Bohuslav Martinů in Focus at Bard Music Festival

In Sunday’s (8/10) New York Times, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim writes, “Before the opening of the Bard Music Festival on Friday, the conductor Leon Botstein … introduced the evening’s unlikely star…. ‘This is a theremin,’ Botstein said, ‘a wonderful musical instrument.’… The theremin was the most eye-catching element in the first concert of this festival, devoted to the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů….On Friday at the Fisher Center in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., it joined a cast of traditional instruments—oboe, piano, strings—in Martinů’s ‘Fantasia’ from 1944 … The work captures something of the essence of this artist, who embraced both the turbulence and the technological marvels of the 20th century, and who delighted in unusual groupings of instruments … Botstein … has built [the festival] into a summer institution: two weekends of concerts, panel discussions, and lectures exploring the life and work of a single composer, accompanied by a scholarly volume of essays. The subject is as likely to be a household name as an overlooked figure, but the program always stretches beyond familiar repertoire…. This year’s exploration of Martinů, a restless exile equally fluent in Czech folk song, Neo-Classicism and the hum of the modern world, invites audiences to discover one of the most distinct and delightful voices of his time.”