The 23rd annual Bard Music Festival: “Saint-Saëns and His World”
Described by the New York Times as “part boot camp for the brain, part spa for the spirit,” the world-renowned Bard Music Festival in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, returns for its 23rd annual season, filling the last two weekends of Bard SummerScape 2012 with a compelling and enlightening investigation of “Saint-Saëns and His World.” Twelve concert programs over the two mid-August weekends, complemented by pre-concert lectures, panel discussions, and expert commentary, make up Bard’s examination of Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921), whose long and remarkable career spanned and helped shape the course of French music from Gounod to Ravel. The twelve concerts offer an immersion in the music of Belle Époque France, with its trademark opulence and emotional richness, presenting masterpieces from all genres of Saint-Saëns’s prodigious oeuvre, including a rare concert performance of his grand opera Henry VIII, alongside a wealth of music from contemporaries and compatriots. Weekend 1 – “Paris and the Culture of Cosmopolitanism” (August 10–12) – situates Saint-Saëns within his native city, which, as the new musical capital of Europe, was attracting a young generation of composers from abroad. Weekend 2 – “Confronting Modernism” (August 17–19) – explores the ways the French late-Romantics set the stage for modernism’s subsequent upheavals. Together, Bard’s offerings present a vivid portrait of a dazzlingly creative and colorful era in European history: a Golden Age of promise and possibility that came to an end with the tragedy of World War I.
As the New York Times observes, “Over two decades, the Bard Music Festival has managed more than its fair share of ambitious feats in its immersive annual examinations of classical music’s major composers,” offering a “rich web of context” for a full appreciation of that composer’s inspirations and significance. The resident American Symphony Orchestra, integral to the Bard Music Festival from the first, celebrates its half-centenary in the coming season, with the 2012 music festival taking place on the eve of the orchestra’s 50th anniversary. Leon Botstein, co-artistic director of the festival and soon to begin his 20th season as music director of the American Symphony, will conduct all three orchestral programs at the beautiful Frank Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on Bard’s glorious Hudson Valley campus. As in previous seasons, choral programs will feature the Bard Festival Chorale directed by James Bagwell, while this year’s impressive roster of performers includes cellists Edward Arron, Zuill Bailey, and Sophie Shao; violinists Miranda Cuckson, Eugene Drucker, and Giora Schmidt; sopranos Ellie Dehn and Lori Guilbeau; the Horszowski Trio; pianists Anna Polonsky, Gilles Vonsattel, and Orion Weiss; and mezzo-soprano Rebecca Ringel.
With its recognized gift for thematic programming, Bard achieves a unique depth and breadth of musical and cultural discovery. A wide range of Saint-Saëns’s own music will be performed, from popular and canonical works like the Carnival of the Animals and the “Organ Symphony” to such bona fide rarities as Henry VIII, the late solo sonatas for oboe and bassoon, and his finest choral work: the biblical oratorio Le déluge (“The Flood”). Bard also presents a rich and illuminating array of music by Saint-Saëns’s contemporaries, who range from luminaries like his close friend and most famous student, Gabriel Fauré, to lesser-known figures like Cécile Chaminade. Works by foreign-born composers, including Franz Liszt, Pablo de Sarasate, and Igor Stravinsky, reflect Paris’s eclipse of Vienna as Europe’s musical center by the late 1800s.
From his childhood as a prodigy dubbed the “French Mozart,” Saint-Saëns was a consummate and exceptionally versatile musician. His vast compositional output reflects his virtuosity on piano and organ, and, in its advanced chromaticism, his championship of Wagner and Liszt. Yet the clean, almost classical transparency of his music and the brilliancy of his orchestration are unmistakably French. After Saint-Saëns’s death, the critical consensus was initially harsh, dismissing him as lacking even while recognizing his craftsmanship as second to none. Yet, as onetime New York Times music critic Harold C. Schonberg explained, “Saint-Saëns is due for a reassessment. A turn of the wheel might find his kind of consummate craft, and his lightweight but elegant and clear-cut musical ideas, worthy of revival.”
