Bard Music Festival: “Berlioz & His World” (Aug 9–18)

Hector Berlioz (portrait: courtesy of Bard Music Festival)

“An edifying mix of academic and aesthetic delights” – New Yorker

(May 1, 2024, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.) — This August, the Bard Music Festival returns for its
34th season with an intensive two-week exploration of “Berlioz and His World.” In eleven themed
concert programs, the festival examines the life and times of visionary French composer Hector
Berlioz, whose grand-scale works, startling sonorities, and advanced literary leanings helped
redefine musical Romanticism. Weekend One contextualizes the composer within an age of
Revolutionary Spectacle and Romantic Passion (August 9–11), and Weekend Two investigates
his crucial role in uniting Music and the Literary Imagination (August 15–18). Aside from
Program Six, presented in nearby Rhinebeck, all concerts take place in the stunning Frank
Gehry-designed Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College’s idyllic
Hudson River campus. Six programs will also stream live to home audiences worldwide on
Upstreaming, the Fisher Center’s virtual stage, and chartered coach transportation from New
York City will be available for the final performance (see details below). A centerpiece of the 21st
Bard SummerScape festival, the Bard Music Festival is set once again to prove itself “the
summer’s most stimulating music festival” (Los Angeles Times).

Since its inception in 1990, the Bard Music Festival has enriched the standard concert repertory with
a wealth of important rediscoveries. This is in no small part thanks to its founder and co-artistic
director, Leon Botstein. “One of the most remarkable figures in the worlds of arts and culture” (NYC
Arts, THIRTEEN/WNET), Botstein serves as music director of both the American Symphony
Orchestra (ASO) and The Orchestra Now (TON), Bard’s unique graduate training orchestra. At this
year’s festival, TON performs under his leadership in Weekend One, and the ASO joins him in
Weekend Two. As in previous seasons, the Bard Festival Chorale takes part in all choral works under
the direction of James Bagwell, and this year’s final program – a concert performance of Berlioz’s
opera-oratorio (or “dramatic legend”) La damnation de Faust – features vocal soloists Sasha Cooke,
Joshua Blue, Alfred Walker, and Stefan Egerstrom. Bard’s other operatic, chamber, and vocal
programs boast a comparably impressive lineup of guest artists (see below).

Berlioz and His World

Hector Berlioz (1803–69) was an innovator and a revolutionary. A guitarist and flutist who never
studied the piano, he had an iconoclastic approach to composing from the start. By writing for
massive forces, exploring new permutations of instrumental color, and publishing an influential
Treatise on Instrumentation, he transformed the Romantic sound world, and, as Richard Strauss put
it, “invented the modern orchestra.” Similarly, Berlioz’s passion for theater and the written word,
especially the works of Virgil, Shakespeare, and Goethe, inspired a flexibility with musical phrasing,
form, and genre that freed them from Classical constraint. Yet, despite winning recognition for his
music on tours of England, Germany, and Russia, Berlioz remained something of an outsider in his
native France, where he supported himself primarily as a conductor and critic. As the 19th century’s
preeminent writer on music, and one who foregrounded storytelling in his compositions, he helped
redefine the relationship between music and literature that has come to epitomize Romantic
culture.

To explore Berlioz’s life and world in all their complexity, the festival presents a broad sampling of
his oeuvre, from such audience favorites as the Symphonie fantastique to less familiar works like
the Te Deum, Lélio, and songs for voice and guitar. These will be heard alongside three undersung
Romantic rarities – Pauline Viardot’s salon opera Le dernier sorcier, Louise Farrenc’s Third
Symphony, and Joseph Joachim Raff’s Tenth Symphony – together with music by Berlioz’s musical
heroes Christoph Willibald Gluck, Gaspare Spontini, and Carl Maria von Weber; opera
composers he largely disparaged, like Luigi Cherubini and Gioachino Rossini; fellow
writer-composers Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn ; other friends and contemporaries,
including Franz Liszt, Niccolò Paganini, and Clara Schumann; those he met on his travels, such as
Michael Balfe, Mikhail Glinka, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky; and some of the many whose
sonorities he would influence, from Edgard Varèse and Olivier Messiaen to Luciano Berio and
Steve Reich. Two thought-provoking panel discussions and a series of informative pre-concert
talks will illuminate each concert’s themes. On August 17, there will be a Summer Soirée at
Blithewood, Bard’s turn-of-the-century mansion overlooking the Hudson River.

