Bard Music Festival “Saint-Saëns and His World” Weekend Two opens Friday, August 17
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. – “Confronting Modernism,” the second and final weekend of the 23rd annual Bard Music Festival, explores the ways Saint-Saëns and his fellow French late-Romantics set the stage for the musical upheavals that followed. The weekend opens this Friday, August 17, with a free panel discussion followed by “Proust and Music”: an evening of chamber music and readings from novelist Marcel Proust, including the famous “Vinteuil Sonata” passage, commonly identified with Saint-Saëns’s exquisite Violin Sonata in D minor. Performed by Eugene Drucker, violinist of the nine-time Grammy-winning Emerson String Quartet, this forms the concert’s centerpiece, alongside works by Debussy, Fauré, Franck, and Reynaldo Hahn, the novelist’s lover. Among the weekend’s highlights are two orchestral programs with Leon Botstein, co-artistic director of Bard SummerScape and the Bard Music Festival, leading the resident American Symphony Orchestra. The programs of choral works include Saint-Saëns’s unjustly neglected masterpiece, The Flood, and an all-too-rare concert performance of the great French composer’s grand opera Henry VIII brings the weekend – and all seven weeks of SummerScape – to a thrilling close.
Two further chamber programs examine the allure of the Baroque for Saint-Saëns and his peers, and explore his complicated relationship with modernism; although blindsided by its more radical innovations, the composer began his long career as a champion of new music, and his work foreshadowed many 20th-century stylistic tropes. A second free panel discussion on Saturday morning, moderated by Richard Aldous, considers “Exporting Western Music Past and Present”; four of the weekend’s six programs are augmented by a pre-concert talk from a distinguished scholar, namely Byron Adams, Hugh Macdonald, Jann Pasler, and Richard Wilson; and Daniel Goldmark provides commentary on a fifth, which investigates Saint-Saëns’s role as the first major composer to write an original film score. As in previous seasons, Weekend Two’s choral programs feature the Bard Festival Chorale directed by James Bagwell, and among the many other notable musicians who perform are singers Ellie Dehn, Paul Appleby, and Nathan Stark; violinist Min-Young Kim; cellist Robert Martin; and pianists Anna Polonsky and Orion Weiss.
Bard’s delightful Spiegeltent will be open for lunch and dinner throughout “Saint-Saëns and His World,” and there will be a special closing party in the tent on August 19.
Critical acclaim:
The Wall Street Journal has observed that the Bard Music Festival “has long been one of the most intellectually stimulating of all American summer festivals and frequently is one of the most musically satisfying.” Reviewing a previous season of the festival, a critic for the New York Times reported, “As impressive as many of the festival performances were, they were matched by the audience’s engagement: strangers met and conversed, analyzing the music they’d heard with sophistication, and a Sunday-morning panel discussion of gender issues in 19th-century culture drew a nearly full house. All told, it was a model for an enlightened society.”
Complete programs for Weekend Two of the 2012 Bard Music Festival follow.
Program details of Bard Music Festival, “Saint-Saëns and His World”
Weekend Two, August 17—19: Confronting Modernism
FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 2012
BMF PROGRAM SEVEN: Proust and Music *†
Friday, August 17, 2012 at 8:30 pm
Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater
7 pm Preconcert Panel: Larry Bensky, moderator; André Aciman; Mary Davis; William C. Carter
8:30 pm Performance: Daniel del Pino, piano; Danny Driver, piano; Eugene Drucker, violin; Min-Young Kim, violin; Priscilla Lee, cello; Daniel Panner, viola; Anna Polonsky, piano; Jamie Van Eyck, mezzo-soprano; Bard Festival Chamber Players, Lucille Chung, piano, Geoffrey McDonald, conductor
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921)
Violin Sonata No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 75 (1885)
César Franck (1822–90)
Prelude, chorale et fugue, M21 (1884)
Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924)
Piano Quartet No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 15 (1876–79; rev. 1883)
Claude Debussy (1862–1918)
Chansons de Bilitis (1897–98)
Reynaldo Hahn (1874–1947)
Le bal de Béatrice d’Este, suite (1909)
Tickets: $25, 35, 45, 55
SATURDAY, AUGUST 18, 2012
BMF PANEL TWO: Exporting Western Music Past and Present
Saturday, August 18, 2012 at 10 am – noon
Olin Hall
Richard Aldous, moderator; Brigid Cohen; Tamara Levitz; Jann Pasler
Free and open to the public.
