Martinů and His World
“Part boot camp for the brain, part spa for the spirit.” —The New York Times
Weekend One: A Musical Mirror of the 20th Century
August 8–10
Weekend Two: Against Uncertainty, Uniformity, Mechanization: Music in the Mid-20th Century
August 14–17
Bard Music Festival returns with an intensive two-week exploration of Martinů and His World. In eleven themed concerts featuring its boldest and most adventurous programming to date, the festival’s 35th season examines the life and times of Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959), the 20th century’s foremost Czech composer, whose music is nonetheless largely unfamiliar to U.S. audiences today.
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Image c/o Bohuslav Martinů Centre, Polička
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Martinů and His World
In the mid-20th century, Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959) was considered one of the world’s leading composers. Unusually prolific, he wrote almost 400 works, including six symphonies, 14 operas, numerous ballets, close to 30 concertos, and a wealth of chamber, vocal, and instrumental music. As a prominent figure on the U.S. cultural scene, he held teaching posts at Princeton, Curtis, Mannes, and Tanglewood; received a string of prestigious commissions that saw five of his six symphonies premiered by either the Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, or Philadelphia Orchestra; and was elected to life membership in the National Institute of Life and Letters.
Rooted in the folk traditions of his long-lost homeland yet imbued with such recent innovations as neoclassicism and jazz, Martinů’s music is deeply cosmopolitan, registering the tensions of his complicated life and times. Born and raised in the Czech village of Polička, he studied in Prague and pursued his career in Paris before fleeing wartime Europe for the United States. Although he eventually found his way back to Western Europe, the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia prevented his returning, as hoped, to his homeland, and only posthumously were his remains restored to Polička. Today, his music is venerated in the Czech Republic and increasingly performed elsewhere. As BBC Music magazine writes, “His output is a veritable treasure-house of creativity, full of jewels which deserve to be displayed more often.”
To explore Martinů’s life and world in all their complexity, the festival presents a broad sampling of his oeuvre, including the Second and Sixth Symphonies, such choral masterpieces as The Epic of Gilgamesh and Field Mass, and the original version of his one-act opera Mariken de Nimègue, which receives its long-overdue world premiere. These will be heard alongside music by composers including Martinů’s predecessors Antonín Dvořák and Leoš Janáček, teachers Josef Suk and Albert Roussel, students Vítězslava Kaprálová and Jan Novák, compatriots Erwin Schulhoff and Rudolf Firkušný, fellow École de Paris members Alexandre Tansman and Alexander Tcherepnin, American colleagues Aaron Copland and David Diamond, and successors, from Joan Tower to Frank Zappa.
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History
Founded in 1990, the Bard Music Festival has established its unique identity in the classical concert field by presenting programs that, through performance and discussion, place selected works in the cultural and social context of the composer’s world.
Programs of the Bard Music Festival offer a point of view. The intimate communication of recital and chamber music and the excitement of full orchestral and choral works are complemented by informative preconcert talks, panel discussions by renowned musicians and scholars, and special events. In addition, each season University of Chicago Press publishes a book of essays, translations, and correspondence relating to the festival’s central figure.
By providing an illuminating context, the festival encourages listeners and musicians alike to rediscover the powerful, expressive nature of familiar compositions and to become acquainted with less well-known works.
Since its inaugural season, the Bard Music Festival has entered the worlds of Brahms, Mendelssohn, Richard Strauss, Dvořák, Schumann, Bartók, Ives, Haydn, Tchaikovsky, Schoenberg, Beethoven, Debussy, Mahler, Janáček, Shostakovich, Copland, Liszt, Elgar, Prokofiev, Wagner, Berg, Sibelius, Saint-Saëns, Stravinsky, Schubert, Carlos Chávez, Puccini, Chopin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Korngold, Nadia Boulanger, Rachmaninoff, Vaughan Williams, and Berlioz.
The 35th Bard Music Festival in 2025 will be devoted to the life and work of Bohuslav Martinů.
About
The Bard Music Festival promotes new ways of understanding and presenting the history of music to a contemporary audience. Each year, a single composer is chosen as the main subject. The biography of the composer, the influences and consequences of that composer’s achievement, and all aspects of the musical culture surrounding the time and place of the composer’s life are explored.
Perhaps the most important dimensions of the festival are the ways in which it links music to the worlds of literature, painting, theater, philosophy, and politics and brings two kinds of audience together: those with a long history of interest in concert life and first-time listeners, who find the festival an ideal place to learn about and enjoy the riches of our musical past.
Visit the Fisher Center
The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College is located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, situated on the east bank of the Hudson River in the beautiful Hudson Valley, about 90 miles north of New York City and 220 miles southwest of Boston.
Support
The Fisher Center is generously supported by Carolyn Marks Blackwood and Gregory H. Quinn, Jeanne Donovan Fisher, the Martin and Toni Sosnoff Foundation, Felicitas S. Thorne, Andrew E. Zobler, the Advisory Board of the Fisher Center, Fisher Center members and general fund donors, the Smokler/Hebert Family Fund, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.
The Bard Music Festival is generously supported by Helen and Roger Alcaly, Kathleen Vuillet Augustine, the Bettina Baruch Foundation, Jeanne Donovan Fisher, the Marstrand Foundation, the Naughton-Chesley Gift Trust, Denise Simon and Paulo Vieira da Cunha, Felicitas S. Thorne, the Wise Music Family Foundation, the Bard Music Festival Board, and Bard Music Festival members.