Weekend One: Revolutionary Spectacle and Romantic Passion (August 9–11)

Program One, “Staging the Musical Imagination ,” a concert with commentary by Botstein,
launches the festival with the rare opportunity to hear Berlioz’s most famous work as he intended:
paired with its little-known sequel. Written just three years after Beethoven’s death, the Symphonie
fantastique revolutionized the symphonic form for the Romantic age. Through its detailed,
semi-autobiographical program note; its unifying and mutating principal theme, or idée fixe; and
vast forces that include instruments previously confined to the opera house, Berlioz took the genre
to a newly theatrical realm to chronicle the unrequited love that drove him to visions of suicide,
murder, and gothic horror. Pathbreaking, of seminal importance, and enduringly popular, the
symphony nonetheless finds its “conclusion and complement” in Lélio, ou Le retour à la vie, its
seldom-programmed sequel. Featuring spoken monologues, vocal soloists, mixed chorus, and a
conclusion inspired by The Tempest, this boldly experimental, genre-defying work revisits the story
and idée fixe of Berlioz’s symphony, recounting the artist’s “return to life” through his love of
literature and music. (This concert will be livestreamed.)

Program Two, “Anxieties of Influence: Models and Teachers,” helps contextualize Berlioz among
his predecessors, mentors, and peers. One of his little-known chamber works will be heard
alongside examples by Luigi Cherubini, under whose headship he chafed at the Paris Conservatoire,
and Elias Parish Alvars, whom he considered “the Liszt of the harp.” Also featured are Carl Maria
von Weber’s Invitation to the Dance – the piano piece Berlioz orchestrated for his French adaptation
of Der Freischütz – and operatic excerpts by his early composition teacher Jean-François Le Sueur,
fellow Prix de Rome winner Ambroise Thomas, and Italian opera composer Gaspare Spontini, whom
he dubbed “the genius of the century.” The program’s centerpiece is the substantial yet underrated
C-minor String Quartet of Berlioz’s Czech-born teacher, Anton Reicha.

Program Three, “The Sounds of a Nation: Patriotism and Antiquity,” offers an orchestral
snapshot of mid-19th century France. Originally conceived as the climax of a symphony celebrating
Napoleon Bonaparte, Berlioz’s choral setting of the Te Deum hymn is one of his greatest religious
works, combining architectural mastery with grandeur of expression. Les Troyens, his grand opera
based on Virgil’s Aeneid, is yet more monumental in scope. An epic tour de force that, to his chagrin,
the composer never saw performed complete, the opera is represented here by the “Trojan March,”
the tone poem “Royal Hunt and Storm,” and the Merchant of Venice-inspired duet “Nuit d’ivresse et
d’extase infinie.” These share the program with Berlioz’s stirring arrangement of the Marseillaise ,
the French national anthem, together with overtures by Daniel-François-Esprit Auber and Christoph
Willibald Gluck, the composer Berlioz deemed, with Beethoven, one of music’s “two supreme gods.”
(This concert will be livestreamed.)

In a thoughtfully curated concert with commentary, Program Four, “Chansons, romances, et
mélodies: Vocal Music from Cosmopolitan Paris,” musicologist Byron Adams explores the rich
variety of songs heard in the Parisian salon. Featured composers range from Giacomo Rossini, the
leading light of Berlioz’s youth, to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, whom he met late in life in Russia;
younger scions Georges Bizet and Gabriel Fauré; and Pauline Viardot, the mezzo-soprano who
created the female lead in Meyerbeer’s Le prophète (SummerScape 2024’s mainstage opera) and
whom Berlioz originally envisioned as Les Troyens’ Dido. He himself is represented by three songs
from Irlande, a collection reflecting his feel for the cadences of Gaelic-inspired verse.

