Bard Music Festival: Program Seven - Berlioz: The Composer as Writer

Berlioz was one of the first composers to publish memoirs for posterity. Encompassing many of his earlier writings, especially those devoted to his travels, they are sometimes unreliable, yet also vivid, personal, and entertaining.

Program Seven alternates chamber works by the composer and his contemporaries with readings about them from his memoirs, letters, and criticism. Featured composers include Fromental Halévy, creator of the popular grand opera La Juive; Mikhail Glinka, whom he met and admired in Russia; Ireland’s Michael Balfe, whose music he conducted in London; and Charles-Valentin Alkan, dubbed “the Berlioz of the piano.”

Niccolò Paganini’s Cantabile is juxtaposed with a complete account of Berlioz’s Harold en Italie, as arranged with piano accompaniment by Franz Liszt, a lifelong friend. As Berlioz recounts, Paganini first commissioned the work to showcase his Stradivarius viola, then rejected it as insufficiently virtuosic, and finally hailed it as a masterpiece, sending Berlioz the extravagant sum of 20,000 francs by way of apology.

Program:

6:30 pm • Preconcert Talk with Peter Bloom
7 pm • Performance: Jana McIntyre, soprano; Noah Stewart, tenor; Alfred Walker, bass-baritone; Luosha Fang, viola; Piers Lane and Orion Weiss, piano; and others

Hector Berlioz (1803–69)

Harold en Italie, Op. 16 (1834; arr. Liszt)

Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840)

Cantabile (1823)

Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47)

Andante and Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 14 (1830)

Piano works and arias by Louis Spohr (1784–1859), Fromental Halévy (1799–1862), Adolphe Adam (1803–56), Mikhail Glinka (1804–57), Michael Balfe (1808–70), Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813–88)

Location: Sosnoff Theater

Ticketing:
Tickets start at $25
$5 tickets for Bard students are made possible by the Passloff Pass.
Livestream: $20; Free for Members; Reservations Required

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