BARD MUSIC FESTIVAL 2004 SHOSTAKOVICH AND HIS WORLD |
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PROGRAMS FOR 2004 BARD MUSIC FESTIVAL'S 15TH ANNIVERSARY ARE ANNOUNCED, FOCUSING ON THE MANY LEGACIES OF SOVIET COMPOSER DMITRII SHOSTAKOVICH. MUSIC BY SHOSTAKOVICH, HIS PREDECESSORS, CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSORS TO BE PERFORMED IN ELEVEN CONCERTS
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — In its 15th season, the 2004 Bard Music Festival (August 13-15 and August 20-22) will focus on the former Soviet Union's foremost composer, Dmitrii Shostakovich (1906-75). In two summer weekends of concerts, panel discussions and a symposium, co-artistic directors Leon Botstein, Christopher H. Gibbs and Robert Martin will appear along with a host of Shostakovich experts and musicians from the United States and abroad, including the American Symphony Orchestra, the Bard Festival String Quartet and other notable ensembles, along with contralto Ewa Podleś, violist Kim Kashkashian, pianist D≥nes Varj—n, and many others. Over the past 14 seasons, the Bard Music Festival has set the trend in music festival programming, combining diverse concert programs of well- and lesser-known works with panels, symposia and other special events, all designed to bring the musical world of a given composer vividly to life. With the recent opening of Bard's new Frank Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, the Bard Music Festival is now part of the new Bard SummerScape Festival, the Hudson Valley's premiere destination for summer performances of opera, music, theater and more. Critical praise for last summer's events included the Boston Globe's "with the addition of the Fisher Center at Bard É the Hudson River Valley is on its way to becoming one of the premier cultural destinations in the nation." Of last year's Bard Music Festival, the New York Times wrote "Leon Botstein, the festival's mastermind, conducted the American Symphony Orchestra, which sounded resplendent in its new home," and "bass pizzicatos sprang off the stage with a substance and vibrancy seldom heard in any New York hall." Describing last year's performance of Janáček's Glagolitic Mass, the Times reported, "the end result was thrilling." "Shostakovich and his World" will comprise nearly one third of SummerScape 2004's presentations: eleven concerts (including one of Soviet popular music), each preceded by an informative talk; panel discussions; and a symposium. Performances will range from solo piano works, songs, and chamber works through jazz and choral works, to several symphonies played by the resident American Symphony Orchestra and conducted by its music director, Leon Botstein. Many of the works included in the festival, by Shostakovich as well as his contemporaries, are rarely heard in concert either here or abroad. Among Shostakovich's compositions on the festival programs are his first, fourth and fourteenth symphonies, his orchestration of Musorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death, the Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 1, piano preludes and fugues from Op. 87, several string quartets, and his satirical cantata Rayok. Works by such Shostakovich contemporaries as Glazunov, Skriabin, Miaskovky, Prokofiev, Gavriil Popov, Vissarion Shebalin, Aram Khachaturian, Mikhail Gnesin and Maximilian Shteynberg will also be performed. The more recent generation of composers will be represented by Edison Denisov, Alfred Schnittke, Boris Tishchenko and Sofiya Gubaidulina. Shostakovich-related performances at SummerScape include his comic opera The Nose and his rarely-heard musical, Moscow: Cherry Orchard Towers. Opera and theater director Francesca Zambello will stage both these works in her double-debut at Bard. Architect Rafael Vi¯oly will design the sets of The Nose. Irene Zedlacher, executive director of the Bard Music Festival, has written of 2004's "Shostakovich and his World" at Bard: "The life and work of Dmitrii Shostakovich intersect in an inextricable manner with the politics and culture of the 20th century. His music represents a challenge to listeners unique in the annals of concert music, in part because of tremendous potential divergences between the ordinary assumptions of the listeners, the surface of the music, and the potential for reading into the music meaning that may or may not correspond to the intentions of the composer, or interpretations dating from the years surrounding a work's creation and first performance." No cultural institution in the United States has undertaken such a wide-ranging examination of Dmitrii Shostakovich's legacy in the context not only of his music but also of his character, career, public and private personas, his position in music and the politics of the day, his public disgrace at the hands of his own colleagues and Josef Stalin, and his eventual elevation to public adoration and the posthumous role as a hero of artistic freedom. A third weekend of "Shostakovich and his World" will take place from November 5-7 and will include an examination of the close friendship between Shostakovich and his English contemporary, Benjamin Britten (1913-76), as well as further focus on the composer's life during and after World War II. Performances will include concerts by the Emerson String Quartet. BMF details at press-time are given below. Updates will be published on the festival website, http://www.bard.edu/fishercenter. The site also provides phone numbers, ticket information and directions for getting to Bard (only 90 minutes north of Manhattan). The Bard Music Festival box office, which begins selling tickets on May 1, 2004, can be reached at 845-758-7900. Tickets will also be available on the Fisher Center website listed above. # # #
SHOSTAKOVICH AND HIS WORLD WEEKEND ONE - August 13-15, 2004 PROGRAM ONE - Dmitrii Shostakovich: The Character and the Career Friday, August 13, 2004
PANEL ONE - Contested Accounts: The Composer's Life and Career Saturday, August 14, 2004 PROGRAM TWO - Coming of Age Saturday, August 14, 2004
PROGRAM THREE - From Success to Disgrace: The Early Career Saturday, August 14, 2004
PANEL TWO - Music and Politics in the Soviet Era Sunday, August 15, 2004 PROGRAM FOUR - The Progressive 1920s Sunday, August 15, 2004
PROGRAM FIVE - The Heavy Hand of Politics Sunday, August 15, 2004
SHOSTAKOVICH AND HIS WORLD SYMPOSIUM - Art and Culture in the Soviet Era Paul Mitchinson, moderator; Caryl Emerson; others TBA PROGRAM SIX - Good Morning Moscow: Life and Music in a Moscow Communal Apartment Friday, August 20, 2004
PROGRAM SEVEN - Music and Satire Saturday, August 21, 2004
PROGRAM EIGHT - Out of the Shadow of 1948 Saturday, August 21, 2004
PROGRAM NINE - In the Thaw: A Composer Looks Back Saturday, August 21, 2004
PANEL THREE — The Composer's Legacy: Shostakovich in the Context of Music Today Sunday, August 22, 2004 PROGRAM TEN - A New Generation Responds Sunday, August 22, 2004
PROGRAM ELEVEN - Ideology and Individualism Sunday, August 22, 2004
# # # Bard Music Festival Box Office phone: (845) 758-7900 Bard College web site: www.bard.edu/fishercenter Bard Music Festival press contact: Mark Primoff (845) 758-7412, primoff@bard.edu 21C Media Group press contact: Glenn Petry (212) 625-2038, gpetry@21cmediagroup.com Website: http://www.bard.edu/bmf This event was last updated on 05-24-2005 |
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