The 2017 Bard Music Festival explores Fryderyk Chopin’s complex and enigmatic sides.
By the end of the 19th century, Chopin’s compositions had come to represent music as an expressive medium. Already recognized in his lifetime as a unique phenomenon, Chopin became known as the supreme “poet” of the piano, the medium for which he composed almost exclusively.
Chopin left a powerful legacy that helped shape the future of music, beginning with Liszt and Richard Wagner. On the Festival’s programs, echoes of this legacy will be heard in works by Johannes Brahms, Alexander Scriabin, Serge Rachmaninoff, Claude Debussy, and Gabriel Fauré, and in Polish music from Stanislaw Moniuszko to Karol Szymanowski and Grazyna Bacewicz.
The music by teachers and contemporaries in Warsaw—Józef Elsner, Wilhelm Würfel, and Maria Szymanowska—and by predecessors such as Ferdinand Ries, John Field, Friedrich Kalkbrenner, Ignaz Moscheles, Carl Maria von Weber, and Johann Nepomuk Hummel help reconstruct the context of his career. Also featured is the work of contemporaries including Robert Schumann, George Onslow, Charles-Valentin Alkan, Henri Herz, Sigismond Thalberg, Vincenzo Bellini, Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Ferdinand Hiller.
The festival ventures beyond Chopin’s chronological career, and through concerts, panels, and lectures, addresses how attitudes to the composer have changed since his death in 1849, how we hear Chopin today, and, most importantly, why he still matters
Weekend One - August 11 - 13
Chopin, the Piano, and Musical Culture of the 19th Century
Weekend Two - August 17 - 20
Originality and Virtuosity
