Bard SummerScape 2013 Explores Life and Times of Igor Stravinsky with Seven-Week Arts Festival in New York’s Hudson Valley (July 6–Aug 18)
and Bill T. Jones/Anne Bogart’s New Rite<
Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. – Russia’s profound and far-reaching impact on 20th-century culture will be explored at the 2013 annual Bard SummerScape festival, which once again offers an extraordinary summer of music, opera, theater, dance, film, and cabaret, keyed to the theme of the 24th annual Bard Music Festival, Stravinsky and His World. Presented in the striking Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College’s bucolic Hudson River campus, the seven-week festival opens on July 6 with the first of two performances of A Rite (2013) by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SITI Company, and closes on August 18 with a party in Bard’s beloved Spiegeltent, which returns for the full seven weeks. Complementing the Bard Music Festival’s exploration of “Stravinsky and His World,” some of the great Russian-born composer’s most captivating compatriots provide key SummerScape highlights. These include the first fully-staged American production of Sergey Taneyev’s opera Oresteia; the world premiere of an original stage adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s seminal novel The Master and Margarita; and a film festival titled “Between Traditions: Stravinsky’s Legacy and Russian Émigré Cinema.” Together, SummerScape’s offerings will continue Bard’s yearlong tenth-anniversary celebrations for the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center, which commence with a month of special performances in April.
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Dubbed “part boot camp for the brain, part spa for the spirit” by the New York Times, the Bard Music Festival provides the creative inspiration for SummerScape, presenting “Stravinsky and His World”: an illuminating and extensive program of orchestral, choral, and chamber concerts, as well as pre-concert talks and panel discussions, all devoted to examining the life and times of Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971), arguably the most important composer of the 20th century. The groundbreaking nature of his music is in part due to the broad and eclectic range of influences on which he drew. Over the course of his long career, these included such unlikely bedfellows as Russia’s folk and classical traditions, African-American ragtime, the Baroque concerto grosso, and Second Viennese School twelve-tone technique. The Bard Music Festival offers an immersion in the worlds Stravinsky straddled, from their luminaries to their lesser-known figures, contextualizing him within the musically distinct milieus – all of them cultural melting pots – he inhabited: pre-revolutionary Russia, 1920s Paris, and post-war Hollywood. A wide range of Stravinsky’s music will be performed, from canonical masterworks like The Rite of Spring and Symphony of Psalms to such comparative rarities as Mavra and his melodrama Perséphone. With its recognized gift for thematic programming, Bard achieves a depth and breadth of musical and cultural discovery that is truly unique. The two weekends of the Bard Music Festival will take place on August 9-11 and August 16-18 (see further details below).
The American Symphony Orchestra, under its music director, Leon Botstein, is in residence at Bard throughout SummerScape. Besides leading the Bard Music Festival’s three orchestral programs, Botstein will also conduct this season’s annual opera, Oresteia (1887-94), a musical setting of Aeschylus’s tragic trilogy by Sergey Taneyev (1856–1915). Returning to direct Oresteia’s first full staging outside Russia is Thaddeus Strassberger, creator of SummerScape’s previous hit productions The King In Spite of Himself, Les Huguenots, and The Distant Sound. In theater, Bard will present Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical, absurdist masterpiece The Master and Margarita (1937), widely recognized as one of the greatest Russian novels of the 20th century. Hungarian director János Szász, whose previous stage adaptation has already “made it big” (Moscow Times) in both Moscow and Budapest, will direct ten performances of a new adaptation between July 11 and 21. Continuing SummerScape’s tradition of opening each year with a significant dance performance, this season the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SITI Company join forces to launch the festival with their new dance-theater piece, A Rite (2013), which celebrates the centenary of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and the furor of its Paris premiere on May 29, 1913.
