SUMMERSCAPE CHOPIN AND HIS WORLD August 11–13 and 17–20, 2017 BARD thank you to our donors The Bard Music Festival thanks its Board of Directors and the many donors who contributed so generously to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Challenge Grant. We made it! Your support enabled us to complete the two-for-one match and raise $3 million for an endowment for the festival. Because of you, this unique festival will continue to present chamber and orchestral works, rediscovered pieces, talks and panels, and performances by emerging and favorite musicians for years to come. Bard Music Festival Mellon Challenge Donors Edna and Gary Lachmund Anonymous Alison L. and John C. Lankenau Helen and Roger Alcaly Glenda A. Fowler Law and Alfred J. Law Joshua J. Aronson Dr. Nancy Leonard and Dr. Lawrence Kramer Kathleen Augustine Dr. Leon M. and Fern Lerner John J. Austrian ’91 and Laura M. Austrian Mrs. Mortimer Levitt Mary I. Backlund and Virginia Corsi Catherine and Jacques Luiggi Nancy Banks and Stephen Penman John P. MacKenzie Matthew Beatrice Amy and Thomas O. Maggs Howard and Mary Bell Daniel Maki Bessemer National Gift Fund Charles Marlow Dr. Leon Botstein and Barbara Haskell Katherine Gould-Martin and Robert L. Martin Marvin Bielawski MetLife Foundation David J. Brown Kieley Michasiow-Levy Prof. Mary Caponegro ’78 Andrea and Kenneth L. Miron Anna Celenza Karl Moschner and Hannelore Wilfert Fu-Chen Chan Elizabeth R. and Gary J. Munch Lydia Chapin and David Soeiro Martin L. and Lucy Miller Murray Robert and Isobel Clark Phillip Niles Michelle R. Clayman Michael Nishball Prof. Matthew Deady Terrence J. O’Malley Ms. Nancy Deland Mr. and Mrs. James H. Ottaway Jr. Joseph DeLeo Mona and Fred Payton Estate of John A. Dierdorff Debra R. Pemstein and Dean Vallas Rt. Rev. Herbert A. and Mary Donovan Steve Perog/B&G Amy K. and David Dubin Albrecht Pichler Robert C. Edmonds ’68 Marvin and Ingrid Reed Arthur L. Fenaroli Drs. M. Susan and Irwin Richman Jeanne Donovan Fisher Sarah Rothenberg and Robert Azencott C. Robert Friedman and Vernon Mosheim David E. Schwab II ’52 and Ruth Schwartz Schwab ’52 Thomas F. Froese David L. Shengold Michael H. Garrety Ellen Silbergeld GE Foundation Denise S. Simon and Paulo Vieiradacunha Carlos Gonzalez and Katherine Stewart Norman J. and Charlotte T. Sissman Arthur B. Groos, Jr. Raissa St. Pierre ’87 Matthew M. Guerreiro and Christina Mohr Cruce Stark Hathaway Family Foundation Dr. Stanford B. Sternlieb Eliot D. and Paula K. Hawkins Allan and Ronnie Streichler Dorothy and Leo Hellerman Felicitas S. Thorne Elena and Fred Howard Dr. Elisabeth F. Turnauer-Derow* Daniel R. Idzik and Kathleen M. Osborne Takemi Ueno Anne E. Impellizzeri Olivia van Melle Kamp Jane W. Nuhn Charitable Foundation Margo and Anthony Viscusi Dr. Harriette Kaley Dr. Siri von Reis Rachel and Dr. Shalom Kalnicki Rosemary and Noel Werrett Susan and Roger Kennedy Maureen A. Whiteman and Lawrence J. Zlatkin Dr. Barbara Kenner Irene Zedlacher Erica Kiesewetter Bill Zifchak and Maggie Evans Robert James Kurilla *Deceased b BARD MUSIC FESTIVAL 2017 CHOPIN AND HIS WORLD August 11–13 and 17–20, 2017 Leon Botstein, Christopher H. Gibbs, and Robert Martin, Artistic Directors Jonathan D. Bellman and Halina Goldberg, Scholars in Residence 2017 Irene Zedlacher, Executive Director Raissa St. Pierre ’87, Associate Director Founded in 1990, the Bard Music Festival has established its unique identity in the classical concert field by presenting programs that, through performance and discussion, place selected works in the cultural and social context of the composer’s world. Programs of the Bard Music Festival offer a point of view. The intimate communication of recital and chamber music and the excitement of full orchestral and choral works are complemented by informative preconcert talks, panel discussions by renowned musicians and scholars, and special events. In addition, each season Princeton University Press publishes a book of essays, translations, and correspondence relating to the festival’s central figure. By providing an illuminating context, the festival encourages listeners and musicians alike to rediscover the powerful, expressive nature of familiar compositions and to become acquainted with less well-known works. Since its inaugural season, the Bard Music Festival has entered the worlds of Brahms, Mendelssohn, Richard Strauss, Dvorˇák, Schumann, Bartók, Ives, Haydn, Tchaikovsky, Schoenberg, Beethoven, Debussy, Mahler, Janácˇek, Shostakovich, Copland, Liszt, Elgar, Prokofiev, Wagner, Berg, Sibelius, Saint-Saëns, Stravinsky, Schubert, Carlos Chávez, Puccini, and Chopin. The 2018 festival will be devoted to the life and work of Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. “From the Bard Music Festival” is a growing part of the Bard Music Festival. In addition to the programming at Bard College, “From the Bard Music Festival” performs concerts from past seasons and develops special concert events for outside engagements. In June 2012, the festival, together with The Bard College Conservatory of Music, presented