Now marking its 38th season, Aston Magna has forged an important and unique place in American cultural life.
Founded in 1972 by Lee Elman and the late Albert Fuller, the Aston Magna Festival (Daniel Stepner, Artistic Director) is the oldest annual summer festival in America devoted to music performed on period instruments. Among the many highlights of Aston Magna’s pioneering history have been the first performances of the complete Bach Brandenburg Concertos and the first Mozart symphonies heard in America on original instruments. Music from Aston Magna takes on tour throughout the world some of the highlights of the summer festival concerts. In addition to concerts across the length and breadth of America, international concert performances have included appearances at the Valtice Festival in the Czech Republic and a European tour of Handel’s oratorio, The Triumph of Time and Truth, on several series in Europe, including a performance at the Pamphilj Palace in Rome, where the work was first heard under Handel’s direction in 1707.
Aston Magna’s performances aim to interpret the music of the past as the composer imagined it. This involves the use of original instruments or historically accurate reproductions, mastery of the performance techniques appropriate to the period, understanding of the different musical expressions and aesthetics of the various national styles and study of the cultural surroundings and aesthetic temperament of the age in which it was produced.
Such aims are also pursued in Aston Magna’s educational and public programs, recordings and books. For almost 20 years the Aston Magna Academies brought together artists and scholars in all disciplines of the humanities for three weeks of intensive interdisciplinary exploration. A series of books based on the themes of the Academies is being published. The first of these, Schubert’s Vienna, is currently available through Yale University Press. A second volume, The Worlds of Johann Sebastian Bach, published by Amadeus Press, was just released.
Aston Magna’s growing discography includes performances of the Schubert Octet and Mozart Quintets on the Harmonia Mundi label; The Musical Offering and other works by J.S. Bach, Bach cantatas as well as Handel’s Triumph of Time and Truth, Mozart quintets and Monteverdi’s landmark opera, L’Orfeo, on the Centaur label.