Imported from Europe for its eighth SummerScape season, Bard’s authentic and sensationally popular Spiegeltent is a handmade pavilion decorated with mirrors and stained glass, evoking a bygone era of glamour. Offering food, beverages, and intimate performances on Thursdays through Sundays throughout SummerScape, the mirrored tent is the festival’s unique, fun spot to hear live music, discover cutting-edge cabaret, enjoy a family performance, and relax alongside festival artists.
Critical Acclaim:
London’s Times Literary Supplement lauded SummerScape as “the most intellectually ambitious of America’s summer music festivals.” The New Yorker called it “one of the major upstate festivals,” and American Record Guide agreed, “Bard’s SummerScape has to be one of the New York area’s great seasonal escapes.” Travel and Leisure reported, “Gehry’s acclaimed concert hall provides a spectacular venue for innovative fare.” Newsday called SummerScape “brave and brainy,” Huffington Post dubbed it “a highbrow hotbed of culture,” Musical America judged it “awesomely intensive,” the International Herald Tribune pronounced it “seven weeks of cultural delight,” and GALO (Global Art Laid Out) magazine named it “one of the great artistic treasure chests of the tri-state area and the country.” As the New York Sun observed, “Bard … offers one of the best lineups of the summer for fans of any arts discipline.”
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Bard SummerScape 2013 – highlights by genre
Music
The numerous offerings that make up the comprehensive 24th annual Bard Music Festival, “Stravinsky and His World,” take place during SummerScape’s two final weekends: August 9–11 and August 16–18. Through the prism of Stravinsky’s life and career, this year’s festival will explore the momentous changes wrought by musical modernism on both sides of the Atlantic. Stravinsky’s long career spanned two continents and more than two-thirds of the 20th century, bringing him into collaboration with artists from Rimsky-Korsakov and Ravel to T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden, and from Picasso, Nijinsky, and Cocteau to Louis B. Mayer. From his apprenticeship years in St. Petersburg to those spent leading the Parisian avant-garde and as an émigré in Hollywood, Stravinsky was a master of reinvention.
His stylistic development reflects this protean capacity for change. His early compositions achieve a synthesis of the melodies, sonorities, and rhythmic vitality of his homeland’s folk traditions with a modernist sensibility. Later, when it became politically expedient for him to distance himself from his Russian roots, Stravinsky developed neoclassicism, infusing pastiches of past masters with a subtly contemporary slant. And towards the end of his career, having initially repudiated Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method, he came to embrace and put his own stamp upon it.
Paradoxically, while remaining a lifelong monarchist who opposed the Bolshevik Revolution, in music Stravinsky could hardly have been a more radical revolutionary. Certainly no 20th-century composer’s legacy is greater; his influence is incalculable and, like his output, extraordinarily wide in range. As his friend and fellow composer Erik Satie put it, Stravinsky was “a liberator,” who, “more than anyone else, … freed the musical thought of today.”
Bard’s eleven musical programs, built thematically and spaced over the two weekends, range from “The 20th Century’s Most Celebrated Composer” to “The Classical Heritage.” Along with music by his contemporaries, a broad sampling of Stravinsky’s own compositions will be heard. Three thought-provoking panel discussions will be supplemented by informative pre-concert talks before each performance that illuminate the concert’s themes and are free to ticket holders. The last of these will be presented by this year’s Scholar-in-Residence, Tamara Levitz, Professor of Musicology at UCLA.
Weekend One, August 9–11: Becoming Stravinsky: From St. Petersburg to Paris
Stravinsky came of age in imperial St. Petersburg at a time when musical life was dominated by his teacher, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The first weekend of the Bard Music Festival traces Stravinsky’s path from his early Russian years to his first great successes in Paris writing for Sergei Diaghilev’s legendary Ballets Russes, most notably the scandalous premiere of Le Sacre du printemps. Alongside Stravinsky’s own works, including the Symphonies of Winds, Concerto for Two Pianos, Les Noces, and Mavra, the opening weekend presents music by his contemporaries, from the little-known Maximilian Steinberg, who also studied with Rimsky-Korsakov, to such leading lights as Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Erik Satie, all members of Stravinsky’s close Parisian circle.
