Bard SummerScape 2026 • Now through August 16

Bard Music Festival

Program Ten • A Lasting Influence: Mozart’s Legacy

August 16

Add to Calendar2026-08-16 11:30 am2026-08-16 11:30 amEDTProgram Ten • A Lasting Influence: Mozart’s LegacyOlin Hall,

A master of all genres who revolutionized the opera and concerto forms, Mozart was instrumental in shaping the trajectory of Western concert music. Rather than attempting to capture the full scope of this singular impact, Program Ten, “A Lasting Influence: Mozart’s Legacy,” pairs Mozart’s unfinished, posthumously discovered D-minor Fantasia — a dark but well-loved masterpiece — with some of those of his peers’ and successors’ works that he inspired most directly. These include variations on a Papageno aria by Beethoven, on whose early career Mozart exerted a powerful influence; variations on a theme from Le nozze di Figaro by Beethoven’s friend, the Bohemian-born composer-theorist Anton Reicha; the formidably demanding piano fantasy on themes from Don Giovanni by Franz Liszt, who considered Mozart “the greatest of all masters”; selections from the piano arrangement of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Mozartiana, composed to mark the centennial of Don Giovanni; and the virtuosic concert fantasy on themes from The Magic Flute by Spanish violinist-composer Pablo de Sarasate. Finally, the String Sextet from Capriccio by Richard Strauss—the composer of this season’s SummerScape opera, The Egyptian Helen, and one in whom Mozart’s influence ran especially deep—offers a modern reflection on the Classical, Mozartean ideals of beauty and structural balance in a nostalgic 18th-century setting.

Program

11 am • Preconcert Talk: Richard Wilson
11:30 am • Performance

Wolfgang Amadé Mozart (1756–91)

Fantasia No. 3 in D Minor, K397 (ca. 1782)
Michael Stephen Brown, piano

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)

7 Variations on “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen,” WoO 49 (1801)
Tommy Mesa, cello
Danny Driver, piano

Franz Liszt (1811–86)

Réminiscences de Don Juan (1841)
Orion Weiss, piano

Pablo de Sarasate (1844–1908)

Fantasy on Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Op. 54 (c. 1900)
Lun Li, violin
Michael Stephen Brown, piano

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–93)

From Mozartiana, Suite No. 4, Op. 61 (1887) (arr. for piano)
No. 3 Preghiera
Danny Driver and Michael Stephen Brown, piano

Anton Reicha (1770–1836)

18 Variations and Fantasy on a Theme from Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Op. 51 (1804)
Keith Bonner, flute
Luosha Fang ’11, violin
Tommy Mesa, cello

Francis Poulenc (1899–1963)

Novelette in C Major, for piano solo, FP 47 (1927)
Danny Driver, piano

Richard Strauss (1864–1949)

String Sextet from Capriccio, Op. 85 (1940–41)
Ariel Quartet
Luosha Fang ’11, viola
Tommy Mesa, cello

Artwork: Hommage a Mozart by Raoul Dufy (1915); Collection Buffalo AKG Art Museum; ARS

Artists

Keith Bonner

Keith Bonner

Flute

Luosha Fang ’11

Luosha Fang ’11

Violin and Viola

Lun Li

Lun Li

Violin

Tommy Mesa

Tommy Mesa

Cello

Michael Stephen Brown

Michael Stephen Brown

Piano

Danny Driver

Danny Driver

Piano

Orion Weiss

Orion Weiss

Piano

Ariel Quartet

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