Bard SummerScape Presents the 21st Annual Bard Music Festival: “Berg and His World”
In-Depth Survey of Music by Great Viennese Modernist Alban Berg and His Contemporaries Is Centerpiece of Seven-Week 2010 Bard SummerScape Festival
“Berg and His World” Takes Place over Two Weekends:
August 13–15 and August 20–22
“Part boot camp for the brain, part spa for the spirit” – New York Times
Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. – Described by the Los Angeles Times as “uniquely stimulating,” the world-renowned Bard Music Festival returns for its 21st annual season, to fill the last two weekends of Bard SummerScape 2010 with a compelling and enlightening exploration of “Berg and His World.” Twelve concert programs over the two mid-August weekends, complemented by preconcert lectures, panel discussions, expert commentaries, and a symposium, make up Bard’s examination of Alban Berg, the composer whose enduring impact on the hearts and minds of post-war audiences is unique among the modernists of his generation. The twelve concerts present Berg’s complete orchestral oeuvre, all of his published chamber, instrumental, and vocal works, and Berg’s own suites from his operas Wozzeck and Lulu, alongside a wealth of music from over 40 of his contemporaries. Weekend One—“Berg and Vienna” (August 13–15)—contextualizes Berg within the cultural melting pot he shared with Schoenberg, Mahler, and Freud, while Weekend Two—“Berg the European” (August 20–22)—takes stock of the diversity of music between the wars, including the backlash against modernism.
The Bard Music Festival has won international acclaim for its unrivaled, in-depth exploration of the life and works of a single composer and his contemporaries, offering, in the words of the New York Times, a “rich web of context” for a full appreciation of that composer’s inspirations and significance. Leon Botstein, co-artistic director of the festival and music director of the resident American
Symphony Orchestra, will conduct the orchestral programs, that will, like many of the other concerts and special events, take place in 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 the Daedalus and FLUX Quartets, pianist Jeremy Denk, violinist Soovin Kim, and soprano Christiane Libor.
Through the prism of Berg’s life and career, the 2010 festival will explore the origins, varieties, and fate of modernism in music. Listeners will encounter music ranging from the familiar Viennese waltzes of Berg’s youth to the most avant-garde experiments of the 1920s and ’30s, by way of serialism, the conservative reaction against it, neo-classicism, and jazz. Usually hailed as a pioneer of the modernist movement along with his teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, and fellow student Anton Webern, here Berg will be considered in a richer and more nuanced context as a contemporary of Mahler, Zemlinsky, Pfitzner, Reger, Busoni, and Karl Weigl, and as one who engaged the new music of Bartók, Debussy, Stravinsky, Ravel, Gershwin, Casella, and Szymanowski.
Christopher H. Gibbs, one of the three Artistic Directors for the Bard Music Festival – along with Leon Botstein and Robert Martin – observes, “Berg’s genius rested in his capacity to integrate into modernism – with its rigorous insistence on aesthetic integrity – the emotional intensity associated with late Romanticism, the expressionist will to break with the past, and an abiding affection for the Classical tradition. Berg’s music, from the start – its disciplined and complex modernity notwithstanding – evoked an intense truthfulness, communicating, as one of his contemporaries put it, ‘summer, the depth of the night, loneliness, pain and happiness.’ He lived only half a century, yet no other modernist composer of the time still affects as many present-day listeners so profoundly.”
The twelve musical programs, built thematically and spaced over the two weekends, open with a pair of chamber concerts. “Alban Berg: The Path of Expressive Intensity” traces Berg’s stylistic development from early works like the Seven Early Songs (1905-08), composed while under Schoenberg’s tutelage, to the maturity of his Lyric Suite (1925-26), a twelve-tone string quartet dedicated to Zemlinsky, from whose Lyric Symphony it quotes. Also featured is Berg’s 1921 arrangement of Wein, Weib, und Gesang (“Wine, Women, and Song”) by Johann Strauss II, Vienna’s “waltz king,” whose music was highly regarded by the Schoenberg circle. Program Two presents “The Vienna of Berg’s Youth,” coupling selections from Berg’s early piano pieces and songs with other works, also from the early 1900s, which share the same preoccupation with extending tonality without yet breaking the bounds of Romanticism. Webern’s Piano Quintet of 1907, for example, is predominantly Brahmsian, despite the extremity of its chromaticism. Like Berg, Webern was at the time taking lessons from Schoenberg, who in turn studied counterpoint with Zemlinsky, two of whose works are featured.