As Program Five, “Women Musicians in Berlioz’s Time,” discovers, Viardot was one of several
women to stake a serious claim in the previously all-male province of professional music. Berlioz
helped stage La Esmeralda, an opera by fellow Reicha student Louise Bertin, to whom he dedicated
the first version of Les nuits d’eté. One of the Romantic era’s most distinguished pianists, Clara
Schumann is finally also winning recognition today for her own compositions, including the piano
collection Soirées musicales. She was among the attendees of the first performance of Viardot’s Le
dernier sorcier. This little-known rarity – a two-act chamber opera set to a French libretto by Ivan
Turgenev, the composer’s lover – will be performed in a semi-staged production of Viardot’s
original salon arrangement for voices and piano. Also on the program are two Berlioz works for
female voice – Le mort d’Ophélie, inspired by Hamlet, and La captive, which Viardot sang in London –
together with a Rossini aria made famous by Viardot’s sister, legendary singer Maria Malibran. (This
concert will be livestreamed.)

Weekend Two: Music and the Literary Imagination (August 15–18)

Following the success of last season’s first foray off-campus, the Bard Music Festival returns to
nearby Rhinebeck for Program Six, “Sacred Music in France.” Once again featuring the renovated
organ of the Episcopal Church of the Messiah, this program presents a range of religious works in
the ecclesiastical environment for which they were written. Organ pieces by masters of the genre
Alfred Lefébure-Wély, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Olivier Messiaen will be interspersed with short
choral works by Berlioz, Cherubini, Meyerbeer, Fauré, and Dmitry Bortniansky, a Ukrainian who
served at the court of Catherine the Great. The program showcases two Romantic compositions that
were first presented to the public as rediscoveries from the past: a faux-Renaissance hymn by
Pierre-Louis Dietsch and the purportedly 17th-century La fuite en Égypte. Heard here in the original
version for tenor, chorus, and chamber orchestra, this was in fact by Berlioz, who later incorporated
it into his oratorio L’enfance du Christ.

Berlioz was one of the first composers to publish memoirs for posterity. Encompassing many of his
earlier writings, especially those devoted to his travels, they are sometimes unreliable, yet also
vivid, personal, and entertaining. Program Seven, “Berlioz: The Composer as Writer,” alternates
chamber works by the composer and his contemporaries with readings about them from his
memoirs, letters, and criticism. Featured composers include Fromental Halévy, creator of the
popular grand opera La Juive; Mikhail Glinka, whom he met and admired in Russia; Ireland’s
Michael Balfe, whose music he conducted in London; and Charles-Valentin Alkan, dubbed “the
Berlioz of the piano.” Niccolò Paganini’s Cantabile is juxtaposed with a complete account of Berlioz’s
Harold en Italie, as arranged with piano accompaniment by Franz Liszt, a lifelong friend. As Berlioz
recounts, Paganini first commissioned the work to showcase his Stradivarius viola, then rejected it
as insufficiently virtuosic, and finally hailed it as a masterpiece, sending Berlioz the extravagant
sum of 20,000 francs by way of apology. (This concert will be livestreamed.)

Among his peers, Berlioz was by no means the only eminent writer on music. Robert Schumann,
whom he befriended in Germany, was a similarly influential critic with a comparably vibrant
literary style; Ferdinand Hiller, Berlioz’s close friend for 40 years, corresponded with all the leading
musicians of Europe; American pianist-composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk was another early
memoirist; and Fanny Mendelssohn, as her correspondence reveals, was an astute commentator on
musical life in Berlin. Felix Mendelssohn, with whom Berlioz made friends in Italy, was a true man
of letters who met and impressed Goethe as a child, became a skilled amateur poet, and wrote some
8,000 letters in German, French, and English. Program Eight, “Literary Romantics,” brings these
and other composers into focus through works including Mendelssohn’ s posthumously published
Second String Quintet and Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été. Set to poems by Berlioz’s friend Théophile
Gautier, the cycle – a jewel of the art song repertoire – will be heard in its first incarnation, with
each song sung to piano accompaniment by a different vocal soloist.