Weekend Two, August 16–18: Stravinsky Re-invented: From Paris to Los Angeles
Weekend Two of the Bard Music Festival explores Stravinsky’s creative output during the interwar years and the music he composed in the United States, where he settled in 1939. This period was marked by an intense investigation of new trends in music and a shift in musical style from neoclassicism to serialism. The weekend’s programs include compositions by fellow neoclassicists like Paul Hindemith; music by a younger generation of American composers such as Aaron Copland and Elliott Carter; and an examination of the sacred music that influenced Stravinsky’s later religious works.
Since the founding of the Bard Music Festival, Princeton University Press has published a companion volume of new scholarship and interpretation for each season, with essays, translations, and correspondence relating to the featured composer and his world. Scholar-in-Residence Tamara Levitz is editor of the upcoming 2013 volume, Igor Stravinsky and His World.
Described as “uniquely stimulating” by the Los Angeles Times, and named “one of New York’s premier summer destinations for adventurous music lovers” by the New York Times, the Bard Music Festival has impressed critics worldwide. On his blog, New York Times journalist Steve Smith confesses:
“For an unrepentant music geek like me, the Bard Music Festival is simply irresistible: a fabulous wealth of music by a major composer from the classical tradition, surrounded and contextualized with works by forebears, peers, colleagues, friends, enemies, students, followers – you name it.”
The New York Times reports that “performers engaged by Bard invariably seem energized by the prospect of extending beyond canonical routine, and by an audience that comes prepared with open ears and open minds.” As the Wall Street Journal’s Barrymore Laurence Scherer observes:
“The Bard Music Festival … no longer needs an introduction. Under the provocative guidance of the conductor-scholar Leon Botstein, it has long been one of the most intellectually stimulating of all American summer festivals and frequently is one of the most musically satisfying. Each year, through discussions by major scholars and illustrative concerts often programmed to overflowing, Bard audiences have investigated the oeuvre of a major composer in the context of the society, politics, literature, art, and music of his times.”
The 24th 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.
Opera
As a child prodigy pianist and composer, Sergey Taneyev (1856–1915) was a protégé and champion of Tchaikovsky’s, serving as soloist in early performances of all the older composer’s piano concertos: the Moscow premiere of his First, the Russian premiere of his Second, and the posthumous premiere of his Third. He was one of Russia’s most influential music theorists, teaching for nearly three decades at the Moscow Conservatory, where his students included Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, and Glière; Stravinsky later recalled how highly he valued Taneyev’s treatise on counterpoint, calling it “one of the best books of its kind.” Taneyev’s own music earned him the nickname of “Russian Brahms” from later Soviet critics. Yet in striving to synthesize counterpoint with folksong, he developed a distinct compositional voice that looked forward to Stravinsky himself.
Taneyev’s crowning achievement is undoubtedly his opera Oresteia (1887-94). Defying Russian operatic tradition, Taneyev turned to Greek antiquity, basing his libretto on Aeschylus’ trilogy of dramas – Agamemnon, Choephori, and Eumenides – that chronicles the calamities befalling the accursed House of Atreus. Rimsky-Korsakov considered Oresteia “striking in its wealth of beauty and expressiveness”; as Telegraph critic and Russian music expert Geoffrey Norris observes:
“It is highly original. … The music speaks with a strong individual voice; the classical subject made the work stand out at a time when Russian plots were de rigueur; and Taneyev shows genuine dramatic skill in bringing Aeschylus to the operatic stage.”
