Bard Music Festival | Program Seven | Faith and Folklore

The Festival’s second all-Martinů event opens with one of the composer’s greatest choral works. A Czech-language cantata written to honor the Czech volunteers who fought in the French army, Martinů’s Field Mass had him blacklisted by the Nazis. Set to texts by Jiří Mucha, passages from Bohemian folk poetry, and lines from psalms and the liturgy, this powerful anti-war protest anticipates such later works as Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem and Leonard Bernstein’s MASS. Folk poetry is also the basis for Martinů’s Brigand Songs, which use Moravian tales of feudal tyranny to address the Soviet invasion of Hungary. The program concludes with the world premiere of the original French version of Martinů’s one-act opera Mariken de Nimègue (“Mary of Nijmegen”). Based on a medieval Dutch miracle play, and better-known in the later Czech version for which he won the Czechoslovak State Prize for Composition, Martinů’s original is set to French text by Henri Ghéon and features different orchestration as well as extensive original musical material that has never previously been published or performed.

Program

6 pm • Preconcert talk: Michael Beckerman and Aleš Březina
7 pm • Performance: Anna Thompson, soprano; Tyler Duncan, baritone; Bhavesh Patel, Master of Ceremonies, Mariken de Nimègue; Bard Festival Chorale, James Bagwell, choral director; The Orchestra Now, conducted by James Bagwell; and others

Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Field Mass, H279 (1946)
Brigand Songs, H361 (1957)
Mariken de Nimègue, H236/2 I (1933–34)

Tickets: https://tickets.fishercenter.bard.edu/3454/3443

Livestream: https://tickets.fishercenter.bard.edu/3431/3450