special programs from its Tchaikovsky and Mahler festivals in Taiwan and cities throughout China. A tour to cities in Russia, Hungary, Poland, and Germany took place in June 2014 and a similar trip brought students of the Conservatory to Cuba in June 2016. The Bard Music Festival 2017 program book was made possible by a gift from Helen and Roger Alcaly. This season is made possible in part through the generous support of the Boards of the Bard Music Festival, Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, and Friends of the Fisher Center. Programs and performers are subject to change. Please make certain that the electronic signal on your watch, pager, or cellular phone is switched off during the performance. The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not allowed. cover Fryderyk Chopin, Louis-Auguste Bisson, 1847 Hope, Kazimierz Wojniakowski, 1807 2 BARD MUSIC FESTIVAL 2017 “EN PASSANT PAR PARIS” THE VARSOVIAN AND PARISIAN WORLDS OF CHOPIN Fryderyk Chopin (1810–49) was eulogized as “a Varsovian by birth, a Pole at heart, a citizen of the world by virtue of his talent” by the Polish poet Cyprian Kamil Norwid. As a fellow exile who befriended the composer during the last year of his life, Norwid recognized the diverse sources of Chopin’s musical language, and he was also attuned to the origins of Chopin’s artistic struggles and the essence of his achievement. Chopin’s musical style was grounded in the artistic and intel- lectual experiences of his early years in Warsaw, but came to reflect his lifelong negotiation between emotional ties to Poland and participation in the cosmopolitan musical milieux of Paris and beyond. Ultimately, Chopin spoke to his fellow Poles and to foreigners who wished to hear Poland in his music, but at the same time reached a broader international audience of listeners who responded to the beauty and strangeness, the dreamlike soundscapes, the deeply felt emotion, and the fun- damental humanity of his compositions. Chopin was raised by his Polish mother, Justyna, and French-born father, Mikol´aj (Nicolas), in parti- tioned Poland, a country that had been recently dismembered by its more powerful neighbors. Mikol´aj ’s teaching positions placed the Chopin family among the Warsaw intelligentsia, for whom the formation and preservation of Polish culture was a central concern, and so the four Chopin chil- dren were raised as unequivocally Polish. Consequently, Fryderyk grew up in an atmosphere of intense patriotism. But he was far from a musical monoglot; by the time he left Poland, at age 20, he was comfortable and accomplished in several different styles. His attraction to Polish music was based largely upon popular pieces and vernacular opera rather than systematic explorations of folk materials. He had some exposure to rural Polish music making, but learned the Polish dance genres—mazurka, polonaise, krakowiak—in the opera house, ballroom, and the salon. The most influential Warsaw musicians of the earlier generation were the two major opera composers, Józef Elsner and Karol Kurpin´ski (from whom we will hear in Program 2), whose historically and folkloristically themed works provided the young Chopin with the musical vocabulary of Polishness. Elsner, Chopin’s revered composition teacher, also bequeathed to his pupil an admira- tion for Mozart and made sure that he was schooled in the Germanic traditions of harmony and musical rhetoric. Thanks to his childhood piano teacher Wojciech Z˙ywny, Chopin’s admiration of J. S. Bach was profound, and he committed a good number of preludes and fugues to memory. Among the musical styles Chopin internalized in Warsaw was the ubiquitous style brillante.This flashy idiom was made mostly of scale patterns, arpeggio passages, and figurations of all kinds, and was characteristic of such influential pianists as Johann Nepomuk Hummel (Program 2) and Ferdinand Ries (Program 8), whose compositions included piano concertos that Chopin admired. Besides Polish opera, Chopin was also able to enjoy German, French, and Italian operas, especially those of Rossini, whose bel canto melodic and ornamental vocabularies exercised a great influence on him. After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Warsaw was assigned a central role in the newly established Kingdom of Poland—supposedly a constitutional monarchy but in reality under Russian control. The city’s regional importance made it a regular stop for touring performers such as singers Angelica CHOPIN AND HIS WORLD 3 Catalani and Henriette Sontag and instrumentalists Hummel and Nicolò Paganini. Music by inter- nationally acclaimed Polish composer-virtuosos, especially pianist Maria Szymanowska (Programs 2 and 8) and violinist Karol Lipin´ski (Program 2), also offered models for the young composer. Both Lipin´ski and Szymanowska were admired for their vocally inspired tone, and their performances led Chopin to develop the singing sound and legato phrasing that came to typify his pianism. Upon settling permanently in Paris in 1831, Chopin found himself in the musical capital of Europe.