Yet since its 1895 premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre, the opera has only rarely been performed in its entirety, even in concert form. Indeed, Bard’s upcoming production marks the first time the complete opera will ever have been fully staged outside Russia. Returning to direct it is Thaddeus Strassberger, whose previous SummerScape opera productions are among Bard’s resounding success stories. Of his way with Meyerbeer, the Financial Times declared: “Les Huguenots in Bard’s staging is a thriller from beginning to end. … Five Stars.” Similarly, of his staging of Schreker’s The Distant Sound, the Wall Street Journal observed: “Strassberger’s engrossing production reflected the experimental nature of the opera by seamlessly integrating period films and giving the show a modernist, distancing aura,” while New York magazine named it one of the “Top Ten Classical Music Events of 2010.” In last season’s treatment of Chabrier’s Le roi malgré lui, the New York Times found that “Mr. Strassberger and his team provide[d] a near-ceaseless barrage of sight gags, amusing diversions, and outright distractions …, provid[ing] a sparkle that suited both the whimsical story and the bubbly music.” As Musical America remarks, “Bard’s annual opera has become an indispensable part of the summer operatic landscape because the choice of works is invariably inspired and their productions distinctively creative.”
The new production will run for five performances (July 26, 28 & 31; Aug 2 & 4), with an Opera Talk, free and open to the public, before the matinee on July 28.
Theater
Like Stravinsky, Russian playwright and novelist Mikhail Bulgakov (1891–1940) was born into late 19th-century imperial Russia. Whereas the composer emigrated, however, spending the Bolshevik and Soviet years in Switzerland, France, and America, ill health prevented Bulgakov from following suit, and he was forced to work under the repressive and often dangerous conditions of Stalin’s regime.
This is reflected in his art, not least his undisputed masterpiece, The Master and Margarita, on which he worked from 1928 until his death. With multiple timeframes and three interwoven plots – ranging from the devil’s plunging modern Moscow into chaos to Jesus’s last days in Jerusalem – the novel is absurdist and playful, encoded with numerous musical themes and toying with the supernatural and the fantastic in a manner similar to Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka. The narrative is thematically unified; all three strands explore Faustian themes (echoing the inspiration for Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale), critique artistic oppression, and may be read as anti-Soviet satire. The Master and Margarita was necessarily written in secret and even its earliest, least complete publication took place only after both Bulgakov and Stalin were safely dead.
With previews on July 11–12 and opening on July 13 for eight performances (July 13–21), Bard’s new production will be directed by visionary Hungarian auteur János Szász. He will create a new adaptation of the novel for world premiere at Bard, building on the previous successes of his staged versions at both the Hungarian National and Moscow Art Theaters. Szász’s many major U.S. credits include a “spectacularly poetic” Mother Courage (Boston Phoenix) at the American Repertory Theater, of which he was the director, while his eleven motion pictures include Woyzeck (1994), winner of a European Film Award.
Bard scored an unequivocal hit last season with Erica Schmidt’s all-male production of Molière’s classic comedy of manners The Imaginary Invalid. According it a five-star rating, Time Out New York advised:
“The old cures are the best. Say, for instance, that summer in New York has brought on a malaise. … Your prescription is simple: rest (a bus ride to Bard College, thoughtfully provided), fluids (a beer at the Spiegeltent before the show) and a spa vacation in the form of Erica Schmidt's refreshing ice-cube-down-your-back – her all-male version of Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid.”
As Bloomberg News explained, the production was “by turns outrageously funny and unexpectedly moving,” while the Financial Times found that “part of the beauty of this Invalid [was] the fluency with which Schmidt marrie[d] period detail with contemporary intonations.” And Theatermania assured theatergoers they would find “ample reason to smile … from the moment they walk into the theater at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College until the moment they leave.”