There follows “Mahler and Beyond,” first of the orchestral programs, which addresses the legendary symphonist’s legacy. The Adagio from Mahler’s own unfinished Tenth Symphony (1910) is paired with comparably lush, large-scale works, including “Abend” and “Nacht” from Pfitzner’s Von deutscher Seele (1921) and Berg’s elegiac Violin Concerto (1935), his most frequently-performed work. Although based on a tone row, the concerto’s sonorities are often more tonal than serial in effect, for the row itself is built of major and minor thirds. Moreover, both its movements close with passages reminiscent of Mahler’s Lied von der Erde. Berg composed the concerto in the year of his death, interrupting work on his seminal opera Lulu to do so, to commemorate the death of Alma Mahler’s teenage daughter. Yet despite his dedicating it “to the memory of an angel,” the Violin Concerto is said to be a “piece with a double life,” containing encrypted references to Berg’s mistress at the time.
Love and death are inextricably entwined in the fourth program, entitled “Eros and Thanatos,” after the conflicting drives – the libido, or life-drive, and the death-drive – that Freud identified as governing human nature. Since Schopenhauer’s study of the Buddhist notion of Nirvana, which inspired Wagner’s treatment of love and death in Tristan und Isolde, such themes had come to preoccupy the modernists greatly. Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg were all personally acquainted with Freud, and his theories struck a chord, both with them and with such contemporaries as Alma Malher and Franz Schreker.
The figure of Schoenberg presides over the next concert, “Teachers and Apostles,” a program of chamber works by the composer, his students (Berg included), and those of Berg. Representing the older generation are the three composers of the Second Viennese School and Egon Wellesz, with Berg’s String Quartet of 1910 as centerpiece. Schoenberg’s younger students include Viktor Ullmann, who would later die in Auschwitz, while Berg’s two pupils are Theodor Adorno, eminent philosopher and sociologist of the Frankfurt School, and the aptly-named Hans Erich Apostel. The selection offers a rare opportunity to trace the genealogy of influence between them.
The opening weekend concludes with a second orchestral concert, “The Orchestra Reimagined.” This time the featured works are scaled down and, far from taking Mahler’s opulence as their inspiration, are modeled on Classical lines. Paired with Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony, Hindemith’s Kammermusik No. 1, and the ambiguous harmonies of Busoni’s Berceuse élégiaque (1909, arr. 1920), is Berg’ Kammerkonzert of 1923-25, his first work to use a tone row. Such pared-down orchestration appealed to Berg, who valued being able “to hear and judge modern orchestral scores stripped of all sound effects that an orchestra produces and all of its sensory aids.”
After the First World War and in the wake of Wozzeck’s success, Berg’s relationship with Schoenberg underwent changes. Nevertheless, they worked together to run the Society for Private Musical Performances, which sought to create an ideal environment for the exploration of unappreciated and unfamiliar new music by means of open rehearsals, repeated performances, and the exclusion of all critics. Weekend Two of the Festival, “Berg the European,” opens with a sampling of some of the more important works that programmed there, including Ravel’s La valse (1919-20), arranged for two pianos, and works by Bartók, Szymanowski, and Stravinsky, as well as a chamber version of Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1891-94, arr. 1921), in “‘No Critics Allowed’: The Society for Private Performances.”
By contrast, “You Can’t Be Serious! Viennese Operetta and Popular Music” provides some light relief, with extracts from chamber operas and cabaret songs by Johann Strauss II, Arthur Sullivan, Franz Léhar, Emmerich Kálmán, and Berg himself. Popular music is also evoked in Program Nine’s survey of contemporary composition, “Composers Select: New Music in the 1920s,” since Gershwin’s Three Preludes for Piano (1923-26) take their inspiration from blues and jazz. Testifying to the fragmented nature of musical modernism in the ’20s, the Preludes share the program with a heterogeneous group of works, including quarter-tone experiments from Czech Alois Hába, Falla’s masterful Harpsichord Concerto of 1923-26, and works by Casella (an enthusiastic Fascist), Korngold, Eisler, Ernst Toch, and Berg himself.