Bard’s twelve musical programs, built thematically and spaced over two August weekends, open with the first of three all-Saint-Saëns events: Program 1, “Saint-Saëns and the Cultivation of Taste,” an intimate chamber evening offering fresh hearings of some of his best-loved works. Already familiar as an orchestral tone poem, here the haunting Danse macabre (“Dance of Death”) is presented in its original incarnation for baritone and piano. Likewise Africa, Saint-Saëns’s travel-inspired piano fantasy, is heard without orchestral accompaniment, training attention on its fine balance of local color with lyrical and rhythmic richness. The Wedding Cake Waltz captures in microcosm the economy of his concertante style, while the Schumannesque First Trio and the Quartet for Piano and Strings in B-flat, which deftly blends Classical and Romantic elements, are two of Saint-Saëns’s finest chamber works.
Program 2 – “Performing, Composing, and Arranging for Concert Life” – cuts a wider swath, contextualizing the composer within the Parisian musical world of his day. A prolific adapter, Saint-Saëns’s transcriptions and arrangements of works by Gluck, Mozart, Chopin, and Bizet complement his own First Cello Sonata. It was also Bizet whose Carmen provided the inspiration for the Concert Fantasies of virtuoso violinist Pablo de Sarasate, Saint-Saëns’s friend, fellow performer, and dedicatee of his runaway success, the Spanish-inflected Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso. Selections from Franz Liszt, who would become one of the French composer’s closest friends, his fellow piano prodigy Louis-Moreau Gottschalk, and others of their Parisian circle help complete this evocative snapshot of the age.
Charles Gounod dubbed Saint-Saëns the “French Beethoven,” in recognition of the younger composer’s achievement in bringing symphonic music into the French cultural mainstream. Program 3 – “Saint-Saëns, a French Beethoven?” – offers an all-Saint-Saëns orchestral tour-de-force. The concert opens with his Haydnesque Symphony in A, which premiered when the composer was only eighteen, prompting an admiring Berlioz to quip: “He knows everything, but lacks inexperience,” and closes with the monumental and enduringly popular “Organ” Symphony, which paid homage to Saint-Saëns’s friend and mentor Liszt. Interspersed between are three of his most important contributions to the orchestral repertory. His symphonic poem Le rouet d’Omphale (“Omphale’s Spinning Wheel”) helped pioneer Liszt’s new art form in France, while La muse et le poète (“The Muse and the Poet”) demonstrates the inimitable luminescence and clarity of Saint-Saëns’s mature style. The French composer’s fifth and final Piano Concerto, the “Egyptian,” whose bold harmonies anticipate those of Ravel, has remained a critical and popular success since its premiere, when Saint-Saëns himself was the soloist.
The composer’s prowess as a keyboard virtuoso comes into focus in Program 4, “The Organ, King of Instruments.” It was Saint-Saëns’s ephemeral weekly improvisations in church that inspired Liszt to name him the “greatest organist in the world,” but fortunately Saint-Saëns also left a number of organ works to posterity. Selected examples are programmed alongside those of his compatriots, including Adolphe Adam, Charles Gounod, César Franck, Louis Lefébure-Wély (his predecessor as organist at Paris’s church of the Madeleine), and Charles-Marie Widor, his successor at the Conservatoire.
One of Saint-Saëns’s most valuable contributions to French musical life was his co-founding of the Société Nationale de Musique in 1871. With the motto “Ars gallica” (‘French art’), the society was conceived to promote the works of living French composers and to combat the national tendency to privilege vocal and operatic music over orchestral works. Early members included Franck, Massenet, and Fauré, and meetings were held at the home of Henri Duparc, whose songs are featured in Program 5 – “Ars Gallica and French National Sentiment” – together with a wide selection of other works first heard at the society. These include Saint-Saëns’s own Piano Quintet, which the preeminent critic Eduard Hanslick reportedly compared favorably to that of Brahms, and chamber music by Edouard Lalo, Marie Jaëll, Ernest Chausson, Albéric Magnard, and Augusta Holmès.
