Out & About
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Need we further proof the harpsichord is hot? Two early music concerts featuring the instrument that took place in the midst of Berkshires blizzards last winter each drew 150 people. A summer series — three concerts each weekend, in three different venues, over five weeks — played to sold-out theaters even on the most splendid July days.
This is the melodic state of affairs for the Aston Magna Festival based in Great Barrington, Mass. Last Saturday, it reverberated throughthe gardens and lawns of the estate where the festival was founded: the former summer home of violinist Albert Spalding, one of the first American violinists to gain international stature. Designed by Charles Platt for Charles Freer, who began the Freer Art Gallery, Spalding bought the house in 1929 and summered there until he died in 1953. His widow, who died in 1970, willed the estate to the Berkshire Museum.
Saturday’s event marked the 36th anniversary of the festival started by a New York investment manager, Lee Ellman, shortly after he bought the estate from the museum in 1971. Mr. Ellman got the idea when he saw Spalding’s studio, where the violinist practiced before his worldwide tours, and occasionally performed with distinguished visitors, such as Albert Einstein, who played the fiddle. Leonard Bernstein and Jean Sibelius also visited the house.
“The place is imbued with music. When I saw the studio, I said, Let’s have some chamber music here, and let’s invite the public,” Mr. Ellman said.
Originally, Mr. Ellman — whose uncle was violinist Mischa Ellman, a rival of Spalding’s — had no preference for what kind of music the festival would present. Instead he went about hiring an artistic director who wanted to build something, had the skills necessary to launch an educational component, and a temperament that was not too volatile.
He found all those things in a Juilliard professor and harpsichordist, Albert Fuller, whose specialty was Baroque music.
“As it turns out, I love Baroque music. But if his specialty happened to have been Impressionist or Romantic music, I probably would have hired him as well,” Mr. Ellman said.
Fuller served as director for 11 years, until 1983, organizing concerts of early music with original instruments and helping to bring the format into fashion. Today, concerts are held at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.,onFridays, Simon’s Rock College in Great Barrington on Saturdays, and, new this year, the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., on Sundays. There have also been concerts in Rome, symposia on the art, literature, and music of the Renaissance, and eight recordings.
The current artistic director is a violinist, Daniel Stepner, who is a member of the Lydian String Quartet and has taught at the Eastman School of Music.
The festival has many faithful friends who were pleased to attend the organization’s first bona fide gala. Its chairman, Robert Strassler, has held the post for 28 years. Yet the younger faces in evidence suggest that a new generation will sustain what started in Mr. Ellman’s backyard.
