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X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://www.bowdoinfestival.org
X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Bowdoin Music Festival
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DTSTART:20260308T070000
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DTSTART:20261101T060000
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260722T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260722T120000
DTSTAMP:20260906T002002
CREATED:20260527T030130Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260719T160632Z
UID:24410-1784718000-1784721600@www.bowdoinfestival.org
SUMMARY:Meet the Composer: Elena Langer
DESCRIPTION:MEET THE COMPOSER: Elena Langer \nDuring this talk\, composer Elena Langer will discuss her work and creative process. Her piece RedMare was performed by Festival Fellows during our Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music on Saturday\, July 11. \nThis event is via a Zoom Webinar; we hope you will join the conversation online! \n— \nElena Langer is a prolific composer of colourful\, dramatic and often humorous music\, familiar to audiences across Europe and America through her operatic\, vocal and orchestral pieces. Elena’s 2016 hit for Welsh National Opera\, Figaro Gets a Divorce (receiving a new production at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm in 2026) was described by Rupert Christiansen in the Daily Telegraph as “that rare thing: a modern opera that exerts an immediate emotional impact”. Her WNO follow-up\, the 2018 vaudeville Rhondda Rips It Up!\, was wildly popular with audiences across the UK\, The Times describing it as “bursting with irreverent joy”. Her recent cantata The Dong with a Luminous Nose was warmly reviewed in The Times: “Langer manages to uncover the sadness of lost love lurking beneath the poem’s whimsy”. \nHer new opera To Die For [A Comedy] will be co-produced by the Netherlands Reisopera in Holland and Buxton International Festival in the UK in 2026. Based on the 1928 play The Suicide by Nikolai Erdman\, it is an exuberant and subversive black farce whose message is that while life may be chaotic and cruel\, lived amid absurdity and horror\, the alternative is almost certainly worse. A new version of Elena’s comic opera Four Sisters (initially commissioned by Dawn Upshaw for Bard College) is to be performed at Covent Garden in spring 2026. \nElena Langer studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire in Moscow and at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Her works have been performed at Zurich Opera\, Carnegie Hall\, the Grand Theatre Geneva\, Opera National du Rhin\, Strasbourg\, Welsh National Opera\, Shakespeare’s Globe\, Hong Kong Academy of Arts\, the Linbury Theatre at Covent Garden\, the Tokyo Theatre and Boston Symphony Hall. \nLandscape with Three People\, a CD of Elena’s vocal and chamber pieces\, was released by Harmonia Mundi in 2016. Richard Morrison in The Times wrote: “She can do sardonic astringency but also evoke surreal otherworldliness or romantic yearning. It all depends on her chosen texts to which she responds in meticulous detail”. Landscape with Three People was performed in 2022 at the Oxford Lieder Festival. \nThe orchestral suite created from Figaro Gets a Divorce was premiered by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra\, conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev\, in 2020; subsequently\, Anna Rakitina conducted it with the Boston Symphony and the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra. There have been further performances by Gergely Madaras and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra\, Sir Mark Elder with the Hallé Orchestra\, and Nicholas McGegan with the Cleveland Orchestra\, among others. \nThe Dong with a Luminous Nose\, a setting of the Romantic nonsense-poem by Edward Lear for chorus\, orchestra and cello\, was co-commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra. The LPO premiered the work under Andrey Boreyko at the Royal Festival Hall in March 2023\, and in March 2024 Sir Mark Elder conducted the American premiere at Symphony Hall. In autumn 2024 the work was performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. \nThe oboist Nicholas Daniel commissioned and premiered Elena’s Gluhwein Concerto with Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss am Rhein in 2022\, and a new song cycle\, Love & Endings\, for soprano\, oboe and harpsichord\, was performed by Nicholas\, Anna Dennis and Mahan Esfahani in April 2023 at Aldeburgh. \nThree new song cycles are going to be premiered in 2025: Nice Weather for Witches\, for mezzo\, piano and dancers\, and Two Mandelstam Songs for tenor and piano\, at the Oxford International Song Festival in October 2025; and Fabulous Beasts\, to be performed by the counter-tenor Hugh Cutting at the Wigmore Hall in December 2025. Elena’s new piano solo piece\, Seasons (based on Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons\, and performed alongside it)\, was commissioned by the London Piano Festival to celebrate its tenth anniversary in October 2025. A new trumpet concerto\, The Day the Sun Came Round for Tea\, will be performed by Ben Wright and Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston in autumn 2025.  \nHer recent orchestral piece Leonora’s Dream will be performed in Stuttgart under the baton of Andrei Boreyko in May 2026. Elena is also working on a new large orchestral piece for the Royal Scottish National Orchestra\, to be premiered in March 2026\, and on a new violin concerto for Julian Rachlin and Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg\, to premiere in 2027.
