Opening August 8, Bard Music Festival explores life and times of foremost 20th-century Czech composer in “Martinů and His World”

Bohuslav Martinů (photo: courtesy of Bohuslav Martinů Centre, Polička)

(Annandale-on-Hudson, July 2025) — On Friday, August 8, the Bard Music Festival returns with an intensive two-week exploration of “Martinů and His World.” In eleven themed concert programs, the festival’s 35th season examines Bohuslav Martinů, the 20th century’s foremost Czech composer, by considering him as A Musical Mirror of the 20th Century (Weekend One: August 8–10), and investigating the stand he took Against Uncertainty, Uniformity, Mechanization(Weekend Two: August 14–17). Aside from Program Six, presented in nearby Rhinebeck, all concerts take place in the stunning Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College’s idyllic Hudson River campus. Six programs will also stream live to home audiences worldwide on the Fisher Center’s virtual stage, and chartered coach transportation from New York City will be available for the final performance (see details below). Representing a centerpiece of the 22nd Bard SummerScape festival, the Bard Music Festival is set once again to prove itself “the summer’s most stimulating music festival” (Los Angeles Times).

“One of the most remarkable figures in the worlds of arts and culture” (NYC Arts, THIRTEEN/WNET), festival founder and co-artistic director Leon Botstein is music director of both the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO) and Bard’s unique graduate training orchestra, The Orchestra Now (TŌN). He explains:

“What’s interesting about Martinů is that he was almost permanently in his career in exile, an émigré, and he was intensely prolific. … He as a composer was very eclectic. He didn’t have one style, really, so he modulated from one style to another. … He never overstays his welcome as a composer, and he had a real sense of the beauty and the uniqueness of instrumental sounds. So, we’re trying to survey his career as a way of introducing the public to a composer we know they’ll like.”

See Botstein and co-artistic director Christopher H. Gibbs discuss “Martinů and His World” further here.

In a concert with commentary by Botstein himself, he and TŌN help open the festival with two of Martinů’s major orchestral works: the Second Symphony, a work commissioned for The Cleveland Orchestra, and Double Concerto, which remains one of the composer’s crowning achievements [Program 1]. Botstein also leads TŌN in the Second Symphony by Martinů’s compatriot Erwin Schulhoff; the Memorial to Lidice, Martinů’s searing response to the Nazis’ annihilation of a Czech village; his award-winning Sixth and final Symphony (Fantaisies symphoniques); his masterly Fourth Piano Concerto, “Incantation“; and the Piano Concertino by his great friend Rudolf Firkušný (the dedicatee of the Fourth Piano Concerto), which receives just its third performance to date [Program 3].

As in previous seasons, Bard’s choral and operatic programs all feature the Bard Festival Chorale under the leadership of choral director James Bagwell. The choir joins TŌN for the Field Mass, Martinů’s powerful anti-war cantata, and the world premiere of the original French version of his one-act opera Mariken de Nimègue(“Mary of Nijmegen”) [Program 7]. Botstein conducts the chorus and the ASO in accounts of Martinů’s only large-scale oratorio, The Epic of Gilgamesh, and of Ignis pro Ioanne Palach, a cantata by his talented student Jan Novák [Program 9]. To conclude the festival, Botstein, the ASO, and the Bard Festival Chorale reunite for a semi-staged concert performance of what is arguably Martinů’s finest work – his eighth opera, Julietta – starring Grammy-winning tenor Aaron Blake and soprano Erica Petrocelli, who lends her “searing intensity” (Los Angeles Times) to the title role [Program 11]. All five orchestral and choral concerts will be livestreamed.

The festival presents a wide range of Martinů’s chamber music. “Theremin queen” Dorit Chrysler (The Village Voice) takes part in his folk-inflected Fantasia [Program 1] and Grammy-winning flutist Brandon Patrick George performs his Flute Sonata, a work inspired by the song of a whippoorwill [Program 2]. In a concert with commentary by scholars-in-residence Michael Beckerman and Aleš Březina, Gramophone Award nominee Danny Driver interprets Martinů’s pentatonic piano piece The Fifth Day of the Fifth Moon and the Cleveland Quartet Award-winning Balourdet Quartet performs his heartfelt Seventh String Quartet, “Concerto da camera” [Program 4]. The opening weekend concludes with a livestreamedprogram featuring the Bard Festival Chamber Players in performances of his witty ballet La revue de cuisine, his contrapuntal Tre ricercari, and his dazzling Harpsichord Concerto, with Opus Klassik Award-winner Mahan Esfahani as soloist [Program 5]. Other Martinů chamber highlights include his lyrical Third Cello Sonataand the Second Nonet, composed in his final months, which finds fresh colors and textures within its neoclassical form [Program 8].

“One of New York’s finest organists” (The New York Times), Renée Anne Loupretteplays works by Leoš Janáček and Petr Eben on the newly renovated organ of the Episcopal Church of the Messiah in nearby Rhinebeck [Program 6]. Other chamber works by Martinů’s predecessors, contemporaries, and successors include the youthful yet confident Piano Quartet by his teacher Josef Suk [Program 2]; the folk-permeated First String Quartet by his gifted composition student Vítězslava Kaprálová [Program 4]; the sparkling Concerto da camera by Martinů’s Tanglewood colleague Arthur Honegger [Program 5]; and Joan Tower‘s Petroushskates, a recent work that harks back to Martinů in its rich timbral variety and rhythmic drive [Program 10].

Supplementary events and companion book

Besides the eleven concert programs, there will be two free panel discussions: “Why Martinů: Understanding Classical Music, Past and Future” and “Music and Politics: From the Multinational Empire to Contemporary Populism and Autocracy.” These will be supplemented by informative pre-concert talks – all free to ticket-holders – by scholars Byron Adams, Michael Beckerman, Aleš Březina, Derek Katz, Christopher H. Gibbs, Marina Frolova-Walker, Anna Harwell Celenza, and Richard Wilson. Bard SummerScape and the ASO also present the first fully staged American production of Dalibor, widely considered by fellow Czechs to be the greatest opera by Martinů’s compatriot Bedřich Smetana (July 25–August 3). Edited by Bard’s 2025 Scholars-in-Residence – Aleš Březina, director of Prague’s Bohuslav Martinů Institute, and New York University’s Michael Beckerman, editor of Martinů’s Mysterious Accident and of two previous Bard Music Festival publications: Dvořák and His World (1994) and Janáček and His World (2003) – the companion book Martinů and His World is published by the University of Chicago Press.

Round-trip bus transportation from New York City

Chartered bus transportation from New York City is available for the festival finale, Program Eleven (August 17). This may be ordered online or by calling the box office at 845-758-7900, and the meeting point for pick-up and drop-off is at Lincoln Center on Amsterdam Avenue, between 64th and 65th Streets. More information is available here.

SummerScape tickets

Tickets for mainstage events start at $25 and livestreams are $20. Panel discussions are free of charge and open to the public. For complete information regarding tickets, series discounts, and more, visit fishercenter.bard.edu or call Bard’s box office at (845) 758-7900.

Click here for a high-resolution photo.