The first festival weekend concludes by showcasing the composition that Saint-Saëns – presciently fearing it would overshadow his more serious work – tried hardest to suppress. Yet his own estimation of what has since become his most famous piece hardly does it justice, and Program 6 – “Zoological Fantasies: Carnival of the Animals Revisited” – undertakes a radical reconsideration of the maligned masterpiece. Only “Le cygne” (‘The Swan’), a serene meditation for accompanied cello, was published during his lifetime, and it remains his best-known composition. Equally beloved today are Le carnaval’s other fourteen movements, especially the shimmering, impressionistic “Aquarium.” Bard presents the finely crafted work complete and in its original, less familiar form: scored for an ensemble of eleven instruments including a glass harmonica, rather than the more commonly heard arrangement for string orchestra with glockenspiel. Rounding out the program are comparable zoological fantasies from Rameau, Rossini, Ibert, and Poulenc.
The festival’s second weekend opens with readings from novelist Marcel Proust, including the famous “Vinteuil Sonata” passage, commonly identified with Saint-Saëns’s exquisite Violin Sonata in D minor, which forms the centerpiece of Program 7, “Proust and Music.” Programmed alongside it are chamber works by Debussy, Fauré, and Franck, all of whose sonatas have also been proposed as possible Proustian models, and by Venezuelan-born Reynaldo Hahn, the novelist’s sometime lover and lifelong friend, who studied under Saint-Saëns at the Paris Conservatoire.
Program 8 – “La musique ancienne et moderne” – examines the allure of the Baroque for Saint-Saëns and his peers, in which they anticipated Stravinsky’s neo-classical pastiches. Saint-Saëns, in collaboration with Dukas, rediscovered and edited the works of Jean-Philippe Rameau, one of the most important French Baroque composers and theorists, and Saint-Saëns’s Septet for trumpet, piano, and string quintet harks back in form and style to the 18th century, inspiring d’Indy’s Suite dans le style ancien in its turn. Rounding out the chamber program are similar experiments by mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot, dedicatee of Samson et Dalila, and by Cécile Chaminade, the first female composer to receive the Légion d’Honneur.
Despite this fascination with the past, Saint-Saëns’s spiritual outlook was distinctly forward-looking. In his book Problèmes et Mystères (1894), he made the case for science and art replacing religion, and would later stipulate that the religious component of his own funeral be kept to a minimum. Yet the inspiration for some of his most powerful music was biblical. The second of the season’s orchestral concerts, Program 9 – “The Spiritual Sensibility” – presents a rare performance of Saint-Saëns’s unjustly neglected oratorio The Flood, which – with its vivid tone-painting of the cataclysmic rising of the waters – ranks among his finest work. It is complemented by Gounod’s Stabat Mater, two psalm settings from Florent Schmitt and Lili Boulanger, and by a little-known Fauré work: a setting of Victor Hugo’s unearthly, Eastern-inspired Les djinns (“The Genies”).
Saint-Saëns was the first major composer to write an original score for a motion picture: 1908’s L’assassinat du duc de Guise (“The Assassination of the Duke of Guise”), which launched a series of art films sponsored by Charles Pathé. Program 10 – “From Melodrama to Film” – resurrects Saint-Saëns’s long-lost musical contribution to the historical drama, scored for a small chamber group with piano or harmonium. The program also includes Saint-Saëns’s piano reduction of Berlioz’s Lélio, ou le retour à la vie (“Lélio, or the Return to Life”), which – originally intended as a sequel to Symphonie fantastique – makes use of its famous idée fixe.
