Maybe it’s all that red wine.

From a certain, limited perspective, Gabriel Fauré might have been considered a little long in the tooth when he came to write the music we’ll hear on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.” But, as he so eloquently proved, when it comes to art, age is only a number.

At 76 years-old, Fauré surprised just about everyone when he unveiled his Piano Quintet No. 2 in C minor in 1921. For one thing, no one except his wife knew he was even working on anything. For another, he was supposed to be retired, having stepped down from the directorship of the Paris Conservatory only the year before.

Though the composer’s health in his later years was far from the best, thanks in part to decades of heavy smoking, the Quintet conveys a surprisingly youthful spirit, full of tenderness and ardor. Paradoxically, a knowing serenity hangs over the piece, lending it a kind of wisdom and balance. I am reminded of Wordsworth’s assessment that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility.

We’ll hear it performed at the 2015 Marlboro Music Festival by pianist Roman Rabinovich, violinists YooJin Jang and Scott St. John, violist Shuangshuang Liu, and cellist Will Chow.

The program will open with Charles Gounod’s classically proportioned and wholly delightful “Petite symphonie” for nine wind instruments. Gounod, best known for his opera “Faust” and for his setting of “Ave Maria,” was 66 at the time of the work’s premiere in 1885. Though the structure is well-worn, based on the standard symphonic form developed a hundred years earlier by composers like Haydn and Mozart, its long-limbed melodies and occasional harmonic surprises mark it as a product of its time. In spite of its evident nostalgia, its spirit of youth seems ever-green.

The performance, from 2013, will feature flutist Marina Piccinini, oboists Nathan Hughes and Joseph Peters, clarinetists Anthony McGill and Alicia Lee, bassoonists Brad Balliett and Steven Dibner, and hornists David Cooper and Radovan Vlatković.

It’s an hour of French music that belies and defies the passage of time, with performances from the archives of the legendary Marlboro Music Festival, this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

FOREVER YOUNG: Gabriel Fauré (left) and Charles Gounod