The Bard Music Festival offers a point of entry to an entirely different time and place through the eyes of a composer from the past. This past August, the festival marked its 30th anniversary with Korngold and His World.
This is the first and less famous of Ravel’s two violin sonatas, published long after his death, in 1975.
Britten was motivated by pacifism in the face of war in Europe. His violin concerto is uneasy, with lyrical lines built on a dangerously unstable foundation.
Powder Her Face is a 1995 chamber opera by Thomas Adès based on Margaret Campbell, duchess of Argyll, whose real-life 1963 divorce created a sensational scandal in England.
In the 1920s, Dmitri Shostakovich’s troubles were simply those of a student: not enough money, conflicts with teachers, and shaky confidence in his work.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony starts with a clashing fanfare—an idea the composer connected with the famous opening of Beethoven’s Fifth, widely understood to represent fate.
The outer movements are quick, zany, jazz-inspired. But they frame a slow movement of profound lyricism and simplicity. The startling contrast is part of what gives this concerto its brilliance and wonder.
Tänzchen im alten Stil (Little Dance in the Old Style) is a relatively early work from 1918, a transitional point for Korngold between prodigy and maturity. The first section harkens back to classic Viennese waltzes, but with a winsome twist.
Opera didn’t exist in 1567, the year of Claudio Monteverdi’s birth. Yet by 1643, the year Monteverdi died, Venetian opera houses were in full swing for paying audiences, representing a musical and cultural transformation in which the old master played no small part.
Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello is a tour-de-force, its thin instrumentation jacked up with blazing string crossings, piercing harmonics, and snapping pizzicatos.