arcadelt (1507–68)
Ave Maria (1842)
Alfred Lefébure-Wély (1817–69)
Boléro de concert, Op. 166 (1865)
Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924)
Cantique de Jean Racine, Op. 11 (1865)
Hector Berlioz
La fuite en Égypte: Mystère en style ancien, Op. 25 (1850) (Berlioz)
Overture
The Shepherds’ Farewell
The Repose of the Holy Family
Olivier Messiaen (1908–92)
Apparition de l’église éternelle (1932)
The organ at the Church of the Messiah was installed in 1923 by the celebrated E.M. Skinner Company of Boston. The company, which had a reputation for creating instruments of superb quality and great tonal beauty, built organs for prominent churches and universities, including both the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine and St. Thomas Church in New York. A gift to the parish by Captain Vincent Astor, the organ has just returned to the church following a major reconditioning by Quimby Pipe Organs of Warrensburg, Missouri.
Choral Director, Bard Festival Chorale; Conductor, The Orchestra Now
Organ
Tenor
Nearby villages and towns in the Hudson Valley boast a large selection of restaurants, as well as a variety of hotels, motels, inns, and bed & breakfasts.
Eat & StayChurch of the Messiah
6436 Montgomery Street
Rhinebeck, NY 12572
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