Great Barrington — Longtime Simon’s Rock music educators Anne Legêne and Larry Wallach will present their final faculty concert at Bard College at Simon’s Rock on Sunday, June 22. The program for cello and piano will feature personal favorites, with a special emphasis on French composers. Admission is free.
Legêne has taught at Simon’s Rock for more than 30 years; Wallach has been a member of the music faculty since 1972. The school officially closes its Massachusetts campus at the end of the 2025 spring semester.
Anne Legêne performs chamber music on cello and viola da gamba with her husband Larry Wallach; harpsichordist Mariken Palmboom; and with her sister, recorder virtuosa Eva Legêne. She teaches cello and conducts the chamber orchestra and Collegium at Bard College. She also teaches cello and viola da gamba at her home studio in Great Barrington. Anne studied cello with Jean Decroos, principal cellist of the Concertgebouw orchestra, at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands. She earned a graduate performance diploma in early music from the Longy School in Cambridge, Mass., where she studied viola da gamba with Jane Hershey and baroque cello with Phoebe Carrai.
Larry Wallach holds the Livingston Hall Chair in Music at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, where he taught for five decades. A composer, performer, musicologist, and educator, Dr. Wallach’s interests span the history of Western music, with a special focus on baroque and modern repertories. He has published articles about Charles Ives and Johannes Brahms, and, as pianist, performed all the Ives violin sonatas. Dr. Wallach was a founding board member of the Berkshire Bach Society. His compositions, mainly of chamber music, have received performances throughout the United States. He has received two “Meet the Composer” grants, and his 1986 composition “Echoes from Barham Down” won the composition award from the New School of Music in Cambridge, Mass. He has composed music for the Atlantic Sinfonietta, the Da Capo Players, the Housatonic River Festival, the Prometheus Piano Quartet, the New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble, and the Claflin Hill Symphony. In 2020, the Janacek Philharmonic in the Czech Republic recorded Dr. Wallach’s orchestral composition “Species of Motion” for Navona Records. The Orchestra Now performed it on March 3 of this year, and you can hear the Janacek recording on Spotify.
The program on Sunday features some of the performers’ favorite works for cello and piano. French composers dominate the lineup, but the duo has also included a piece by the Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, along with a work by the Belgian Joseph Jongen.
Here’s Sunday’s program:
- Joseph Jongen — “Dans la Douceur des Pins,” Esquisse (“Within the Gentle Sweetness of the Pines,” sketch), op. 51, no. 1
- Gabriel Fauré — Second Sonata for cello and piano, op. 117: Allegro—Andante—Allegro
- Sergei Rachmaninoff — Prélude for cello and piano, op. 2 no. 1
- Maurice Ravel — Sonatina (1905) for piano: Modéré—Mouvement de Menuet—Animé
- Claude Debussy — Sonata for cello and piano (1915): Prologue—Sérénade et Finale
Hear Anne Legêne and Larry Wallach present their final faculty concert on Sunday, June 22, 3 p.m., in the Kellogg Music Center on the campus of Bard College at Simon’s Rock. Admission is free.
