Just Some Songs at Twilight

THE MAVERICK CHAMBER ORCHESTRA CONCERT is an annual event that recently welcomed the Caroga Arts Ensemble as its resident ensemble, a fitting acknowledgment of the quality of music-making going on in New York’s Fulton County each summer. The Maverick Concert Hall itself is in Woodstock (or Hurley, depending on your geographic preference), about a hundred miles south of Caroga Lake. The rustic hall in which the concerts take place was built in 1916, from an era in the area’s history when music and art and love were celebrated with no inkling  that another type of music festival, decades later, would put Woodstock on the map.

Photo courtesy Maverick Concerts

Saturday, August 23 was as perfect a day as you could desire in the middle of summer, which added to the fairy-tale aspect of this event. With its vaulted ceiling and decorative windows, the concert hall is a chapel where the faithful assemble to worship good music, a reasonable object of veneration. 

Seating is on padded benches arrayed in rows, flanked by lines of similar benches along the side walls. The large rear doors open onto a contained area with several more padded benches and, as I learned from arriving early enough to witness some rehearsal, there’s no compromise of the sound and the view. 

The hall was sold out for this concert, and that included the outdoor seating. While the second-half feature, Philip Glass’s Piano Concerto No. 3, performed by Simone Dinnerstein, was the draw, let’s wait to assess it. There’s a remarkable first half to consider.

A Fable

Mark Twain Dept.: Twain tinkered with storytelling techniques throughout his life as he transitioned from scrappy journalist to grand old moralist. Here; a trifle in the latter mode. The illustration is by Thomas Landseer.

                                                                                               

ONCE UPON A TIME an artist who had painted a small and very beautiful picture placed it so that he could see it in the mirror. He said, “This doubles the distance and softens it, and it is twice as lovely as it was before.”

The animals out in the woods heard of this through the housecat, who was greatly admired by them because he was so learned, and so refined and civilized, and so polite and high-bred, and could tell them so much which they didn't know before, and were not certain about afterward. They were much excited about this new piece of gossip, and they asked questions, so as to get at a full understanding of it. They asked what a picture was, and the cat explained.

“It is a flat thing,” he said; “wonderfully flat, marvelously flat, enchantingly flat and elegant. And, oh, so beautiful!”

That excited them almost to a frenzy, and they said they would give the world to see it. Then the bear asked:

“What is it that makes it so beautiful?”

“It is the looks of it,” said the cat.

Martinů: Magical and Mysterious

THE PORTRAIT OF BOHUSLAV MARTINŮ that emerged during a day of Martinů-related events at Bard College was uniquely unusual. He was a Czech-born composer who spent more time in France and America than in his native country. He lived from 1890 to 1959, thus placing his productive years in the midst of a time of great musical unrest. Yet he remained apart from it, absorbing much and transmuting it into a variety of forms. The portrait, therefore, eludes canvas and words: his music is the portrait.

“Martinů and His World” is the title of Bard’s 35th annual music festival. Each of the festivals has been dedicated to examining a composer not only through significant and lesser-known works but also alongside works by others of influence. I attended the three events presented on Saturday, August 9, 2025.

To truly explore the breadth of Martinů’s influences probably would demand many weeks of effort. As scholar-in-residence Michael Beckerman wrote, “Martinů provides us with an almost inexhaustible collection of works, approaches, and ideas. His fascinations, with such things as madrigals, Stravinsky, the Virgin Mary, jazz, Baroque music, Bartók, surrealism, neoclassicism, Byzantine chant, medieval miracle plays, and the folk cultures of Czechoslovakia, give his works shadings both subtle and powerful.” 

Longtime NYU prof Beckerman is about to become dean of the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA. A Czech-music specialist, he also was scholar-in-residence for Bard’s festivals centering on Dvořák (1993) and Janáček (2003).

Toothsome Haven

From the Food Vault Dept.: It’s the time of year when I should be schlepping to the Berkshires to frolic amongst the theaters and eateries that strew the landscape, but it’s not about to happen this summer. I may get a visit to Mass MoCA on the autumn calendar, but for now, let’s revisit a piece I wrote in 2013, a review of a restaurant that’s still thriving in Lenox. And, after re-reading this, I have to go back there sooner than later. Remember: All quoted pricing has changed in the intervening years. But you knew that. (Photos by B. A. Nilsson)

                                                                                                 

BECAUSE OUR EXOTIC VACATIONS are annoyingly few, my teenaged daughter and I play a game in which we imagine ourselves, at various moments, to be somewhere overseas. We typically end up in a European locale that combines Tuscany’s rural beauty with the urban indifference of Paris, where we just might have to bully through an inscrutable menu in order to tame our appetites at a picture-book café. 

The menu at Lenox’s Haven Café is in English, of course, and the downtown environment is unmistakably affluent New England. But, once seated at one of the polished wooden tables in the sun-warmed dining area, we decided that, with the addition of a thatched roof or two, we as easily could be in Cockington Village in Devon.

Not that any Cockington eatery would be offering grilled polenta topped with pesto ($14.50) or a $10 beet, apple and almond salad over arugula. Faced with the offerings for a Haven lunch, we were whisked back to Lenox and still found ourselves in a relaxing place.