THE BARD College Conservatory of Music, which offers scholarships and study courses for musicians from all over the world, is touring central Europe during 2013. On a snowy evening in January it made a stop in the Slovak capital to perform at the Pálffy Place on Zámocká Street.
The line-up of performers reflected the route of the tour: Pétér Bársony (violin), Ferenc Farkas (horn), Adrienn Kántor (flute), Szilvia Mikó (piano), David Adam Nagy (bassoon) and Noémi Sallai (clarinet) came from Hungary, Renata Raková (clarinet) from the Czech Republic and Rastislav Huba (cello) from Slovakia. The rest of the performers were US students of music and musicians: Robert Martin (cello and head of the conservatory), Alex Meyer (oboe), and Sabrina Tabby (violin). The ensemble was completed by Sunbin Kim (Korea), the composer who authored the third piece – and the most contemporary one, as it premiered in Bratislava – of the concert, Two Mirrors.
The international line-up, fittingly, also played an international repertoire, although thematically drawn from the region once belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the source of innumerable musicians and composers. Audiences were offered works by Mozart, Schubert and a lesser-known later composer, Ernst von Dohnányi, born in Bratislava (then called Pressburg or Pozsony) who lived and worked in the USA later in his life.
The Bard College Conservatory’s Bratislava chamber concert, which offered warm contemplation in a historical building on the cold evening of January 14, was presented by the US Embassy to Slovakia.