21st Annual Bard Music Festival “Berg and His World” Opens Friday, August 13 with “Alban Berg: The Path of Expressive Intensity”

By -

First of Two Festival Weekends Presents Six Concerts Addressing “Berg and Vienna”, with Orchestral, Chamber, Instrumental, and Vocal Music by Berg, plus Contemporaries’ Compositions

The 21st annual Bard Music Festival opens here on Friday, August 13 for Weekend One: Berg and His World – Berg and Vienna. Leon Botstein, co-artistic director of the Bard Music Festival, delivers a pre-concert talk entitled “Alban Berg: The Path of Expressive Intensity,” which is followed by a chamber program tracing Berg’s stylistic development from early works like the Seven Early Songs (1905-08) to the maturity of his Lyric Suite (1925-26). While usually hailed as a pioneer of the modernist movement along with Schoenberg and Webern, at the Bard Music Festival Berg is considered in a richer and more nuanced context as a child of Johann Strauss II’s Vienna, and a contemporary of composers including Mahler, Zemlinsky, Pfitzner, Reger, Busoni, Karl Weigl, and Korngold. Each of the six concerts is augmented by a pre-concert talk by a distinguished scholar, namely Byron Adams, Antony Beaumont, Mark DeVoto, Christopher H. Gibbs, Sherry D. Lee, and Botstein himself; Botstein also leads the resident American Symphony Orchestra in the weekend’s two orchestral programs. Among the many notable musicians performing at the festival are singers Christiane Libor, Christine Goerke, Marnie Breckenridge, and Thomas Meglioranza; pianists Jeremy Denk, Alessio Bax, and Danny Driver; the Daedalus Quartet; and violinists Akiko Suwanai and Soovin Kim.

During this first weekend (a second follows on August 20-22), additional events shed further light on “Berg and Vienna”, contextualizing the composer within the cultural melting pot he shared with Schoenberg, Mahler, and Freud. Bard Music Festival audiences can take in a panel discussion on “Berg: His Life and Career” and attend a performance with commentary on “Eros and Thanatos,” the conflicting drives that Freud identified as governing human nature. “The Orchestra Reimagined” – the weekend’s final program, on Sunday at 5:30 pm – features Berg’s Kammerkonzert of 1923-25, his first work to use a tone row, alongside similarly pared-down orchestral works by Schoenberg, Busoni, and Hindemith. Round-trip transportation by coach from Columbus Circle for the Sunday late-afternoon performance is available (call 845-758-7900 for details).

Rarities offered over the weekend include early works by Berg and Webern; the music of Alma Mahler; and compositions by Berg and Schoenberg’s students, among them the eminent philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Role of Music in Opera

By -
There are numerous books on the topic, and every composer, librettist, director, singer and audience member has their opinion as to what role the music should play in an opera. In a play without music, the words ought to support the meaning behind a character's actions. However, in the case of action movies, often times the action is what tells the story and there aren't words, just images to forward the plot. We might hear music to accompany action, build tension, but the action tells the story. Musicals tend to speak until the emotion of the moment just "has" to break out in song - unless it's something like "Mama Mia" where the dialog is the rails we travel on between songs; the songs themselves, written before the concept of the musical, are the focus of the production, while the story is secondary. Operas are a different beast. The music provides emotion to the words spoken, but it also plays the role of ambience when there is only action. In &quo
Read more

Episode 210b: Joyeuse le départ

By -
Image
Podcast:  Play in new window  |  Download Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  |  Android  |  Google Play  |  Stitcher  |  TuneIn  |  RSS Provost Cunningham has Transmigrated, but to where! What is Dr Sage going to do with his body? And how can she bring home her friends, Abigail and Erasmus, without also bring home Cunningham? What are they going to say when they find the “skeleton” she’s hiding in her closet? Cast: Eddie Louise Clark  as Dr Sage Chip Clark  as Professor Savant Justin Bremer  as the Narrator Emily Riley Piatt  as Abigail Entwhistle, Calypso & Dean Stewart Written by  Eddie Louise Theme music by  Unwoman Sound Design by  Chip Michael
Read more

The Art of String Quartets by Brian Ferneyhough

By -
Image
When an artist sets paint to canvas, there are brush strokes used for different effects. Sometimes those strokes are subtle, imperceptible; they produce works of art like the Mona Lisa . Other times the very obvious nature of the stroke is the art, as in works by Van Gogh. With some composers of music, the notes on the page are their craft. How those notes translate into an aural experience is what defines some composers as great artists. Brian Ferneyhough has a masterful command of the techniques of putting notes on the page. These techniques are sometimes so subtle, even though written in black and white, they escape detection. Some of what he attempts with his music is just that, to escape detection, to bury the framework, diverting the ear away from the structure, so only the music is heard . The subtlety is so fine it is almost imperceptible. Even though he studied at several institutions, he is considered self-taught, studying scores from Boule
Read more