Saint-SaenSSSS at Bard College, how wonderful! I just wonder why some people, including some musicologists, think that to drop the final S in Saint-Saens sounds more French. Well, nobody’s perfect, we all know that. So I listened to Saint-Saen all evening, luckily with no effect on the setting or the music.
I owe this great Bard experience to the kindness of the Chair of the Festival’s Board, Denise Simon, whom I again thank for a most enjoyable evening, which started out with a dinner under the “Spiegeltent”, a temporary construction on the college grounds which, I hear, is imported from Belgium, although Spiegel is, of course, German for mirror. Aha, some quick research on Google tells me that the word is the same in Flemish. Voilà. The dinner was extremely pleasant and when we were asked to adjourn to the Sosnoff Auditorium to hear the opening concert, we were given a bag of delicious chocolate chip cookies, the soft kind, so that we munched our way through the lovely college grounds to the hall.
Due to my total ignorance, I almost choked on a cookie when I caught my first glimpse of the concert hall. I had no idea it was designed by Frank Gehry and that it was such a spectacular construction. The Fisher Center for the Performing Arts is on a par with the Berlin Philharmonie (Hans Scharoun), the Lyon Opera (Jean Nouvel), Rome’s Parco della Musica (Renzo Piano) and Mexico’s Sala Nezahualcoyotl (Arcadio Artís) to name only those I’m most familiar with. The stainless steel waves seem to blow in the wind and could be an avant-garde musical instrument. You can almost hear it play. If that was the point Gehry wanted to make, it is a complete success. But whatever the idea behind the design, it is simply beautiful. The theater inside is also perfect, with a great seating plan and excellent acoustics. So the stage was grandly set for an evening of good music.
And a most interesting concert it was, although it had its ups and downs, luckily fewer of the latter than of the former.
As the musical director of the festival stressed, the festival’s philosophy is to promote lesser known works of familiar composers and to situate the composer’s work in the context of his times. The programs are thus very well elaborated and the accompanying publication is superb. I could only attend this opening concert, but the catalogue allowed me to understand the thread of ideas and to recreate the whole concept through my own recordings of the pieces that were to be played in the following evenings. Brilliant.
So, having myself quite a narrow focus concentrating on Saint- Saens’s (SSSSSS) cello works, which are fortunately abundant and marvelous, I was very happy to hear these variations on a theme of Beethoven, very well played, by two first rate young pianists (a couple, I was told). The theme is from the 3rd movement, Minuet, of Beethoven’s E flat major sonata op.31 no. 3, stated majestically from the outset and treated in a manner that would have pleased Beethoven himself. The other piano piece, Africa, in an arrangement for the instrument, was much less interesting, in my opinion, as it stressed virtuosity far more than expressiveness, an unusual trait for Saint-Saens. The chamber works with piano, trio no. 1 in F major and the quartet in E flat major, were given a superb treatment by the Horszowski Trio and violist Miranda Cuckson. So, what were the downs? They came courtesy of baritone John Hancock, who sang with excessive gusto, to the detriment of phrasing and dynamics, and with very poor diction, making the French words impossible to understand, even by a native speaker like myself (yes, Violetta was born in Cremona but has a perfect command of French).
I was sorry to miss the rest of the Festival. Maybe next year? But Igor Stravinsky, I’m ashamed to say, is not one of my favorite composers. I will, nevertheless, secure the publications to past Festivals as they seem to be, judging by the one I have in my hands, of the highest caliber.