Program Nine, “An Evening with the Orchestra,” offers the chance to hear two little-known
Romantic symphonies, both overdue for restoration to the canon. After studying with Reicha at the
Paris Conservatoire, Louise Farrenc went on to become the only female professor hired there in the
19th century. Like Berlioz, who admired her orchestration, she was one of the few to write
symphonies in Paris when they were far from fashionable. Unlike his contributions to the genre,
however, her masterly Third Symphony is traditional in design and Germanic in its influences. So
too are the works of German-Swiss composer Joseph Joachim Raff, heralded as one of the leading
symphonists of his day. Forming the third part of his “seasons” cycle, Raff’s Tenth Symphony, “In
Autumn,” follows a program inspired by nature and folklore, and has prompted comparisons with
Schumann and Mendelssohn. These substantive Romantic rarities share the program with Rossini’s
programmatic William Tell Overture, a longtime audience favorite and one of the few examples of
his work to impress Berlioz, and the French composer’s own Waverley Overture, an early
composition inspired by the novels of Walter Scott. (This concert will be livestreamed.)

Berlioz’s innovative instrumental soundscapes had an extraordinary and liberating impact on the
composers who followed. Program Ten, “Berlioz’s Transformation of the World of Sound,” pairs
his Chant sacré, in a reconstruction of the lost version for saxophones, with a sampling of the
unorthodox sonorities he helped inspire. These include pieces respectively showcasing the cornet,
by virtuoso cornetist Jean-Baptiste Arban; bassoon, by Edward Elgar; and French horn, by Richard
Strauss, who edited and updated the Treatise on Instrumentation . Such works helped open the door
for some of the 20th century’s most adventurous sounds, by Berlioz’s compatriots Edgard Varèse
and Messiaen, who shared his focus on timbre; Italian experimentalist Luciano Berio, whose
trombone showpiece calls for extended techniques and theatricality; and American minimalist
Steve Reich, whose Clapping Music eschews traditional instrumentation altogether. The program
concludes with Six Bagatelles for wind quintet by Hungarian modernist György Ligeti, for whom
timbre and texture were both vital structural elements.

A pinnacle of German literature, Goethe’s Faust reimagines the classic tale of the scholar who sells
his soul to the devil as a complex philosophical drama. Touching on a host of Romantic themes, his
retelling inspired music by some of the most important composers of the era, including Schubert,
Schumann, Wagner, and Liszt. For Berlioz, who considered Goethe one of literature’s three greatest
figures, the story became an obsession. In La damnation de Faust, originally billed as an “opéra de
concert,” Berlioz thought he had finally done justice to Goethe’s masterpiece. The work’s first
audiences, however, felt differently. Recalling its two poorly attended, ill-received first
performances, Berlioz wrote: “Nothing in all my artistic career ever wounded me so deeply as this
unexpected indifference.” He could not know that, of all the musical settings of the work, his would
become one of the best-loved and most highly respected. Expanding and enriching material from
Huit scènes de Faust, his own earlier treatment of the same story, La damnation is now a beloved
repertory staple. Program Eleven, “Faust and the Spirit of the 19th Century,” presents the epic
work in concert, with British-American tenor Joshua Blue as Faust, two-time Grammy-winning
mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke as Marguerite, bass-baritone Alfred Walker as Méphistophélès, and
bass Stefan Egerstrom as the student Brander. Anchored by Botstein and the ASO, their
performance draws the Bard Music Festival – and all seven weeks of Bard SummerScape – to a
fittingly dramatic close. (This concert will be livestreamed.)

Supplementary events and companion book

Besides the eleven concert programs, there will be two free panel discussions: “A Revolutionary
Life in a Revolutionary Era” and “Musical Romanticism and Literature.” These will be
supplemented by informative pre-concert talks – all free to ticket-holders – to illuminate some of
the individual programs’ themes. Bard SummerScape also presents the first American production in
47 years of Le prophète, a French grand opera by Berlioz’s contemporary Giacomo Meyerbeer (July
26–August 4).

