ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON — The Bard College Conservatory of Music Spring 2009 Concerts and Lectures Series presents “Words and Music: Drawing Literary Inspiration from Bach,” a reading and concert featuring violinist Eugene Drucker, a member of the Emerson String Quartet, and of the Bard Conservatory faculty. Drucker will read from his novel, The Savior, and perform the Bach Chaconne for solo violin. The program takes place on Monday, April 6, at 4 p.m. in Olin Auditorium. Admission is free and open to the public.

As a member of the Emerson String Quartet, Eugene Drucker has received eight Grammy Awards, the Avery Fisher Prize and three Gramophone Awards. An active solo artist, he has recorded the sonatas and partitas of Bach as well as the violin sonatas and duos of Bartók. He is the author of numerous articles, CD liner notes, and concert program notes on string quartet and solo violin music. Drucker published The Savior, a novel about the Holocaust, in 2007.

A moving, honest exploration of conscience; Eugene Drucker's description of music illuminates the text in a way that a nonmusical writer would have been incapable of. The test of a good novel is whether it stays with you afterward, and The Savior is a book you will not forget.
—Kate Atkinson, author of One Good Turn and Case Histories

Review of The Savior by Eugene Drucker From Publishers Weekly
Violinist for the magnificent Emerson String Quartet, whose interpretations of Beethoven and Shostakovich are unparalleled, Drucker has written a haunting novel of the waning days of WWII. When a Kommandant orders him to play the violin for an audience of near-death concentration camp detainees, young musician Gottfried Keller is forced to participate in a ghastly experiment with hope. Repelled, Gottfried reluctantly complies: it would have been easier to face a row of corpses in a morgue. Over the four days he serves as camp musician,

Gottfried reminisces about his treatment of his Jewish former girlfriend, Marietta, and of his Jewish schoolmate friend, Ernst, a violinist who fled as the Nazis took power. (Drucker's own violinist father emigrated to the U.S. in 1938.) As the days wear on, Gottfried attempts to separate himself from the nightmare of the camp by trying not to comprehend what is taking place there, and it is here, Drucker intimates, that his culpability lies, especially as Gottfried begins to draw inspiration from his audience. Drucker writes lyrically about the music Gottfried plays (including Ysaÿe's L’Aurore), and his morality tale has bite.

For more information about this program please call 845-758-7196.

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This event was last updated on 03-12-2009

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