BMF PROGRAM EIGHT: La musique ancienne et moderne
Saturday, August 18, 2012 at 1:30 pm
Olin Hall
1 pm Preconcert Talk: Jann Pasler
1:30 pm Performance: Carl Albach, trumpet; Alessio Bax, piano; Bradley Brookshire, harpsichord; Jordan Frazier, double bass; Marka Gustavsson, viola; Katie Lansdale, violin; Robert Martin, cello; Andrea Schultz, violin; Nathan Stark, bass; Jamie Van Eyck, mezzo-soprano; Orion Weiss, piano; and others
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921)
Septet, for trumpet, piano, and string quintet, Op. 65 (1880)
Songs
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764)
From Pièces de clavecin en concerts, quatriéme concert (1741)
Pauline Viardot (1821–1910)
Songs
Vincent d’Indy (1851–1931)
Suite dans le style ancien, Op. 24 (1886)
Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944)
Gavotte, Op. 162, No. 5 (ca. 1921)
Paul Dukas (1865–1935)
Variations, Interlude and Finale on a Theme by Rameau (1899–1902)
Tickets: $35
BMF PROGRAM NINE: The Spiritual Sensibility*†
Saturday, August 18, 2012 at 8 pm
Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater
7 pm Preconcert Talk: Byron Adams
8 pm Performance: Paul Appleby, tenor; Andrew Garland, baritone; Lori Guilbeau, soprano; Rebecca Ringle, mezzo-soprano; Bard Festival Chorale, James Bagwell, choral director; American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921)
Le déluge, poème biblique, Op. 45 (1875)
Charles Gounod (1818–93)
Stabat mater (1867)
Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924)
Les djinns, Op. 12 (c. 1875)
Florent Schmitt (1870–1958)
Psalm 47, “Gloire du Seigneur,” Op. 38 (1904)
Lili Boulanger (1893–1918)
Psalm 130, “Du fond de l’abîme” (1910–17)
Tickets: $30, 50, 60, 75
SUNDAY, AUGUST 19, 2012
BMF PROGRAM TEN: From Melodrama to Film
Sunday, August 19, 2012 at 10 am
Olin Hall
10 am Performance with Commentary by Daniel Goldmark; with Blair McMillen, piano; Bard Festival Chamber Players and Bard Festival Chorale, conducted by James Bagwell
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921)
L’assassinat du Duc de Guise, Op. 128 (1908)
Hector Berlioz (1803–69)
Lélio ou le retour à la vie, Op. 14b (1831/32; arr. Saint-Saëns 1855)
Tickets: $30
BMF PROGRAM ELEVEN: Unexpected Correspondences: Saint-Saëns and the New Generation
Sunday, August 19, 2012 at 1:30 pm
Olin Hall
1 pm Preconcert Talk: Richard Wilson
1:30 pm Performance: Daniel del Pino, piano; Danny Driver, piano; Min-Young Kim, violin; Alexandra Knoll, oboe; Raman Ramakrishnan, cello; Richard Ranti, bassoon
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921)
Sonatas for Oboe and Piano, Op. 166 (1921) and bassoon and piano, Op. 168 (1921)
Claude Debussy (1862–1918)
Sonata for Violin and Piano (1916–17)
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Suite Italienne, for cello and piano (1932)
Tickets: $30
BMF PROGRAM TWELVE: Out of the Shadow of Samson and Delilah: Saint-Saëns’s Other Grand Opera*†
Sunday, August 19, 2012 at 4:30 pm
Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater
3:30 pm Preconcert Talk: Hugh Macdonald
4:30 pm Performance: Ellie Dehn, soprano; Jennifer Holloway, mezzo-soprano; Jason Howard, baritone; Nathan Stark, bass; John Tessier, tenor; Bard Festival Chorale, James Bagwell, choral director; American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director; and others
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921)
Henry VIII (1881–82)
Tickets $30, 50, 60, 75
All programs subject to change.
Bard SummerScape Travel and Ticket Information
New York City Round-Trip Coach Transportation:
To make a reservation on the round-trip coach provided exclusively to ticket-holders for specific performances indicated by * in the calendar of events above, call the box office at 845-758-7900. The round-trip fare is $30 and reservations are required. The coach departs from Lincoln Center at least four hours before scheduled curtain time to allow for dining in the Spiegeltent.
Poughkeepsie MetroNorth Train Station Round-Trip Shuttle Transportation:
Round-trip shuttle between the MetroNorth station in Poughkeepsie and Bard is available exclusively to ticket-holders for specific performances marked with a †. Shuttle service is available for all performances of the opera. The round-trip fare is $20 and reservations are required. To make a reservation, call the box office at 845-758-7900.
For tickets and further information on all SummerScape events, call the Fisher Center box office at 845-758-7900 or visit www.fishercenter.bard.edu.
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©21C Media Group, August 2012