Bard Music Festival
Program One • A Career Beyond Borders
August 8
Bard Music Festival
August 8
Harnessing Bard’s unusual ability to integrate orchestral, vocal, and chamber works within a single event, this Opening Night Celebration is the first of three programs devoted exclusively to Martinů’s own music.
Although none of the featured works were composed in his homeland, all testify to its profound spiritual importance to him. Set to Czech folk texts, the nostalgic song cycle Petrklíč / Primrose draws on the modes and rhythms of Moravian dance. Czech folk influences likewise color the Fantasia, in which oboe and theremin function as dueling soloists, illustrating Martinů’s creative approach to timbre. Commissioned for The Cleveland Orchestra to celebrate Czechoslovakia’s 25th anniversary, his Second Symphony uses Czech motifs to achieve its pastoral lyricism. By contrast, the contemporaneous First Piano Quartet evokes the drama and turbulence of its wartime creation, and the Double Concerto for string orchestras, piano, and timpani, completed on the day of the Munich Agreement, seems to capture the tension of impending war. A concerto grosso whose dark-hued final movement concludes with an unresolved dissonance, this powerful work is one of the composer’s crowning achievements.
7 pm • Performance with commentary by Leon Botstein: with Jana McIntyre, soprano; Taylor Raven, mezzo-soprano; Michael Stephen Brown, Erika Switzer, & Orion Weiss, piano; Luosha Fang, violin; Dorit Chrysler, theremin; the Balourdet Quartet; The Orchestra Now, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Nos. 2 & 5 from Etudes and Polkas, Book II, H308 (1945)
Petrklíč / Primrose, H348 (1954)
Fantasia, H301 (1944)
Piano Quartet No. 1, H287 (1942)
Double Concerto, H271 (1938)
Symphony No. 2, H295 (1943)
Photo: Bohuslav Martinů in Darien, CT, 1943. Courtesy of Bohuslav Martinů Center in Polička, Czechia.
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 & StayBard College’s main campus is located in Annandale-on-Hudson (a hamlet of Red Hook), New York, on the east bank of the Hudson River, about 90 miles north of New York City and 220 miles southwest of Boston. The Taconic State Parkway and the New York State Thruway provide the most direct routes to our campus. Click the Google map below, or get directions by entering the following address into your GPS: 60 Manor Avenue, Red Hook, NY 12571.
From the East
If you are traveling from east of the Hudson River in New York State, take the Taconic State Parkway to the Red Hook / Route 199 exit, drive west on Route 199 through the village of Red Hook to Route 9G, turn right onto Route 9G, drive north 1.9 miles, turn left onto Annandale Road, then turn right onto Manor Ave.
From the West
If you are traveling from west of the Hudson River, take the New York State Thruway (I-87) to exit 19 (Kingston), take Route 209 (changes to Route 199 at the Hudson River) over the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge to Route 9G, turn left onto Route 9G, drive north 3.5 miles, turn left onto Annandale Road, then turn right onto Manor Ave.
Sosnoff Theater
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