Der Wein (1929), Berg’s concerto aria for soprano and orchestra, is ostensibly dodecaphonic, although based on a tone row that lends itself to diatonic sonorities. Program Ten, “Modernism and Its Discontent,” couples the aria with a very different work: Franz Schmidt’s powerful biblical oratorio Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (“The Book of the Seven Seals,” 1935-37). With this choral epic, Schmidt rejected expressionism and serialism wholesale, espousing instead a Brucknerian sound world that sometimes harks back to the Baroque. The oratorio received its Vienna premiere just after the 1938 Anschluss, by which Austria came under Nazi rule, and the work’s reputation suffered as a result.
Berg himself did not live to see the Anschluss, meeting an untimely death from sepsis in 1935, but in the preceding years he, like his contemporaries, already confronted difficult political decisions. In the face of Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933, those who were not forced to flee could either emigrate of their own accord or stay, and those who stayed must choose “Between Accommodation and Inner Emigration: The Composer’s Predicament.” It was writer Frank Thiess who coined the phrase “Inner Emigration” to describe those artists who chose to stay in Nazi Germany and publish. It was their duty, Thiess claimed, to remain in the country they loved and continue to write for their public. Program Eleven features Berg’s song Schliesse mir die Augen beide (1925) alongside works by composers representing a range of different responses to this dilemma. Ernst Krenek was especially vulnerable because of his brief marriage to Anna Mahler and his jazz-influenced music – he emigrated to America in 1938, his music already banned in Germany; lyrical serialist Luigi Dallapiccola took a courageous stand against the Third Reich, which forced him on several occasions into hiding; Karl Amadeus Hartmann, a passionate anti-Nazi, was nonetheless too poor to leave Germany; and Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck, though harboring no especial Nazi sympathies, attended the Berlin premiere of his opera Das Schloss Dürande in 1943.
No Berg retrospective could be complete without hearing from his operas. The twelfth and final program of the Bard Music Festival, “Crimes and Passions,” redresses this balance with an orchestral concert featuring both the Three Fragments from Wozzeck (1924) and the Lulu Suite (1934). The operas themselves differ musically, Wozzeck’s dating from Berg’s atonal period while Lulu, one of his last works, is dodecaphonic. Thematically, however, they are linked, both addressing the social predicament of women. Berg’s orchestral suites, which functioned like film trailers at the time and generated interest in the works, are coupled with two operas-in-concert that also embrace “crimes and passions.” Hindemith’s one-act expressionist opera Sancta Susanna (1921) is about celibacy, lust, and the church. Royal Palace (1925-26), Kurt Weill’s rarely-programmed one-act opera, boasts a jazz-inflected score and incorporates such contemporary dance forms as fox-trot and tango. It is the story of a beautiful woman who is asked to choose between three men: her husband, her former lover, and a new admirer, but eventually wearies of their egotism and attempts to possess her, and decides instead to drown herself. The full score and orchestral parts of Royal Palace were lost after a 1929 production, and the opera was not reconstructed until 1971. Bard’s revival of this exciting and innovative work by one of the 20th-century’s great entertainers is a fitting way to bring audiences together for the close of another captivating festival.
Two programs – “Eros and Thanatos” and “You can’t be serious! Viennese Operetta and Popular Music” – will be accompanied by commentaries from experts in the field, Byron Adams and Derek B. Scott respectively. Two free panel discussions, entitled “Berg: His Life and Career” and “Music and Morality,” and a free symposium moderated by Garry Hagberg on “Rethinking the Modern” will be supplemented by informative discussions before each performance, which illuminate the concert’s themes and are free to ticket holders. As has become traditional, the first of these preconcert talks will be given by Maestro Botstein himself, with further talks by Antony Beaumont, Mark DeVoto, Christopher H. Gibbs, Bryan Gilliam, Christopher Hailey, Sherry D. Lee, Tamara Levitz, Marilyn McCoy, and Richard Wilson.
Round-trip coach transportation from Columbus Circle in New York City to Bard’s Fisher Center will be provided for Program Six on Sunday, August 15. Reservations are required. Call the Box Office at (845) 758-7900 for more information.
