Summer Festival Preview: Bard SummerScape

False Tsars and Polish piano mastery mark this year's festival.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Murder of the False Dmitry by Konstantin Makovsky
gives some idea of the mayhem to come at this summer's Bard Festival.
Image from Wikimedia Commons.

The rolling greens of Bard College, located just off the Hudson River in the quaint but practical little town of Annandale-on-Hudson, welcome music lovers once more. The attraction: Bard SummerScape, offering six weeks of classical music, academic programming and as always, a unique opera that you probably won't hear anywhere else anytime soon.

Opera Review: Smoke Gets in His Eyes

The Orchestra Now plays Respighi and Wolf-Ferrari.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Don't say we didn't warn you.

In his capacity as a musical archeologist, Leon Botstein unearths little-heard compositions, and leads them before the discerning ears of those who attend his orchestral concerts. In his other job, he is the president of Bard College, that bastion of liberal arts learning on the Hudson River near Peekskill. Starting last season, Dr. Botstein combined these jobs, emerging as the leader of The Orchestra Now, comprised of Bard's masters' candidates setting forth upon the concert stage. This ensemble played Carnegie Hall Friday night as part of its spring concert season, with Dr. Botstein on the podium.

Superconductor 2016 Summer Festival Preview III: Bard Festival

Up the Hudson, the Bard Festival revisits Puccini.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Just a settin' on the lawn. No, that statue of Puccini isn't really there.
Original photo of the Fisher Center © A. Zahner and Co.

The third part of our Summer Festival Preview features the Bard Festival, that celebration of the forgotten and the unusual in symphonic and operatic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. Held on the sprawling verdant campus of Bard College and fcused around the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center For the Performing Arts, Bard has a reputation as one of the elite summer festivals, a grand day out at the opera that is worth the long trip.

Opera Review: This House Aches

Bard SummerScape presents Taneyev's Oresteia.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Detail from The Remorse of Orestes by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1862.)
Image from Project Gutenberg, used under license through Wikimedia Commons.

A summer visit to the Fisher Center, that Frank Gehry-designed theater plunked down in the rolling greens of Bard College means that the average opera-lover is going to hear something that they've never heard before. On Friday night, Bard President (and Bard SummerScape music director) Leon Botstein offered up the United States stage premiere of Oresteia, by forgotten Russian composer Sergei Taneyev. Dr. Botstein conducted the American Symphony Orchestra, who played this sumptuous music at their usual high standard of execution.