Since its founding, each Bard Music Festival has been accompanied by the publication of a
companion volume of new scholarship and interpretation, with essays and translated documents
relating to the featured composer and their world. Published by the University of Chicago Press,
Berlioz and His World is edited by Bard’s 2024 Scholars-in-Residence: Case Western University’s
Francesca Brittan, whose publications include Music and Fantasy in the Age of Berlioz, and the
University of Bristol’s Sarah Hibberd, author of French Grand Opera and the Historical Imagination.

Round-trip bus transportation from New York City

Chartered bus transportation from New York City is available for the festival finale, Program Eleven
(August 18). This may be ordered online or by calling the box office at 845-758-7900, and the
meeting point for pick-up and drop-off is at Lincoln Center on Amsterdam Avenue, between 64th
and 65th Streets. More information is available here.

SummerScape tickets

Tickets for mainstage events start at $25 and livestreams are $20. Panel discussions are free of
charge and open to the public. For complete information regarding tickets, series discounts, and
more, visit fishercenter. bard.edu or call Bard’s box office at (845) 758-7900.

The Fisher Center is generously supported by Jeanne Donovan Fisher, the Martin & Toni Sosnoff Foundation,
Felicitas S. Thorne, the Advisory Boards of the Fisher Center at Bard and Bard Music Festival, Fisher Center and
Bard Music Festival members, the Educational Foundation of America, the Ettinger Foundation, the Herman
Goldman Foundation, the Thendara Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of
Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.

Click here for high-resolution photos.

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Program details of Bard Music Festival, “Berlioz and His World”

WEEKEND ONE: Revolutionary Spectacle and Romantic Passion

PROGRAM ONE: Staging the Musical Imagination
Friday, August 9
Sosnoff Theater
7pm performance with commentary by Leon Botstein, with Joshua Blue, tenor; Alfred Walker,
baritone; Bard Festival Chorale and James Bagwell, choral director; and The Orchestra Now,
conducted by Leon Botstein, music director (plus livestream)

Hector BERLIOZ (1803–69)
Symphonie fantastique: Episode de la vie d’un artiste, Op. 14 (1830)
Lélio, ou Le retour à la vie, monodrame lyrique, Op. 14b (1831–32, rev. 1855)

PANEL ONE: A Revolutionary Life in a Revolutionary Era
Saturday, August 10
Olin Hall
10am–12 noon
Leon Botstein, moderator; Anna Celenza; Esther da Costa Meyer; Michael P. Steinberg
Free and open to the public

PROGRAM TWO: Anxieties of Influence: Models and Teachers
Saturday, August 10
Olin Hall
1pm preconcert talk: Jonathan Kregor
1:30pm performance: Jana McIntyre, soprano; Rebecca Ringle Kamarei, mezzo-soprano; Tyler
Duncan, baritone; Noël Wan, harp; Michael Stephen Brown and Erika Switzer, piano; Balourdet
Quartet; and others

Hector BERLIOZ (1803–69)
Le montagnard exilé (1822–23)
Songs
Luigi CHERUBINI (1760–1842)
Etude No. 2 (1804)
Anton REICHA (1770–1836)
String Quartet in C minor, Op. 49, No. 1 (1803)
Carl Maria von WEBER (1786–1826)
Invitation to the Dance, Op. 65 (1819)
Elias PARISH ALVARS (1808–49)
Introduction and Variations on Themes from Bellini’s Norma, Op. 36 (n.d.)
Arias by Jean-François LE SUEUR (1760–1837), Gaspare SPONTINI (1774–1851), and Ambroise
THOMAS (1811–96)

PROGRAM THREE: The Sounds of a Nation: Patriotism and Antiquity
Saturday, August 10
Sosnoff Theater
6pm preconcert talk: Sarah Hibberd
7 pm performance: with Jana McIntyre, soprano; Megan Moore, mezzo-soprano; Joshua Blue, tenor;
Bard Festival Chorale and James Bagwell, choral director; and The Orchestra Now, conducted by
Leon Botstein, music director (plus livestream)

