Bar Harbor Music Festival Announces Upcoming Concerts, Some With Popovers!
Popover Concerts underway as the Festival Orchestra comes to town!
HANCOCK COUNTY—As part of the Bar Harbor Music Festival’s theme of “Growing our Roots,” audience members were surveyed as to how the Festival could serve them better with the benefits of classical music. One of the most heard responses was the reluctance to drive or come into Bar Harbor at night, citing the darkness as well as parking challenges. Thus morning concerts were added to calendar, at 10:30am, similar to the timing of morning classes at other organizations like Acadia Senior College.
The BHMF is committed to being a thriving third space for people to connect through their curiosity and appreciate of classical music and added a social hour with the artists and fresh popovers from the Stadium in Bar Harbor. Tickets are $25 for the 45-minute concerts and include a popover with sides of maple butter and blueberry jam. Popover concert dates are July 23, 30, August 10, 13, 16, and 30. The atmosphere is family friendly and tickets are FREE to everyone 21 and under thanks to the Thirsty Whale, with a $5 charge for the popover.
Starting July 28, the BHMF will be hosting 27 exceptional classical musicians from as far away as Seattle to combine and perform as the Festival Orchestra in a program of Sibelius, Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 “Jupiter,” and the only piano concerto by Richard Strauss, titled “Burleske” with international competition winner Pyotr Akulov. Orchestra members come mostly from the New York area including outstanding players from Broadway shows who regularly appear with the New York Philharmonic, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.
The Festival Concert master is Eric Wyrick, former member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and current Concertmaster of the New Jersey Symphony. The chair of Principal Second Violin will be filled by Nicholas Pappone, concertmaster of the BHMF Opera, playing the Gofriller violin of the late BHMF director Francis Fortier. This is the most ambitious orchestral production yet from the Bar Harbor Music Festival. Housing for all these outstanding artists comes from donors opening their homes in the community.
On July 30, the Wyrick and friends performs a string trio program “Echoes of Eternity,” with music by Schubert, Beethoven, and the haunting Trio by Gideon Klein. Gideon Klein, often recognized by survivors as "our own Leonard Bernstein," composed this work just ten days before his transport from Terezín to Auschwitz. It feels accessible and light-hearted, but it also includes references to works by other composers and folk music of his native Moravia, perhaps a message about the loss of European and Jewish culture.
The second movement, haunting and soulful, takes up a melodic theme from a folk song Klein's nanny sang to him in his native Moravia, about a goose grieving the fate of her babies as she falls to her death from a hunter's bullet. It's a personal and sorrowful goodbye.
The trio was first performed in 1946 in Prague's Rudolfinum, in a concert organized by Klein's sister, Eliska, and conducted by Karel Ancerl, who was also interned in Terezín. Ancerl wrote, "Where there was a valuable cultural performance, there for sure Gideon Klein was the initiator."
Concerts at 10:30am with popovers and 7:30pm at St. Saviour’s Episcopal Church 41 Mount Desert St. Tickets at the door or barharbormusicfestival.org.
Friday, August 1, Festival artists Kirsten Jermé, cello and Pyotr Akulov, piano join the Acadia Dance Festival to perform live music for “Memo” choreography by Samuel Pott and music by Rochberg, Prokofiev and Dvorak. 7pm at the Criterion Theater. acadiadancefestival.org for tickets
Sunday August 3 at 5 p.m. at the Monteux Forest Studio 42 Melody Lane in Hancock and Monday, August 4 at 5 p.m. at St. Saviour’s Episcopal Church in Bar Harbor (with a BH Chamber of Commerce Afternoon After Hours 3:30-5 at the Jesup Memorial Library). Festival Orchestra in Concert. Sibelius Andante festivo, Strauss Burleske in D Minor, TrV 145 with pianist Pyotr Akulov and Mozart Symphony No. 41, KV 551, “Jupiter” David Alexander Rahbee, conductor barharbormusicfestival.org
The Bar Harbor Music Festival Orchestra is led by Maestro David Alexander Rahbee. Rahbee spent 10 years in Vienna and mentored closely with the late Nicholas Harnoncourt, but has a more local connection. He studied several summers early in his education at the Monteux School in Hancock.
BHMF Director and flutist Allison Kiger was also studying there with Claude Monteux and the two became lifelong friends, based on their love of orchestral music. Kiger says “David Rahbee brings an exciting level of detail, scholarship, and energy to our performances and the musicians really enjoy making music with him.”
Piano soloist Pyotr Akulov is performing with the orchestra as part of a collaboration between the Bar Harbor Music Festival and the Cooper International Music Competition and their shared mission of supporting up and coming talent.
Pyotr Akulov is a native Muscovite.
He started his piano lessons at the age of four. Initially Pyotr entered the Moscow Central Music School then continued his musical education at the Gnessin Moscow Special School of Music with his Professor Maxim Zheleznov.
The 2023 Thomas and Evon Cooper Competition brought a new vibe to Pyotr’s musical growth, giving him the opportunity to study at Oberlin Conservatory.
He has been a scholar of the Mstislav Rostropovich Foundation and the NEW NAMES Foundation.
Pyotr has been involved in a variety of solo and orchestral performances in Russia and worldwide, including the Mstislav Rostropovich Festival, White Nights in St. Petersburg, The Crescendo, The Stars on the Baikal, The Rachmaninoff White Lilac (Kazan), Mikkeli Music Festival, St. Petersburg Arts Square Festival, PIANISSIMO, ViveArte Festival etc.
As a soloist Pyotr collaborated with different orchestras including The Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, The SVETLANOV Symphony Orchestra, The Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, The Tatarstan National Symphony Orchestra, The Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra, The Volgograd Symphony Orchestra, The Salzburg Chamber Soloists, The Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Macao Orchestra. He is an eager chamber music performer.
In 2021/2022 Pyotr debuted with his recital programs at the venues of the Moscow and St. Petersburg Philharmonic Societies. Since 2023 he has been engaged in a music subscription by the Moscow Philharmonic Society to perform a series of piano concerti with orchestra.
Pyotr is a prize winner of a number of international musical competitions inter alia: 2017 Zhuhai Mozart Competition for Young Musicians (I Prize); 2019 Astana Piano Passion (Grand Prix); 2020 Hilton Head International Piano Competition (II Prize); 2021 Grand Piano Competition (Grand Prix); 2021 Bachauer International Junior & Young Artists Competition (Silver Medal); 2023 The Thomas and Evon Cooper International Competition (I Prize and Audience Prize).
Pyotr will perform for thr Acadia Dance Festival Friday August 1, and the Strauss “Burleske in D Minor” TrV 145 with the Festival Orchestra August 3 and 4, and perform a solo piano recital on Saturday, August 9 at 10:30am and 7:30pm “Passion and Elegy - music of Chopin, Rachmaninov, and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet” and a Young Audience Concert on Monday August 11th featuring Franz Liszt’s Dance of the Gnomes at St. Saviour’s Episcopal Church 41 Mount Desert St.
For more Bar Harbor Music Festival information