Having begun his long career as a champion of new music, Saint-Saëns nonetheless was blindsided by modernism’s more radical innovations, hating Debussy’s music and famously storming out of the Paris premiere of Le sacre du printemps. Yet his work paradoxically foreshadowed many 20th-century stylistic tropes, like emotional restraint, lightness of texture, and playful engagement with music of the past. Program 11 – “Unexpected Correspondences: Saint-Saëns and the New Generation” – juxtaposes two of Saint-Saëns’s last chamber works, both deceptively simple masterpieces of tonal expression, with Debussy’s final composition, the Sonata for Violin and Piano, and Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne, one of several spin-offs from the neoclassical ballet Pulcinella.
Today, Saint-Saëns’s operatic reputation rests solely on Samson et Dalila, and even during his lifetime, he occupied an unusual position in French music, being better-known for his orchestral and chamber works. Yet his output includes a further eleven operas, including the grand opera Henry VIII, which dates from 1881–82. According to Gounod, who published an entire pamphlet extolling the work, it “had earned the most signal honor for French art,” and indeed, Henry VIII helped win Saint-Saëns’s promotion to Officier of the Légion d’Honneur in 1884. It remained in the Paris Opéra repertory until 1919, after a total of 87 performances, then traveled to Frankfurt, Milan, Moscow, London, Antwerp, Prague, and Monte Carlo. Reynaldo Hahn, writing for the composer’s centenary in 1935, argued that a performance of Henry VIII would convince the skeptical that Saint-Saëns was indeed a “man of the theater.” Such revivals are rare, however, especially outside Europe, and the full orchestral concert performance concluding the Bard Music Festival should be prized all the more highly in consequence. Program 12 – “Out of the Shadow of Samson and Delilah: Saint-Saëns’s Other Grand Opera” – offers 21st-century listeners a not-to-be-missed opportunity to reassess the composer’s stage career, providing a fitting end to this uniquely probing and far-reaching festival.
Program 8, “From Melodrama to Film,” will be accompanied by commentary from Daniel Goldmark, author of Tunes for ‘Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon. Two free panel discussions – “Prodigy, Polymath, Globetrotter, and Reactionary” and “Exporting Western Music Past and Present” – will be supplemented by informative pre-concert talks before each performance that illuminate the concert’s themes and are free to ticket-holders. As has become traditional, the first of these pre-concert talks will be given by Maestro Botstein himself.
Since the founding of the Bard Music Festival with “Brahms and His World” in 1990, each season Princeton University Press has published a companion volume of new scholarship and interpretation, with essays, translations, and correspondence relating to the featured composer and his world. Jann Pasler, author of Composing the Citizen: Music as Public Utility in Third Republic France, which won a 2010 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, is editor of the 2012 volume, Camille Saint-Saëns and His World.
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.”
Getting to the Bard Festival
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 that follows, 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.
Bard’s delightful Spiegeltent will be open for lunch and dinner throughout “Saint-Saëns and His World,” and there will be special opening and closing parties in the tent on August 10 and 19 respectively.
Program details of Bard Music Festival, “Saint-Saëns and His World”
WEEKEND 1: Paris and the Culture of Cosmopolitanism
Friday, August 10
PROGRAM 1
Saint-Saëns and the Cultivation of Taste*†
Sosnoff Theater, 8pm (7:30pm pre-concert talk by Leon Botstein)
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Trio No. 1 in F, Op. 18 (1864)
From Mélodies persanes, Op. 26 (1870)
Danse macabre, for baritone and piano (1872)
Variations on a Theme of Beethoven, Op. 35 (1874)
Wedding Cake Waltz, Op. 76 (1885)
Quartet for piano and strings, Op. 41 (1875)
Africa, Op. 89 (1891; arr.)
John Hancock, baritone; Horszowski Trio; Anna Polonsky, Gilles Vonsattel, Orion Weiss, piano;
Bard Festival Chamber Players
Tickets: $25, 35, 45, 55
Tickets for the 2012 Bard Music Festival Opening-Night Dinner include a 5pm pre-performance dinner in the Spiegeltent and a premium seat for the evening’s concert.