URL:https://www.bowdoinfestival.org/event/meet-the-composer-langer/
LOCATION:Online from Brunswick\, 12 Campus Rd S\, Brunswick\, ME\, 04011
CATEGORIES:Free Events,Meet the Composer,New Music
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowdoinfestival.org/contents/media/2026/05/MTC-Langer.png
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260722T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260722T150000
DTSTAMP:20260906T002002
CREATED:20260605T165757Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260721T192449Z
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SUMMARY:Farnsworth Museum Community Concert
DESCRIPTION:Farnsworth Museum Community Concert \nJoin us for a wonderful afternoon of music in Rockland featuring talented Festival Young Artists. This concert will include a variety of classical repertoire and last 45 minutes to 1 hour. \nThis concert is free and open to the public; each concert ticket includes free access to the museum galleries after the concert is over. Pre-registration is highly encouraged; seats not claimed ten minutes prior to the start of the concert will be available to walk in registrants. \nFREE REGISTRATION \n  \n— PROGRAM — \n\nWOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791)\nViolin Concerto No. 3 in G Major\, K. 216 \nI. Allegro\nII. Adagio\nIII. Rondeau \nLinghe Zhang\, violin • Irene Huang\, piano\nIrene is sponsored by Barbara & John Norton. \n\nEDWARD ELGAR (1857–1934)\nSalut d’Amour\, Op. 12 \nDaniel Xu\, violin • Irene Huang\, piano\nIrene is sponsored by Barbara & John Norton. \n\nGABRIEL FAURÉ (1845–1924)\nSonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 in A Major\, Op. 13 \nI. Allegro molto\nII. Andante\nIII. Allegro vivo\nIV. Allegro quasi presto \nLinghe Zhang\, violin • Jingyang Wu\, piano\nJingyang is sponsored by Ed & Whitney Selover.
URL:https://www.bowdoinfestival.org/event/farnsworth-museum-concert-2026/
LOCATION:Farnsworth Art Museum\, 16 Museum Street\, Rockland\, ME\, 04841
CATEGORIES:Concert,Community Concerts,Free Events
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260722T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260722T210000
DTSTAMP:20260906T002002
CREATED:20260130T030034Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260722T161414Z
UID:23996-1784748600-1784754000@www.bowdoinfestival.org
SUMMARY:Farr\, Beethoven\, & Dvořák
DESCRIPTION:Farr\, Beethoven\, & Dvořák \nGARETH FARR (b. 1968)\nTaheke for Flute and Harp\nBen Smith\, flute • June Han\, harp \nLUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)\nQuintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat Major\, Op. 16\nCorinne Foley\, oboe • Michael Wayne\, clarinet • Abigail Lopez\, bassoon • Oved Rico\, horn • Elinor Freer\, piano \nANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841–1904)\nPiano Quintet in A Major\, Op. 81\nMikhail Kopelman\, Meg Freivogel\, violin • Che-Yen Chen\, viola • Edward Arron\, cello • Jeewon Park\, piano \n  \nProgram Notes \nGARETH FARR\nTaheke for Flute and Harp (2002) \nTaheke is the Maori word for waterfall. The three movements of this work are each a musical depiction of a particular waterfall in New Zealand. \nThe first is the mighty Huka Falls near Taupo. The broad and placid Waikato River is channelled gradually into an increasingly narrow chute\, ultimately erupting into a waterfall of unbelievable power and fury; then\, as quickly as it has built up\, the water subsides back into a calmly flowing river. \nIn contrast to the Huka Falls with its famed reputation\, the waterfall of the second movement is known only to my family. It is on our land in the Marlborough Sounds\, utterly secluded in the bush and only accessible on foot through thick undergrowth. This waterfall is cool\, dark and mysterious. \nThe finale represents the grandeur and sprightly elegance of the Whangarei Falls in Northland\, a beautiful cascade of sparkling rivulets. \nProgram Note by Gareth Farr \n  \nLUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN\nQuintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat Major\, Op. 16 (1796) \nIn 1796\, as his composition career in Vienna was just starting to