Dance
For the past eight seasons, dance has been a vital component of SummerScape, which has opened with significant dance performances each summer since 2005. Launching this year’s festival on July 6 is a major new dance-theater work that brings together two key American artists: Bill T. Jones, hailed as “one of the most prominent and provocative American choreographers of his generation” (New York Times), and contemporary theater director Anne Bogart, 1974 Bard alumna and winner of two “Best Director” Obies. With their respective companies – the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SITI Company – the two collaborated to produce a fresh response to The Rite of Spring, the revolutionary ballet score with which Stravinsky changed the course of musical history. A Rite (2013) reflects on the hundredth anniversary of its notorious, near-riotous Paris premiere, the aftershocks of which still reverberate today.
As Jones, whose numerous honors include two Tonys and a MacArthur “Genius” Award, explains:
“Though the apparition of what was staged that night in Paris and the scandal of the opening performance confronted us regularly, we have – for the most part – tried to look past the scenario and engage the music and the 100-year-old discourse around it with as fresh and personal an approach as possible.”
Jones and Bogart have created a new libretto that draws from diverse sources to explore the rich history of The Rite of Spring and its lasting cultural influence: interviews with a distinguished musicologist who becomes a muse in the new work, words from soldiers returned from World War I, and writings on theoretical physics by the string theorist Brian Greene. A Rite will be presented in two performances on July 6 and 7.
Film
Between Traditions: Stravinsky’s Legacy and Russian Émigré Cinema
No 20th-century composer has had a greater impact on cinema than Stravinsky. To do justice to his world and legacy, this season’s film festival will be broken into two overlapping parts: a retrospective of Russian émigré filmmaking and a series of films directly influenced by the composer’s work.
The first two weekends will focus on the films produced by the Albatros studio, which combine modernist elements with a classic sensibility rooted in both the French and Russian traditions. Stravinsky’s collaboration with Sergei Diaghilev on L’oiseau de feu (1910) rendered the Ballets Russes an international phenomenon, creating a vogue for Russian aesthetics that eased the transition of those who left after the 1917 Revolution. In its treatment of an impresario patterned after Diaghilev, its reinvigoration of fin-de-siècle creative models, and its haunting depiction of all-consuming artistic obsession, The Red Shoes (1948) sets the tone for the festival. The silent films included here, some of them presented for the first time in the United States, make similarly synthetic use of then-contemporary developments in narrative form, performance, and design.
Émigré studios like Films Albatros helped support French directors committed to pushing the boundaries of cinematic art, including Jean Epstein, Marcel L’Herbier, René Clair, Jacques Feyder, and Jean Renoir. They also provided an opportunity for exiled filmmakers to make the most of their encounter with the new styles available in Paris, extending the achievements of the pre-Revolutionary Russian cinema in dynamic ways. The pivotal link between these two streams was Ivan Mozzhukhin, whose hypnotic screen presence and emotionally expressive gestures made him immensely popular in both Russia and France. He is the central figure of the second weekend of the film festival, which also includes the two most important sound films produced by Albatros founder Alexandre Kamenka.
The second phase of the Festival begins with one of the defining films of the 1920s, Marcel L’Herbier’s L’inhumaine (1924), which includes a scene depicting the famous riot in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées at the premiere of Le Sacre du printemps. Other films shown over the last two weekends make provocative use of particular Stravinsky pieces, such as The Truth (1960); or were created by artists who collaborated with him on important works, like Rapt (1934) and Orpheus (1950); or meditate upon his practice. Jean-Luc Godard’s stylistic heterogeneity serves as a response to Stravinsky’s, while his New Wave compatriot Claude Chabrol admired the composer’s assiduous dryness. Jacques Rivette’s La belle noiseuse (1991) brings the series full circle, using sections of Stravinsky’s late ballet Agon to enrich a subtle and profound exploration of the relationship between painter and model, the nature of creativity, and the meaning of a work of art.
Bard SummerScape is pleased to present all films using restored or archival 35mm prints with English subtitles and musical accompaniment (unless otherwise specified). Films are screened on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at the Jim Ottaway Jr. Film Center in the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Center (July 12 – Aug 3).