Saturday, August 11
PANEL 1
Prodigy, Polymath, Globetrotter, and Reactionary
Olin Hall, 10am–12 noon
Free and open to the public
PROGRAM 2
Performing, Composing, and Arranging for Concert Life
Olin Hall, 1:30pm (1pm pre-concert talk by Geoffrey Burleson)
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921)
Sonata No. 1 for cello and piano in C minor, Op. 32 (1872)
Arrangements and transcriptions of works by Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-87); Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91); Frédéric Chopin (1810-49); and Georges Bizet (1838-75)
Pablo de Sarasate (1844–1908)
Concert Fantasies on Carmen, for violin and piano, Op. 25 (1883)
Franz Liszt (1811–86)
From Two Legends, for piano, S175 (1862-63)
Louis-Moreau Gottschalk (1829–69)
Bamboula, Op. 2 (1844-45)
Songs and arias by Charles Gounod (1818-93), Anton Rubinstein (1829-94), Leo Delibes 1836-91), Jules Massenet (1842-1912), and Ernest Reyer (1823-1909)
Rieko Aizawa, Geoffrey Burleson, Gilles Vonsattel, piano; Edward Arron, cello; Lori Guilbeau, soprano; Jesse Mills, Giora Schmidt, violin; Jamie Van Eyck, mezzo-soprano
Tickets: $35
PROGRAM 3
Saint-Saëns, a French Beethoven?†
Sosnoff Theater, 8pm (7pm pre-concert talk by Christopher H. Gibbs)
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921)
Symphony in A (ca.1850)
Le rouet d’Omphale, symphonic poem, Op. 31(1872)
Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, “Organ,” Op. 78 (1886)
Piano Concerto No. 5 in F Major, “Egyptian,” Op. 103 (1896)
La muse et le poète, for violin, cello, and orchestra, Op. 132 (1910)
Miranda Cuckson, violin; Sophie Shao, cello; American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director
Tickets: $30, 50, 60, 75
Sunday, August 12
PROGRAM 4
The Organ, King of Instruments
Sosnoff Theater, 10am
Works for organ by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921), Adolphe Adam (1803–56), Louis Lefébure-Wély (1817–69), Charles Gounod (1818–93), César Franck (1822–90), Charles-Marie Widor (1844–1937), Leon Boëllmann (1862–97)
Kent Tritle, organ; Yulia Van Doren, soprano; and others
Tickets: $35
PROGRAM 5
Ars Gallica and French National Sentiment
Olin Hall, 1:30pm (1pm pre-concert talk)
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921): Piano Quintet, Op. 14 (1885)
Edouard Lalo (1823–92): Two Aubades (1872)
Marie Jaëll (1846–1925): Valses mélancoliques and Valses mignonnes (1888)
Ernest Chausson (1855–99): Chanson perpétuelle, Op. 37, for soprano and piano quintet (1898)
Albéric Magnard (1865–1914): Cello Sonata in A, Op. 20 (1908-10)
Songs by Augusta Holmès (1847–1903) and Henri Duparc (1848–1933)
Paul Appelby, tenor; Zuill Bailey, cello; Teresa Buchholz, mezzo-soprano; Giora Schmidt, violin;
Orion Weiss, piano; Bard Festival Chamber Players; and others
Tickets: $35
PROGRAM 6
Zoological Fantasies: Carnival of the Animals Revisited*†
Sosnoff Theater, 5:30pm (5pm pre-concert talk by Mitchell Morris)
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921): Le carnaval des animaux (1886)
Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924): Dolly Suite, Op. 56 (1894-96)
Maurice Ravel (1875–1937): Histoires naturelles, for baritone and piano (1907)
Songs by Emmanuel Chabrier (1841–94), Erik Satie (1866–1925), Jacques Ibert (1890–1962), Francis Poulenc (1899–1963)
Works by Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764), Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91), Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47), Jacques Offenbach (1819–80), and others
Lucille Chung, Anna Polonsky, piano; Miranda Cuckson, violin; Lori Guilbeau, soprano; John Hancock, baritone; Sophie Shao, cello; Bard Festival Chamber Players; and others
