Celebrating Everything Prokofiev


The 19th Annual Bard Summer Music Festival, celebrating principally one composer (this year Prokofiev), as well as the composer’s friends and contemporaries, gets under way Aug. 8 at Bard College, in Red Hook, NY.

 

Since the Frank Gehry-designed arts complex, known as the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, was opened in 2005, the festival has been greatly expanded and is now called Bard SummerScape.

Eleven programs are scheduled for the next two weekends. Friday, Aug. 8, the program includes panel discussions and symposiums; concerts by the American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein; the Chiara String Quartet, pianist Jeremy Denk; and Irina Mishura, mezzo-soprano at the Sosnoff Theater.The program will include Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, "The Classical," Op. 25; the Piano Sonata No. 7, in B Flat Major, Op. 83; and the String Quartet No. 1, in B-minor, Op. 50.

Saturday, Aug. 9, a panel discussion on Prokofiev, "The Man and His Music," begins at 10 a.m. Admission is free: it takes place at Bard’s Olin auditorium. At 1 p.m., also at the Olin auditorium, a program titled "Before Emigration: Teachers and Influences" is scheduled with David Nice (preconcert talk), Michael Abramowich and Jeremy Denk, pianists; Sophie Shao, cello; and the Bard Festival Chamber Players.

Saturday, Aug. 9, in the Sosnoff Theater, a preconcert talk begins at 7 p.m., "The Silver Age of Mystic Symbols." Among the works on the program, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 10; Symphony No. 3, Op. 44; and Alexander Scriabin’s "Le poème de l’exstase," Op. 54. Participating artists include the American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein, conducting; and the Bard Festival Choral, James Bagwell, director. Sunday, Aug. 10, at 10 a.m. in Olin Hall a free lecture on "Prokofiev and Composing for Film" is on the program, followed at 1 p.m. by "The Paris Years" in Olin Hall. The program will include works by Prokofiev, Satie, Honegger, Poulenc, Ravel, Stravinsky and Milhaud.

Sunday, Aug. 10, at 5 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater a program titled "The Cult of the Child" is scheduled. Music by Prokofiev, Ravel, Poulenc and Satie is to be performed by pianists Allessio Bax and Lucille Chung; soprano Dina Kutznetsova; Michael York, narrator; and the Bard Festival Ensemble, Eckart Preu, conductor.

For information and tickets, call the box office at 845-758-7900 or go to www.fishercenter.bard.edu.

style="font-size: 10pt", celebrating principally one composer (this year prokofiev), as well as the composer’s friends and contemporaries, gets under way aug. 8 at bard college, in red hook, ny.>

The Berkshire Opera Company


will present five live performances of Mozart’s comedy, "Le Nozze di Figaro," (The Marriage of Figaro) at its home, the Colonial Theatre, on North Street in Pittsfield, MA, Aug. 15, 20 and 22 at 8 p.m., and Aug. 18 and 24 at 2 p.m. For tickets, call the box office at 413-997-4444. Student pricing is available.

 


Music Mountain


in Falls Village, CT, has scheduled a concert for Aug. 10, at 3 p.m. with the Rosetti String Quartet and flutist Eugenia Zuckerman, to benefit the program’s operating fund. All tickets are $50, children 5 to 11 free. Call 860-824-7126 or go to www.musicmountain.org for tickets and information. The benefit program includes Gluck’s "Dance of the Blessed Spirits," arranged for flute and string quartet, from "Orpheus and Eurydice"; Dvorak’s String Quartet No. 14, in A Flat, Op. 105; Piazzola’s "Tango Ballet" for String Quartet; and Ginastera’s "Impressiones de La Puna" for Flute and String Quartet.

 

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less