Bard’s delightful destination-spot, the Spiegeltent, will be open for lunch and dinner throughout “Berg and His World,” and there will be special opening and closing parties in the tent on August 13 and 22, respectively.
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. Dr. Christopher Hailey, editor of The Berg-Schoenberg Correspondence: Selected Letters, is editor of the 2010 volume, Alban Berg 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.”
Program details of Bard Music Festival, “Berg and His World”
Weekend One, August 13—15: Berg and Vienna
Friday, August 13
PROGRAM ONE
Alban Berg: The Path of Expressive Intensity
Sosnoff Theater
7:30 pm Preconcert Talk: Leon Botstein
8:00 pm Performance: Daedalus Quartet; Jeremy Denk, piano; Danny Driver, piano; Alexander Fiterstein, clarinet; Lisa Saffer, soprano; Pei-Yao Wang, piano; Bard Festival Chamber Players
In memory of George Perle
Alban Berg (1885–1935)
Seven Early Songs (1905–08)
Piano Sonata, Op. 1 (1907–08)
Four Pieces, for clarinet and piano (1913)
Lyric Suite (1925–26)
Johann Strauss II (1825–99)
Wein, Weib, und Gesang, Op. 333 (1869, arr. Berg, 1921)
Tickets $20/35/45
Saturday, August 14
Panel
Berg: His Life and Career
Olin Hall
10:00 am—12 noon
Christopher H. Gibbs, moderator; Christopher Hailey; Douglas Jarman; and others
Free and open to the public
PROGRAM TWO
The Vienna of Berg’s Youth
Olin Hall
1:00 pm Preconcert Talk: Mark DeVoto
1:30 pm Performance: Alessio Bax, piano; Daedalus Quartet; Pei-Yao Wang, piano; and others
Alban Berg (1885–1935)
Selections from early piano works and songs
Alexander Zemlinsky (1871–1942)
Fantasies on Poems by Richard Dehmel, Op. 9 (1898)
Five Songs (Dehmel) (1907)
Karl Weigl (1881–1949)
String Quartet No. 3 in A major (1909)
Anton Webern (1883–1945)
Piano Quintet (1907)
Joseph Marx (1882–1964)
Valse de Chopin (1909)
Tickets: $35
PROGRAM THREE
Mahler and Beyond
Sosnoff Theater
7:00 pm Preconcert Talk: Christopher H. Gibbs
8:00 pm Performance: Christiane Libor, soprano; Akiko Suwanai, violin; American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director; and others
Alban Berg (1885–1935)
Fünf Orchesterlieder nach Ansichtskartentexten von Peter Altenberg, Op. 4 (1912)
Three Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6 (1914–15)
Violin Concerto (1935)
Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)
Adagio, from Symphony No. 10 (1910)
Hans Pfitzner (1869–1949)
“Abend” and “Nacht,” from Von deutscher Seele, Op. 28 (1921)
Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957)
Prelude and Carnival Music, from Violanta, Op. 8 (1914)
Tickets: $ 25/40/55
Sunday, August 15
PROGRAM FOUR
Eros and Thanatos
Olin Hall
10:00 am Performance with Commentary by Byron Adams
Works by Alban Berg (1885–1935), Johann Strauss II (1825–99), Richard Strauss (1864–1949), Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951), Franz Schreker (1878–1934), Alma Mahler (1879–1964), Friedrich Hollaender (1896–1976), Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957)
Tickets: $30
PROGRAM FIVE
Teachers and Apostles
Olin Hall
1:00 pm Preconcert Talk: Sherry D. Lee
1:30 pm Performance: Alessio Bax, piano; Marnie Breckenridge, soprano; Cygnus Ensemble; Daedalus Quartet; Danny Driver, piano; Soovin Kim, violin
Alban Berg (1885–1935)
String Quartet, Op. 3 (1910)
Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951)
Six Piano Pieces, Op. 19 (1911)
Anton Webern (1883–1945)
Four Pieces, for violin and piano, Op. 7 (1910)
Egon Wellesz (1885–1974)
Three Piano Pieces, Op. 9 (1911)
Sandór Jemnitz (1890–1963)
Trio, for guitar, violin, and viola, Op. 33 (1932)
Viktor Ullmann (1898–1944)
Variations and Double-Fugue on a Piano Work by A. Schönberg, Op. 3a (1929)
Hans Erich Apostel (1901–72)
Variations from Lulu (1935)
Theodor W. Adorno (1903–69)
Six Bagatelles, Op. 6 (1923–42)
Tickets: $35
PROGRAM SIX
The Orchestra Reimagined
Sosnoff Theater
5:00 pm Preconcert Talk: Antony Beaumont
5:30 pm Performance: Jeremy Denk, piano; Soovin Kim, violin; Members of the American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director
Alban Berg (1885–1935)
Kammerkonzert (1923–25)
Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924)
Berceuse élégiaque, Op. 42 (1909; arr. Stein, 1920)
Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951)
Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 (1905–06)
Paul Hindemith (1895–1963)
Kammermusik No. 1, Op. 24/1 (1921)
Tickets: $20/35/45
Weekend Two, August 20—22: Berg the European
Friday, August 20
SYMPOSIUM
Rethinking the Modern
Multipurpose Room, Bertelsmann Campus Center
10:00 am—12 noon
1:30 pm— 3:30 pm
Garry Hagberg, moderator
Free and open to the public
PROGRAM SEVEN
“No Critics Allowed”: The Society for Private Performances
Sosnoff Theater
7:30 pm Preconcert Talk: Tamara Levitz
8:00 pm Performance: Frederika Brillembourg, mezzo-soprano; Randolph Bowman, flute; Miranda Cuckson, violin; John Hancock, baritone; Blair McMillen, piano; Daniel Panner, viola; Anna Polonsky, piano; Orion Weiss, piano; Bard Festival Chamber Players
Alban Berg (1885–1935)
Four Songs, Op. 2 (1909–10)
Claude Debussy (1862–1918)
Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1891–94; arr. Sachs, 1921)
Max Reger (1873–1916)
Serenade, for flute, violin, and viola, in G major, Op. 141a (1915)
Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
La valse (1919–20, arr. 2 pianos)
Béla Bartók (1881–1945)
14 Bagatelles, Op. 6 (1908)
Karol Szymanowski (1882–1937)
Romance, for violin and piano, Op. 23 (1910)
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Piano-Rag Music (1919)
Berceuses du chat (1915)
Josef Matthias Hauer (1883–1959)
Nomos, Op. 2 (1913)
Tickets: $20/35/45
Saturday, August 21
PROGRAM EIGHT
You Can’t Be Serious! Viennese Operetta and Popular Music
Olin Hall
10:00 am Performance with Commentary by Derek B. Scott
Works by Alban Berg (1885–1935), Johann Strauss II (1825–99); Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900); Franz Lehár (1870–1948), Emmerich Kálmán (1882–1953), and others
Tickets: $30
PROGRAM NINE
Composers Select: New Music in the 1920s
Olin Hall
1:00 pm Preconcert Talk: Marilyn McCoy
1:30 pm Performance: Paolo Bordignon, harpsichord; Miranda Cuckson, violin; Ilana Davidson, soprano; FLUX Quartet; Robert Martin, cello; Blair McMillen, piano; Orion Weiss, piano; Bard Festival Chamber Players; and others
Alban Berg (1885–1935)
Adagio, from Kammerkonzert, arr. for piano trio (1923–25; arr. 1935)
Manuel De Falla (1876–1946)
Concerto, for harpsichord, flute, oboe, clarinet, violin, and cello (1923–26)
Alfredo Casella (1883–1947)
Sinfonia, for piano, cello, clarinet, and trumpet, Op. 53 (1932)
Ernst Toch (1887–1964)
Quartet for Strings No. 11, Op. 34 (1924)
Alois Hába (1893–1973)
Quartet for Strings No. 2, in the quarter-tone system, Op. 7 (1920)
Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957)
Four Little Caricatures for Children, Op. 19 (1926)
Hanns Eisler (1898–1962)
Tagebuch des Hanns Eisler, Op. 9 (1926)
George Gershwin (1898–1937)
Three Preludes for Piano (1926–26)
Tickets: $35
PROGRAM TEN
Modernism and Its Discontent
Sosnoff Theater
7:00 pm Preconcert Talk: Christopher Hailey
8:00 pm Performance: Christiane Libor, soprano; Frederika Brillembourg, mezzo-soprano; Thomas Cooley, tenor; James Taylor, tenor; Robert Pomakov, bass-baritone; Bard Festival Chorale, James Bagwell, choral director; American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director
Alban Berg (1885–1935)
Der Wein (1929)
Franz Schmidt (1874–1939)
Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (1935–37)
Tickets: $25/40/55
Sunday, August 22
PANEL TWO
Music and Morality
Olin Hall
10 am – 12 noon
Christopher Hailey, moderator; Leon Botstein; Klara Moricz; and others
Free and open to the public
PROGRAM ELEVEN
Between Accommodation and Inner Emigration: The Composer’s Predicament
Olin Hall
1:00 pm Preconcert Talk: Richard Wilson
1:30 pm Performance: Ilana Davidson, soprano; John Hancock, baritone; Anna Polonsky, piano; Bard Festival Chamber Players
Alban Berg (1885–1935)
Schliesse mir die Augen beide (1925)
Othmar Schoeck (1886–1957)
Notturno, Op. 47 (1931–33)
Ernst Krenek (1900–91)
Durch die Nacht, song cycle, Op. 67a (1930–31)
Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905–63)