Hector BERLIOZ (1803–69)
Hymne des Marseillaise (arr. 1830)
“Trojan March,” “Nuit d’ivresse et d’extase infinie,” and “Royal Hunt and Storm” from Les Troyens
(1856–58)
Te Deum Op. 22/H.118 (1849)
Christoph Willibald GLUCK (1714–87)
Overture to Iphigenia in Aulis (1774; arr. R. Wagner 1847)
Daniel-François-Esprit AUBER (1782–1871)
Overture to Fra Diavolo (1830)

PROGRAM FOUR: Chansons, romances, et mélodies: Vocal Music from Cosmopolitan Paris
Sunday, August 11
Olin Hall
11 am performance with commentary by Byron Adams; with Jana McIntyre, soprano; Rebecca
Ringle Kamarei, mezzo-soprano; Maximillian Jansen, tenor; Tyler Duncan, baritone; and Kayo
Iwama and Erika Switzer, piano

Hector BERLIOZ (1803–69)
From Irlande, Op. 2 (1830); songs
Songs and arias by Giacomo MEYERBEER (1791–1864); Gioachino ROSSINI (1792–1868); Franz
LISZT (1811–86); Richard WAGNER (1813–83); Pauline VIARDOT (1821–1910); Ernest REYER
(1823–1909); Camille SAINT-SAËNS (1835–1921); Georges BIZET (1838–75); Pyotr Ilyich
TCHAIKOVSKY (1840–93); and Gabriel FAURÉ (1845–1924)

PROGRAM FIVE: Women Musicians in Berlioz’s Time
Sunday, August 11
Sosnoff Theater
2:30pm preconcert talk: Hilary Porris
3pm performance: Laquita Mitchell, Monica Yunus, and Camille Zamora, sopranos; Rebecca Ringle
Kamarei and Adriana Zabala, mezzo-sopranos; Noah Stewart, tenor; Babatunde Akinboboye,
baritone; Anna Polonsky and Lucy Tucker Yates, piano; Sharyn Pirtle, director of Le dernier sorcier;
and others (plus livestream)

Hector BERLIOZ (1803–69)
Le mort d’Ophélie, Op. 18, No. 2 (1842)
La captive, Op. 12 (1831–32)
Pauline VIARDOT (1821–1910)
Le dernier sorcier (1869)
Works by Gioachino ROSSINI (1792–1868); Louise BERTIN (1805–77); Clara SCHUMANN
(1819–96); and others

WEEKEND TWO: Music and the Literary Imagination

PROGRAM SIX: Sacred Music in France
Thursday, August 15 at 7pm
Friday, August 16 at 3pm
Episcopal Church of the Messiah, Rhinebeck
With Renée Anne Louprette, organ, and members of the Bard Festival Chorale and members of The
Orchestra Now, conducted by James Bagwell

Hector BERLIOZ (1803-1869)
Veni Creator Spiritus (c. 1860-68)
La fuite en Égypte: Mystère en style ancien (1850)
Choral and organ works by Dmitry BORTNIANSKY (1751-1825), Luigi CHERUBINI (1760–1842),
Giacomo MEYERBEER (1791–1864), Gioachino ROSSINI (1792–1868), Pierre-Louis DIETSCH
(1808–65), Alfred LEFÉBURE-WÉLY (1817–69), César FRANCK (1822–90), Camille SAINT-SAËNS
(1835–1921), Gabriel FAURÉ (1845–1924), and Olivier MESSIAEN (1908–92)

PROGRAM SEVEN: Berlioz: The Composer as Writer
Friday, August 16
Sosnoff Theater
6:30pm preconcert talk: Peter Bloom
7pm performance: Jana McIntyre, soprano; Noah Stewart, tenor; Alfred Walker, bass-baritone;
Luosha Fang, viola; Piers Lane and Orion Weiss, piano; and others (plus livestream)

Hector BERLIOZ (1803–69)
Harold en Italie, Op. 16 (1834; arr. Liszt)
Niccolò PAGANINI (1782–1840)
Cantabile (1823)
Felix MENDELSSOHN (1809–47)
Andante and Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 14 (1830)
Piano works and arias by Louis SPOHR (1784–1859), Fromental HALÉVY (1799–1862), Adolphe
ADAM (1803–56), Mikhail GLINKA (1804–57), Michael BALFE (1808–70), Charles-Valentin ALKAN
(1813–88)