“Between Traditions: Stravinsky’s Legacy and Russian Émigré Cinema” was made possible by a special grant from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy (New York) and the generous support of the Cinémathèque française (Paris). Special thanks are due to Delphine Selles-Alvarez and Emilie Cauquy.
Spiegeltent
Back for an eighth magnificent summer, the authentic, one-of-a-kind Belgian Spiegeltent has been sensationally popular since its introduction at Bard in 2006, the first time one of these fabulous structures appeared in America. The perfect place to discover new artists in an intimate setting throughout the festival, Bard’s Spiegeltent provides a meeting place for drink, food, and celebration before and after weekend shows. Food is casual summer fare, à la carte burgers from the grill, fresh salads, gourmet ice cream, microbrewed beer, local wine, and more, sourced locally whenever possible.
See below for chronological list of SummerScape 2013 highlights; key performance dates by genre; full program details for the Bard Music Festival; and ticket information.
SummerScape 2013: chronological list of highlights
July 6 & 7 SummerScape opens with A Rite by Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SITI Company
July 11–21 Ten performances of dramatization of The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (previews July 11 & 12; opening July 13)
July 12–Aug 3 Film Festival “Between Traditions: Stravinsky’s Legacy and Russian Émigré Cinema” (27 films)
July 26–Aug 4 Five performances of Sergey Taneyev’s opera Oresteia
August 9 Annual Bard Music Festival opening-night dinner in the Spiegeltent
August 9–11 Bard Music Festival, Weekend One:
“Becoming Stravinsky: From St. Petersburg to Paris”
August 16–18 Bard Music Festival, Weekend Two:
“Stravinsky Re-invented: From Paris to Los Angeles”
SummerScape 2013: key performance dates by genre
MUSIC
Bard Music Festival, Weekend One: “Becoming Stravinsky: From St. Petersburg to Paris” (Aug 9–11)
Bard Music Festival, Weekend Two: “Stravinsky Re-invented: From Paris to Los Angeles” (Aug 16–18)
Complete program details follow.
Round-trip coach transportation from Manhattan to Bard is available on July 7, 13, 14, 21, 26, and 28, and August 4, 9, 11, 16, and 18, for particular Sosnoff Theater performances. A fare will be charged and reservations are required for coach transportation. Check the website for schedules and details or call the box office at 845-758-7900.
OPERA
Sergey Taneyev: Oresteia
Sosnoff Theater
July 26* and Aug 2 at 7 pm
July 28*, 31, and Aug 4* at 3 pm
Tickets: $30, 60, 70, 90
THEATER
Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (adaptation)
LUMA Theater
July 11, 12, 13*, 18, 19, and 20 at 7:30 pm
July 14*, 17, 20, and 21* at 3 pm
Tickets: $45
DANCE
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SITI Company: A Rite
July 6 at 8 pm and July 7* at 3 pm
Sosnoff Theater
Tickets: $25, 40, 45, 55
* Round-trip transportation from Manhattan to Bard is available for this performance. The round-trip fare is $40 and reservations are required.
FILM FESTIVAL
“Between Traditions: Stravinsky’s Legacy and Russian Émigré Cinema”
July 12, 13, 19, 20, 26; Aug 2 and 3 at 7 pm
July 13, 20, 21, 27; Aug 3 at 2 pm
July 14 at 3pm
July 21 at 5:30 pm
July 27 at 6:30 pm
July 27 and Aug 2 at 9 pm
Ottaway Film Center
Tickets: $12
SPIEGELTENT
Live Music, Cabaret, Family Performances, and Festival Salon
Prices vary
Venues:
SummerScape opera, theater, and dance performances and most Bard Music Festival programs are held in the Sosnoff Theater or LUMA Theater in Bard’s Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and celebrated since its opening as a major architectural landmark in the region. Some chamber programs and other BMF events are in Olin Hall. The Spiegeltent has its own schedule of events, in addition to serving as a restaurant, café, and bar before and after performances. The Film Festival screenings are at the Jim Ottaway Jr. Film Center in the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Center.