Quartet for Strings No. 1, “Carillon” (1933)
PROGRAM TWELVE
Crimes and Passions
Sosnoff Theater
4:30 pm Preconcert Talk: Bryan Gilliam
5:30 pm Performance: Christiane Libor, soprano; Lisa Saffer, soprano; Frederika Brillembourg, mezzo-soprano; Brian Stucki, tenor; Philip Horst, bass-baritone; Bard Festival Chorale, James Bagwell, choral director; American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director; and others
Alban Berg (1885–1935)
Three Fragments from Wozzeck (1924)
Lulu Suite (1934)
Paul Hindemith (1895–1963)
Sancta Susanna, Op. 21 (1921)
Kurt Weill (1900–50)
Royal Palace, Op. 17 (1925–26)
Tickets: $25/40/55
Bard SummerScape 2010 Calendar: events in chronological order
July 8 (Thursday)
8:00 pm Trisha Brown (Sosnoff) +
July 9 (Friday)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
8:00 pm Trisha Brown (Sosnoff)
8:30 pm Evening Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
July 10 (Saturday)
5:30 pm Gala Dinner (Spiegeltent)
8:00 pm Trisha Brown (Sosnoff)
9:00 pm Evening Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
July 11 (Sunday)
1:00–3:00 pm Lunch (Spiegeltent)
3:00 pm Trisha Brown (Sosnoff)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
July 14 (Wednesday)
3:00 pm Judgment Day (LUMA Theater) +
July 15 (Thursday)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Film (Ottaway)
8:00 pm Judgment Day (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Thursday Night Live (Spiegeltent)
July 16 (Friday)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
8:00 pm Judgment Day (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Evening Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
July 17 (Saturday)
1:00–3:00 pm Lunch (Spiegeltent)
3:30 pm Family Fare (Spiegeltent)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
8:00 pm Judgment Day (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Evening Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
July 18 (Sunday)
1:00–3:00 pm Lunch (Spiegeltent)
3:00 pm Judgment Day (LUMA Theater)
3:30 pm Family Fare (Spiegeltent)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Film (Ottaway)
July 21 (Wednesday)
3:00 pm Judgment Day (LUMA Theater)
July 22 (Thursday)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Film (Ottaway)
8:00 pm Judgment Day (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Thursday Night Live (Spiegeltent)
July 23 (Friday)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
8:00 pm Judgment Day (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Evening Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
July 24 (Saturday)
1:00–3:00 pm Lunch (Spiegeltent)
3:30 pm Family Fare (Spiegeltent)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
8:00 pm Judgment Day (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Evening Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
July 25 (Sunday)
1:00–3:00 pm Lunch (Spiegeltent)
3:00 pm Judgment Day (LUMA Theater)
3:30 pm Family Fare (Spiegeltent)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Film (Ottaway)
July 29 (Thursday)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Film (Ottaway)
8:30 pm Thursday Night Live (Spiegeltent)
July 30 (Friday)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
8:00 pm The Distant Sound (Sosnoff)
8:30 pm Evening Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
July 31 (Saturday)
1:00–3:00 pm Lunch (Spiegeltent)
3:30 pm Family Fare (Spiegeltent)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
8:30 pm Evening Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
August 1 (Sunday)
1:00–3:00 pm Lunch (Spiegeltent)
3:00 pm The Distant Sound (Sosnoff) +
3:30 pm Family Fare (Spiegeltent)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Film (Ottaway)
August 4 (Wednesday)
3:00 pm The Distant Sound (Sosnoff)
August 5 (Thursday)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Film (Ottaway)
8:00 pm The Chocolate Soldier (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Thursday Night Live (Spiegeltent)
August 6 (Friday)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
8:00 pm The Distant Sound (Sosnoff)
