Before the opening of the Bard Music Festival on Friday, the conductor Leon Botstein turned to the audience to introduce the evening’s unlikely star. At his side stood a boxy contraption with spindly antennas and a tangle of cables that looked like a robot awaiting orders. “This is a theremin,” Botstein said, “a wonderful musical instrument.” Glancing at the sea of gray heads, he added dryly, “It is not a piece of medical equipment.”
The theremin was the most eye-catching element in the first concert of this festival, devoted to the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu. The instrument was invented in 1920 and is played by manipulating an electromagnetic field with magician-like gestures, its hollow keening notes seemingly plucked from the air. On Friday at the Fisher Center in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., it joined a cast of traditional instruments — oboe, piano, strings — in Martinu’s “Fantasia” from 1944, creating an unexpectedly moving amalgam of instrumental colors. 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 that work their charm as much through choreography as sound.
This year marks both Botstein’s 50th year as president of Bard College and the 35th iteration of the festival, which he has built 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. That mix of intellectual ambition and freedom from commercial pressures is rare in music-making in the United States, and it flourishes here. Judging by Friday’s stimulating opener, this year’s exploration of Martinu, 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.
Upcoming programs include a concert performance of “Julietta,” Martinu’s surreal dream opera, and works by composers from his ambit, among them his student and erstwhile romantic interest, Vitezslava Kapralova. With a catalog of more than 400 works, including six symphonies and 15 operas to choose from, the Bard could offer only a slice of his output.
Martinu was born in 1890 in a clock tower in the small Bohemian town of Policka, where his father was the fire watcher. Ninety-nine steps above ground, the family lived in a single square room with a commanding view of the countryside, a vantage point that may explain the composer’s signature blend of pastoral idyll with cool detachment. The lilting, off-kilter rhythms of nearby Moravia filtered into his music long after he traded his homeland for a life of exile.
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