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 $40 and reservations are required. The coach departs from behind Lincoln Center, on Amsterdam Avenue between 64th and 65 Street. Bus departure time will be included on the ticket order receipt or visit fishercenter.bard.edu/transportation.
Full Schedule:
A complete schedule of SummerScape and Bard Music Festival events (subject to change) follows. Updates are posted at the festival web site fishercenter.bard.edu/summerscape/2013.
Tickets for all SummerScape events go on sale to the public on February 18, 2013, but those who register early as “e-Members” will have the early-bird’s choice of the best seats and also receive regular news and updates.
Program details of Bard Music Festival, “Stravinsky and His World”
WEEKEND ONE: Becoming Stravinsky: From St. Petersburg to Paris
Friday, August 9
Program One
The 20th Century’s Most Celebrated Composer
Sosnoff Theater
7:30 pm Pre-concert Talk
8 pm Performance
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Les Noces (1914–17)
Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920, rev. 1947)
Symphony of Psalms (1930)
Concerto for Two Pianos (1935)
Abraham and Isaac (1962–63)
Songs
Tickets: $25, 35, 50, 60
Saturday, August 10
Panel One
Who Was Stravinsky?
Olin Hall
10 am–noon
Free and open to the public
Program Two
The Russian Context
Olin Hall
1 pm Pre-concert Talk
1:30 pm Performance
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Faun and Shepherdess, Op. 2 (1906–07)
Four Studies, for piano, Op. 7 (1908)
Three Movements from Petrushka, for piano solo (1921)
Mikhail Glinka (1804–57)
Trio Pathetique in D Minor, for clarinet, bassoon, and piano (1832)
Alexander Glazunov (1865–1936)
Five Novelettes, for string quartet, Op. 15 (1886)
Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915)
Vers la flamme, Op. 72 (1914)
Serge Rachmaninoff (1873–1943)
Preludes, Op. 23, Nos. 8 & 9 (1901–03)
Songs by Modest Mussorgsky (1839–81), Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840–93), Nikolai Medtner (1880–1951), and Mikhail Gnesin (1883–1957)
Tickets: $35
Program Three
1913: Breakthrough to Fame and Notoriety
Sosnoff Theater
7 pm Pre-concert Talk
8 pm Performance: American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Fireworks (1908)
The Rite of Spring (1913)
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908)
Suite from The Invisible City of Kitezh (c. 1907)
Anatoly Liadov (1855–1914)
From the Apocalypse, Op. 66 (1910–12)
Maximilian Steinberg (1883–1946)
Metamorphosen, Op. 10 (1913)
Tickets: $30, 50, 60, 75
Sunday, August 11
Panel Two
Music and Movement: Stravinsky and Dance
Olin Hall
10 am–noon
Free and open to the public
Program Four
Modernist Conversations
Olin Hall
1 pm Pre-concert Talk
1:30 pm Performance
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Three Japanese Lyrics (1912–13)
Pribaoutki (1914)
Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951)
Pierrot lunaire (1912)
Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé (1913)
Manuel de Falla (1876–1946)
Pour le tombeau de Claude Debussy (1920)
Maurice Delage (1879–1961)
Quatre poèmes hindous (1912–13)
Tickets: $35
Program Five
Sight and Sound: From Abstraction to Surrealism
Sosnoff Theater
5 pm Pre-concert Talk
5:30 pm Performance
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Ragtime (1918)
Mavra (1921–22)
Song of the Nightingale and Chinese March, for violin and piano (1926)
Suite for violin and piano, after themes, fragments, and pieces by Giambattista Pergolesi
(1925)
Erik Satie (1866–1925)
Parade (1916–17; arr. piano four-hands)
Francis Poulenc (1899–1963)
Le travail du peintre, song cycle for voice and piano, Op. 161 (1956)
Georges Auric (1899–1983), Arthur Honegger (1892–1955), Darius Milhaud (1892–1974), Francis Poulenc (1899–1963), and Germaine Tailleferre (1892–1983)