8:00 pm The Chocolate Soldier (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Evening Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
August 7 (Saturday)
1:00–3:00 pm Lunch (Spiegeltent)
3:30 pm Family Fare (Spiegeltent)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
8:00 pm The Chocolate Soldier (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Evening Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
August 8 (Sunday)
1:00–3:00 pm Lunch (Spiegeltent)
3:00 pm The Chocolate Soldier (LUMA Theater)
3:30 pm Family Fare (Spiegeltent)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Film (Ottaway)
August 11 (Wednesday)
3:00 pm The Chocolate Soldier (LUMA Theater) +
August 12 (Thursday)
5:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Film (Ottaway)
8:00 pm The Chocolate Soldier (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Thursday Night Live (Spiegeltent)
August 13 (Friday)
5:30 pm BMF Opening Night Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:30 pm BMF Preconcert Talk (Sosnoff)
8:00 pm BMF Program One (Sosnoff)
8:00 pm The Chocolate Soldier (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Evening Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
August 14 (Saturday)
10:00 am–12 pm BMF Panel (Olin)
1:00 pm BMF Preconcert Talk (Olin)
1:30 pm BMF Program Two (Olin)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm BMF Preconcert Talk (Sosnoff)
8:00 pm BMF Program Three (Sosnoff)
8:00 pm The Chocolate Soldier (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Evening Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
August 15 (Sunday)
10:00 am BMF Program Four (Olin)
1:00 pm BMF Preconcert Talk (Olin)
1:30 pm BMF Program Five (Olin)
1:00–3:00 pm Lunch (Spiegeltent)
3:00 pm The Chocolate Soldier (LUMA Theater)
5:00 pm BMF Preconcert Talk (Sosnoff)
5:30 pm BMF Program Six (Sosnoff)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Film (Ottaway)
August 19 (Thursday)
7:00 pm Film (Ottaway)
8:30 pm Thursday Night Live (Spiegeltent)
August 20 (Friday)
10:00 am–12 pm BMF Symposium (Multipurpose Room, Bertelsmann Campus Center)
1:30– 3:30 pm BMF Symposium (Multipurpose Room, Bertelsmann Campus Center)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:30 pm BMF Preconcert Talk (Sosnoff)
8:00 pm BMF Program Seven (Sosnoff)
8:30 pm Evening Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
August 21 (Saturday)
10:00 am BMF Program Eight (Olin)
1:00 pm BMF Preconcert Talk (Olin)
1:30 pm BMF Program Nine (Olin)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm BMF Preconcert Talk (Sosnoff)
8:00 pm BMF Program Ten (Sosnoff)
8:30 pm Evening Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
August 22 (Sunday)
10:00 am-12 pm BMF Panel Two (Olin)
1:00 pm BMF Preconcert Talk (Olin)
1:30 pm BMF Program Eleven (Olin)
4:30 pm BMF Preconcert Talk (Sosnoff)
5:30 pm BMF Program Twelve (Sosnoff)
5:30–8:00 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
8:30 pm Closing Party (Spiegeltent)
Bard SummerScape Ticket Information
The Bard SummerScape Festival is made possible through the generous support of the Advisory Boards of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and the Bard Music Festival, and the Friends of the Fisher Center.
Tickets for all Bard SummerScape events go on sale to the public on February 16.
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
Bard Music Festival: fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/2009
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.
All program information is subject to change.
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April 2010
- Bard Academy and Bard College at Simon’s Rock Announce Relocation to Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley
- Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking and Master of Arts in Teaching Program Receive Library of Congress Grant Award
- Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking Resumes Dynamic Partnership with Cooke Foundation’s Young Scholars Program in 2025
- Bard College to Host Memorial Hall Dedication Event on Veterans Day