Hawthorn Hill Journal by Richard deRosa

Cooperstown Summer Music Festival: ‘It Does Not Get Any Better’

Many years ago, I wrote about an encounter I had with a butterfly. While weeding, I looked up and locked eyes with the butterfly. We were caught in one another’s gaze for what seemed then like an eternity.

I had been reliving a Bach concert presented by the Cooperstown Summer Music Festival, which highlighted his Brandenburg concertos, for me one of the most profoundly moving compositions every written.

One writer has characterized music as thought expressed in music. Herman Hesse famously wrote that music is “man’s ultimate gesture.” I express myself in words; they are my music. But when music exquisitely played, as was the case several nights ago at Christ Episcopal Church at another of the Cooperstown Summer Music Festival’s concerts, it reminds me that such gestures are humankind’s penultimate form of expression.

For almost two hours, we were treated to a variety of Bach’s works, including several arias sung by two of The Glimmerglass Festival’s brightest young vocalists (who we were especially lucky to host at our house for several nights) and stunningly played violin, cello, and harpsichord solos, each expressing Bach’s thoughts with unique virtuosic brilliance. Quite a night.

This week, the last of the festival’s concerts this summer features the extraordinarily talented Borromeo String Quartet, playing works by Beethoven and Amy Beach, among others. We are so very lucky that for the past 25 years, the festival has treated us to such a fascinating array of genres and styles by some of the most accomplished musicians of our time.

For so many years we have been able to look forward to the joy of listening to beautiful, oftentimes intriguingly unique, music being played right here in Cooperstown, many miles from the urban and cultural hubs where such opportunities are taken for granted. Frankly, one of my reasons for settling here has been to escape the centrifugal pull of “culture” and its sometimes oppressively tedious trappings.

But the Cooperstown Summer Music Festival has afforded me, and others, an opportunity to experience some of the world’s greatest music right here in our own back yard. That is especially compelling for people like me, who are unwilling to trek considerable distances to attend concerts elsewhere at much dearer prices.

Here we have the best of both worlds. And it all due to the tenacity, creativity, and devotion of flutist Linda Chesis, the festival’s founder and artistic director who, along with board members and volunteers, works throughout the year to bring to this small village at the foot of Lake Otsego some of the finest music and musicians the world has to offer.

It does not get any better.

Dick deRosa’s Hawthorn Hill essays have appeared in “The Freeman’s Journal” since 1998. A collection, “Hawthorn Hill Journal: Selected Essays,” was published in 2012. He is a retired English teacher.

Editor’s Note: Tickets for tonight’s performance of the Borromeo String Quartet can be purchased at https://www.cooperstownmusicfest.org/new-events.