Les mariés de la tour Eiffel (1921)
Works by André Souris (1899–1970)
Tickets: $25, 35, 50, 60
WEEKEND TWO: Stravinsky Re-invented: From Paris to Los Angeles
Friday, August 16
Program Six
The Aesthetics of Mechanization
Sosnoff Theater
7:30 pm Pre-concert Talk
8 pm Performance
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Concerto for Piano and Winds (1923–24)
Sonata for Two Pianos (1943–44)
Béla Bartók (1881–1945)
Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, Sz 110 (1937)
Edgard Varèse (1883–1965)
Octandre, for seven wind instruments and double bass (1923)
Paul Hindemith (1895–1963)
Kleine Kammermusik, Op. 24, No. 2 (1922)
Olivier Messiaen (1908–92)
From Quatre études de rythme (1949–50)
Tickets: $25, 35, 50, 60
Saturday, August 17
Panel Three
Lenin, Hitler, and Stalin: Music, Ethics, and Politics
Olin Hall
10 am—noon
Free and open to the public
Program Seven
Stravinsky in Paris
Olin Hall
1 pm Pre-concert Talk
1:30 pm Performance
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Les cinq doigts, for piano (1921)
Octet for Wind Instruments (1922–23)
Duo Concertant (1931–32)
Albert Roussel (1869–1937)
Sérénade, for flute, harp, and string trio, Op. 30 (1925)
Bohuslav Martinu (1890–1959)
String Quartet No. 4, H. 256 (1937)
Sergey Prokofiev (1891–1953)
Sonata for Two Violins, Op. 56 (1932)
Alexandre Tansman (1897–1986)
Sonatine for Flute and Piano (1925)
Works by Arthur Lourié (1892–1966)
Tickets: $35
Program Eight
The Émigré in America
Sosnoff Theater
7 pm Pre-concert Talk
8 pm Performance: American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Jeu de cartes (1936)
Symphony in Three Movements (1942–45)
Ode (1943)
Requiem Canticles (1965–66)
Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951)
Kol Nidre, Op. 39 (1938)
Works by Hanns Eisler (1898–1962)
Tickets: $30, 50, 60, 75
Sunday, August 18
Program Nine
Stravinsky, Spirituality, and the Choral Tradition
Olin Hall
10 am Performance
Works by Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971); Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–77); Gesualdo da Venosa (1566–1613); Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643); Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750); Serge Rachmaninoff (1873–1943); Francis Poulenc (1899–1963); and Lili Boulanger (1893–1918)
Tickets: $30
Program Ten
The Poetics of Music and After
Olin Hall
1 pm Pre-concert Talk
1:30 pm Performance
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Circus Polka, arranged for piano (1942, arr. 1944)
Septet (1952–53)
Anton Webern (1883–1945)
Variations for Piano, Op. 27 (1936)
Walter Piston (1894–1976)
Suite, for oboe and piano (1931)
Aaron Copland (1900–90)
Nonet (1960)
Elliott Carter (1908–2012)
Woodwind Quintet (1948)
Ellis Kohs (1916–2000)
Sonatina for Violin and Piano (1948)
Works by Carlos Chávez (1899–1978)
Tickets: $35
Program Eleven
The Classical Heritage
Sosnoff Theater
3:30 pm Pre-concert Talk
4:30 pm Performance: American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Perséphone (1933–34, rev. 1948)
Oedipus Rex (1926–27, rev. 1948)
Tickets: $30, 50, 60, 75
Bard SummerScape ticket information
Tickets for all Bard SummerScape events go on sale to the public on February 18.
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/2013
Bard Music Festival: fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/2013
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.
The 2013 SummerScape season is made possible in part through the generous support of the Board of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, 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.
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February 2013
- 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