The Orchestra Now at Bard College Revives Works of Composer Friedrich Gernsheim that Survived Destruction by Nazi Germany
Leon Botstein conducting The Orchestra Now. Photo by David DeNee
Over the weekend, audiences at the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater heard music that had not been performed in New York since 1913. The music was that of Friedrich Gernsheim, a masterful composer whose work was spirited away from Nazi Germany in the 1930s, and rarely heard since except in recordings. The program included the Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 54, Song of Miriam (1887), which tells the Biblical story of Moses’s older sister, who rescued him as a baby.
“The Gernsheim Festival: Rediscovering a Master” ran from September 18-20, featuring orchestral and chamber concerts as well as a panel discussion exploring Gersheim’s life and legacy. The concerts represented the public debut of the Gernsheim Rediscovery Initiative, a multi-year project led by The Orchestra Now (TŌN) the graduate orchestra at Bard College, conducted by Leon Botstein, dedicated to recovering and presenting the composer’s work to new audiences, starting at Bard.
Friedrich Gernsheim was a German-Jewish composer, conductor, and pianist. His work was systematically destroyed by the Nazis. A prodigious pianist, he settled in Berlin where he taught composition at the Prussian Academy of Fine Arts, while gaining recognition for his own compositions. Gernsheim died in 1916; 20 years later, in their effort to erase the contributions of Jewish artists and intellectuals, the Nazis destroyed Gernsheim’s printing plates, sheet music, and the remaining copies of a 1928 biography of the composer. In recent years, Gernsheim’s work has been the subject of renewed interest.
“Since about 30 years ago, there have been studio recordings of Gernsheim’s work, but what has been lacking in his rediscovery are live performances,” musicologist and Bard Visiting Associate Professor in the Music Program at Bard Peter Laki told the Daily Catch. “That’s why this festival is very important: It’s a wonderful concentration of Gernsheim that’s rarely seen anywhere in the world.”
The Music Program, one of the largest programs on Bard’s campus, provides a wide range of musical concentrations, from classical composition and performance to jazz, electronic music, musicology, ethnomusicology, and music theory. The Orchestra Now (TŌN) is a graduate program of Bard College that is training the next generation of music professionals to become creative ambassadors of classical music, offering a master’s degree or an advanced certificate.
Post Date: 09-24-2026
“The Gernsheim Festival: Rediscovering a Master” ran from September 18-20, featuring orchestral and chamber concerts as well as a panel discussion exploring Gersheim’s life and legacy. The concerts represented the public debut of the Gernsheim Rediscovery Initiative, a multi-year project led by The Orchestra Now (TŌN) the graduate orchestra at Bard College, conducted by Leon Botstein, dedicated to recovering and presenting the composer’s work to new audiences, starting at Bard.
Friedrich Gernsheim was a German-Jewish composer, conductor, and pianist. His work was systematically destroyed by the Nazis. A prodigious pianist, he settled in Berlin where he taught composition at the Prussian Academy of Fine Arts, while gaining recognition for his own compositions. Gernsheim died in 1916; 20 years later, in their effort to erase the contributions of Jewish artists and intellectuals, the Nazis destroyed Gernsheim’s printing plates, sheet music, and the remaining copies of a 1928 biography of the composer. In recent years, Gernsheim’s work has been the subject of renewed interest.
“Since about 30 years ago, there have been studio recordings of Gernsheim’s work, but what has been lacking in his rediscovery are live performances,” musicologist and Bard Visiting Associate Professor in the Music Program at Bard Peter Laki told the Daily Catch. “That’s why this festival is very important: It’s a wonderful concentration of Gernsheim that’s rarely seen anywhere in the world.”
The Music Program, one of the largest programs on Bard’s campus, provides a wide range of musical concentrations, from classical composition and performance to jazz, electronic music, musicology, ethnomusicology, and music theory. The Orchestra Now (TŌN) is a graduate program of Bard College that is training the next generation of music professionals to become creative ambassadors of classical music, offering a master’s degree or an advanced certificate.
Post Date: 09-24-2026