PANEL TWO: Musical Romanticism and Literature
Saturday, August 17
Olin Hall
10am–12 noon
Eric Trudel, moderator; Francesca Brittan; Mark Pottinger; and others
Free and open to the public

PROGRAM EIGHT: Literary Romantics
Saturday, August 17
Olin Hall
1pm preconcert talk: Dana Gooley
1:30pm performance: Jana McIntyre, soprano; Rebecca Ringle Kamarei, mezzo-soprano; Noah
Stewart, tenor; Tyler Duncan, baritone; Piers Lane, Anna Polonsky, and Orion Weiss, piano;
Balourdet Quartet; and others

Hector BERLIOZ (1803–69)
Les nuits d’été, Op. 7 (1841)
Fanny MENDELSSOHN (1805–47)
From Sechs Lieder, Op. 1 (1846)
Felix MENDELSSOHN (1809–47)
String Quintet No. 2, Op. 87 (1845)
Robert SCHUMANN (1810–56)
Andante and Variations, Op. 46 (1843)
Piano works by Ferdinand HILLER (1811–85), Stephen HELLER (1813–88); and Louis Moreau
GOTTSCHALK (1829–69)

SUMMER SOIRÉE
Saturday, August 17
Blithewood
3:30pm

PROGRAM NINE: An Evening with the Orchestra
Saturday, August 17
Sosnoff Theater
6 pm preconcert talk: Christopher H. Gibbs
7 pm performance: American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director
(plus livestream)

Hector BERLIOZ (1803–69)
Waverley Overture, Op. 1 (1827)
Gioachino ROSSINI (1792–1868)
Overture to William Tell (1829)
Louise FARRENC (1804–75)
Symphony No. 3 in G minor, Op. 36 (1847)
Joachim RAFF (1822–82)
Symphony No. 10 in F minor, “In Autumn,” Op. 213 (1879)

PROGRAM TEN: Berlioz’s Transformation of the World of Sound
Sunday, August 18
Olin Hall
11 am preconcert talk: Richard Wilson
11:30am performance: Anna Polonsky, piano; New Hudson Saxophone Quartet; Bard Festival Wind
Ensemble; and others

Hector BERLIOZ (1803–69)
Chant sacré (arr. 1844)
Jean-Baptiste ARBAN (1825–89)
Fantaisie and Variations on The Carnival of Venice (1861)
Richard STRAUSS (1864–1949)
Andante, op. posth. (1888)
Edward ELGAR (1857–1934)
Romance, Op. 62 (1910)
Eugène BOZZA (1905–91)
Andante et Scherzo (1938)
Edgard VARÈSE (1883–1965)
Density 21.5 (1936, rev. 1946)
Olivier MESSIAEN (1908–92)
Le merle noir (1952)
Steve REICH (b. 1936)
Clapping Music (1972)
Luciano BERIO (1925–2003)
Sequenza V (1966)
György LIGETI (1923–2006)
Six Bagatelles (1953)

PROGRAM ELEVEN: Faust and the Spirit of the 19th Century
Sunday, August 18
Sosnoff Theater
2pm preconcert talk: Francesca Brittan
3pm performance: with Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano; Joshua Blue, tenor; Alfred Walker,
bass-baritone; Stefan Egerstrom, bass; Bard Festival Chorale and James Bagwell, choral director;
American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director (plus livestream)

Hector BERLIOZ (1803–69)
La damnation de Faust, Op. 24 (1846)

Round-trip transportation from New York City is available for this performance.

SummerScape 2024: other key dates

June 20–July 14
Theater: Ulysses by Elevator Repair Service
(world premiere of new SummerScape commission)

June 28–30
Dance: SCAT! The Complex Lives of Al & Dot, Dot & Al Zollar
(world premiere of new SummerScape commission)

June 28–August 17
Spiegeltent: live music and dancing

July 26–August 4
Opera: Meyerbeer’s Le prophète (new production)

All programs subject to change

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