blossom\, Ludwig van Beethoven wrote a Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat. The piece is one of Beethoven’s clearest homages to W.A. Mozart\, who composed a work for these instruments in 1784 that he considered at the time to be “the best thing I have written in all my life.” The pattern of keys and movement tempos in Beethoven’s Quintet (a slow introduction and a sonata form movement in E-flat; a slow movement in B-flat; then a lively rondo back in E-flat) mirrors that of his predecessor\, and there are subtler allusions to Mozart contained in it as well. \nThe Quintet opens with the full ensemble quietly playing a figure that features a double-dotted\, horn-call-like rhythm and conjures the image of a lone trumpeter intoning a military signal in the distance. The body of the movement is set up in the manner of a sonata with instrumental accompaniment of the time\, with the piano playing most of the themes first\, and one or several of the winds shooting it back in reply. The Andante cantabile has an unmistakably Mozartian quality. The curves of the melodic lines are so simple\, and yet each tune contains at least one moment of unanticipated\, expressive weight. \nAt the 1797 premiere of the piece\, the composer used the many dramatic pauses written into the final movement to show off. As his student Ferdinand Ries recalled\, “Beethoven suddenly started improvising\, taking the Rondo subject as his theme and entertaining himself and the others for quite some time.” The audience loved it\, but Ries remembered that “This was not the case with the accompanists. They were very annoyed… It did indeed look very droll to see these gentlemen\, expecting to begin at any moment\, raising their instruments to their mouths incessantly and then quietly putting them down again. At last Beethoven was satisfied and returned to the Rondo. The whole society was enchanted.”  \nProgram Note by Nicky Swett \n  \nANTONÍN DVOŘÁK\nPiano Quintet in A Major\, Op. 81 (1887) \nRobert Schumann’s Piano Quintet (1842) was not the first work to combine the string quartet with the keyboard; but without a doubt\, it was Schumann’s Quintet that catalysed interest in the relatively new genre\, and set the scene for future forays\, including those of Brahms (1865) and Dvořák. Dvořák in fact attempted a Piano Quintet in A Major (1872) early on in his career\, and it was his first composition ever to be performed. But it was Dvořák’s second attempt at the form\, composed at the peak of his fame and in the same key as that earlier effort\, which came to be considered among his\, and the genre’s\, greatest masterpieces. \nDvořák structures the outer movements in expansive sonata forms\, while the inner movements are modeled on Slavic dances — specifically the dumka and the furiant. The use of these forms played a significant part in Dvořák’s general approach to composition: the folklorist aesthetic resonated with nineteenth-century nationalist and regionalist political movements\, and Dvořák saw the use of popular musical traditions as a source of musical rejuvenation: “The music of the people is like a rare and lovely flower growing amidst encroaching weeds\,” he wrote; “It will command attention and creep into the books of composers.” \nHere\, Dvořák draws upon the dumka\, a folk ballad of Ukrainian origin\, as the basis for the lyrical second movement\, opening with a contrapuntal subject for piano and viola. For the third movement\, he builds a scherzo on the bounding rhythm of the furiant\, a dance from his native Bohemia. These forms — the dumka in particular — proved especially inspiring to Dvořák over the course of his career; in addition to the famous “Dumky” Trio\, Op. 90\, he had also composed dumky for his Sextet\, Op. 48 and for his Violin Concerto\, Op. 53. \nProgram Note by Peter Asimov
URL:https://www.bowdoinfestival.org/event/07-22-2026/
LOCATION:Studzinski Recital Hall\, 12 Campus Road S\, Brunswick\, ME\, 04011
CATEGORIES:Concert,Ticketed Events,Wednesdays,Livestream
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.bowdoinfestival.org/contents/media/2026/01/July-22-2026.jpg
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