After a string of successful tone poems, An Alpine Symphony was Richard Strauss’s first such composition after nearly a dozen years of focusing on opera. Written for a massive orchestra that includes such rarities as the heckelphone, thunder sheets, a wind machine, and other unusual effects, this gloriously opulent masterpiece takes listeners through the ascent and descent of a mountain in the Alps, with meadows, streams, storms, and vistas along the way. Also on the program are Strauss’s Burleske for Piano and Orchestra, performed with Blair McMillen, and the vivacious Die Tageszeiten (Times of the Day), a setting of four nature poems by Joseph von Eichendorff. Hear this program at the Fisher Center just days before TŌN performs it at Carnegie Hall.

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Strauss’s “Alpine Symphony”

Fisher Center at Bard

In 2026—200 years following the death of Carl Maria von Weber, a decisive figure in the development of German opera in the Romantic period—the American Symphony Orchestra takes on the composer’s seminal opera Der Freischütz (1821), performed with a twist: in place of the original opera, the ASO presents Hector Berlioz’s version of the work, arranged for the Paris Opera in 1841.

Weber & Berlioz: Der Freischütz Reimagined

Carnegie Hall

For the United States of America’s 250th anniversary, the American Symphony Orchestra celebrates the forging of an American musical identity in the 19th century with a diverse program of seldom performed scores. The concert’s centerpiece is George Bristow’s massive “Niagara” symphony in its first performance since the work’s world premiere. The program begins with two scores of joyful, exuberant celebration, each one rhythmically propulsive and highly entertaining: the Festival Overture on the American National Air by Dudley Buck and Richard Wagner’s American Centennial March, which he wrote for the opening of the Declaration of Independence’s centennial celebration in 1876 in Philadelphia.

Forging an American Musical Identity

Following last season’s sold-out concert “Bach at St. Bart’s,” the ASO returns to the venue where its founder, world-renowned conductor Leopold Stokowski, began his U.S. music career. The acclaimed Bard Festival Chorale joins the orchestra for this performance of two rarely performed scores.

Peter Cornelius, known primarily for his comic opera Der Barber von Bagdad, devoted his early career almost entirely to sacred and chamber music writing. His 1849 setting of the Stabat Mater—performed here in its U.S. premiere—is a score of stunning originality: its bold harmonic language, unusual formal design, and dramatic flair make the work a standout in the composer’s oeuvre.

Requiem & Revelation

St. Bartholomew's Church

Many consider Martinů’s eighth opera to be his finest work. Based, like Ariane, on a French play by Georges Neveux, Julietta is a surreal psychological drama that explores the intersection of dreams and reality. In 2019, Leon Botstein helmed the opera’s overdue American premiere at Carnegie Hall, where he led “a winning cast and the American Symphony Orchestra in a vibrant concert performance” that was selected as a “Critic’s Pick” by The New York Times. Now, the Festival presents the conductor and ASO in a semi-staged revival of the opera, featuring three members of that same winning cast: tenor Aaron Blake and bass-baritones Philip Cokorinos and Alfred Walker, who also appears in this year’s mainstage SummerScape opera. So too does soprano Erica Petrocelli, who headlines Julietta, lending her “searing intensity” (Los Angeles Times) to the opera’s title role. Anchored by Botstein and the ASO, their performance draws the Bard Music Festival—and all seven weeks of Bard SummerScape—to a gripping close.

Bard Music Festival — Program 11

Sosnoff Theater

This program comprises choral and orchestral music by Martinů and perhaps his finest student, Moravia’s Jan Novák. Set to his own Latin text, Novák’s moving cantata Ignis pro Ioanne Palach commemorates a desperate young activist who immolated himself to protest the end of the Prague Spring. As a former professional violinist, Martinů wrote for the instrument with intimate understanding, and his Second Violin Concerto stands among his mature masterpieces. It was commissioned by the great Mischa Elman, who premiered the work with Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony, before performing it for many years, as did Isaac Stern and Josef Suk. Completing the program are an aria from Martinů’s one-act opera Ariane, a surrealist take on the Theseus myth that was inspired by Maria Callas, and The Epic of Gilgamesh, the composer’s only large-scale oratorio. Scored for narrator, soloists, choir, and orchestra, this takes its text from an English translation of the Mesopotamian saga, and is notable for some of Martinů’s most inspired choral writing.

Bard Music Festival — Program 9

Stephanie Blythe Sings Brahms

Program Nine marks the American Symphony Orchestra’s first concert of the festival, presenting two of his late symphonies alongside other key orchestral works of the period. While drawing on his own incidental music for the 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic, the Sinfonia Antartica, his Seventh Symphony, is nonetheless a fully realized modern masterpiece. Scored for vast forces including bells, organ, wind machine, and wordless women’s chorus, this darkly atmospheric work is adventurous both timbrally and harmonically. Brighter in tone yet no less sonically bold, the vividly orchestrated Eighth Symphony was recognized with a New York Critics Circle Award. These late symphonies share the program with Proud Thames, Elizabeth Maconchy’s commanding, winning entry to a Coronation Overture-writing competition; the sparkling Partita for Orchestra by William Walton, then emerging as one of the next generation’s leading lights; and Andante festivo, an earlier work by Jean Sibelius, to whom Vaughan Williams had dedicated his Fifth Symphony and, like many British composers, felt indebted.

The ASO and St. Bartholomew’s Church share a connection rooted deep in the history of both institutions. ASO founder Leopold Stokowski began his American career as organist and choirmaster of St. Bartholomew’s before founding the orchestra in 1962. We return to this National Historic Landmark for a program of works honoring the king of instruments performed on the largest organ in New York City.
The program opens with Saint-Saëns’ popular Symphony No. 3, dedicated to the memory of his friend Franz Liszt. Often referred to as the Organ Symphony, the work’s loosely symphonic form features the organ for two of its four movements. This piece is paired with a work by British composer and social activist, Dame Ethel Smyth—her rarely performed and only sacred work—the six-part Mass in D, which premiered at Royal Albert Hall in 1893, and dedicated to her friend Lady Pauline Trevelyan. As a prominent member of the women’s suffragette movement, Smyth’s work was marginalized, yet she was the first female composer to be granted a damehood and her opera, Der Wald, was the only opera by a woman composer ever produced at the Metropolitan Opera for more than a century.

Bard Festival Chorale

9 - 10 May, 2026

Strauss’s “Alpine Symphony”

Apr 16, 2026

Weber & Berlioz: Der Freischütz Reimagined

Bard Festival Chorale