Tickets: $25, 35, 45, 55
WEEKEND 2: Confronting Modernism
Friday, August 17
PROGRAM 7
Proust and Music*†
Sosnoff Theater, 8:30pm (7pm pre-concert panel: Larry Bensky, moderator; André Aciman; Mary Davis; and others)
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 Beatrice d’Este, suite (1909)
Daniel del Pino, Danny Driver, Anna Polonsky, piano; Eugene Drucker, Min-Young Kim, violin; Daniel Panner, viola; Priscilla Lee, cello; Jamie Van Eyck, mezzo-soprano; Bard Festival Chamber Players
Tickets: $25, 35, 45, 55
Saturday, August 18
Panel 2
Exporting Western Music Past and Present
Olin Hall, 10am–12 noon
Free and open to the public
PROGRAM 8
La musique ancienne et moderne
Olin Hall, 1:30pm (1pm pre-concert talk)
Carl Albach, trumpet; Alessio Bax, piano; Paolo Bordignon, harpsichord; Marka Gustavsson, viola; Katie Lansdale, Andrea Schultz, violin; Robert Martin, cello; 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, quatrième concert (1741)
Pauline Viardot (1821–1910)
From Six chansons du XVe siècle (1886)
Vincent d’Indy (1851–1931)
Suite dans le style ancien, Op. 24 (1886)
Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944)
Gavotte, Op. 162 (ca. 1921)
Paul Dukas (1865–1935)
Variations, Interlude and Finale on a Theme by Rameau (1899-1902)
Tickets: $35
PROGRAM 9
The Spiritual Sensibility*†
Sosnoff Theater, 8pm (7pm pre-concert talk by Byron Adams)
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)
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
Tickets: $30, 50, 60, 75
Sunday, August 19
PROGRAM 10
From Melodrama to Film
Olin Hall, 10am
Performance with commentary by Daniel Goldmark
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)
Bard Festival Chamber Players and Bard Festival Chorale, conducted by James Bagwell
Tickets: $30
PROGRAM 11
Unexpected Correspondences: Saint-Saëns and the New Generation
Olin Hall, 1:30pm (1pm pre-concert talk by Richard Wilson)
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)
Daniel del Pino, Danny Driver, piano; Min-Young Kim, violin; Alexandra Knoll, oboe; Richard Ranti, bassoon; Raman Ramakrishnan, cello
Tickets: $30
PROGRAM 12
Out of the Shadow of Samson et Dalila: Saint-Saëns’s Other Grand Opera*†
Sosnoff Theater, 4:30 pm (3:30pm pre-concert talk by Hugh Macdonald)
Ellie Dehn, soprano; Jennifer Holloway, mezzo-soprano; 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 (written 1881-82)
Tickets: $30, 50, 60, 75
Bard SummerScape ticket information
The 23rd annual Bard Music Festival is made possible in part through the generous support of the Board of the Bard Music Festival and the Friends of the Fisher Center, as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Additional underwriting has been provided by Jeanne Donovan Fisher, James H. Ottaway Jr., Felicitas S. Thorne, Helen and Roger Alcaly, Bettina Baruch Foundation, Mrs. Mortimer Levitt, Michelle R. Clayman, Joanna M. Migdal, Margo and Anthony Viscusi, and the Furthermore Foundation. Special support has also been provided by the Mrs. Mortimer Levitt Endowment Fund for the Performing Arts.
Tickets for all Bard SummerScape events are now on sale to the public.
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.
Bard SummerScape: fishercenter.bard.edu/summerscape/2012
Bard Music Festival: fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/2012
Tickets: [email protected]; or by phone at 845-758-7900
Updates: Bard’s “e-members” get all the news in regular updates. Click here to sign up, or send an e-mail to [email protected].
All program information is subject to change.