This week on “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll serve up a great big musical cake for Rudolf Serkin’s birthday.

Serkin, one of the indisputably great pianists of the 20th century, co-founded, with Adolf and Hermann Busch, and Marcel, Blanche, and Louis Moyse, the Marlboro Music School and Festival in 1951. Above and beyond his own artistic achievements, Serkin inspired countless young musicians, both as a pedagogue at – and then director of – the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and as artistic director of the Marlboro Music Festival for 40 years, until his death in 1991.

We’ll supplement that cake with a little sherbet – better make that Schubert – and a special recording of the Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat major, op. 100, set down in Brattleboro, VT, right at the very beginning, in October of 1951, with Serkin and the Brothers Busch. This is music-making between friends – and relatives – of the highest caliber.

Then we’ll enjoy an additional treat in the form of Schubert’s “Auf dem Strom” (“On the River”). Serkin will join Philadelphia-based soprano Benita Valente and hornist Myron Bloom for a performance of this work that was composed in tribute to Beethoven. Ludwig Rellstab’s text was originally intended for the older master. The song was first performed on the only concert devoted exclusively to Schubert’s music during Schubert’s lifetime, which took place on the first anniversary of Beethoven’s death, March 26, 1828. The Marlboro performance dates from 1960.

I hope you’ll join me in celebrating Rudolf Serkin, on the anniversary of his birth, with an all-Schubert program, this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

PHOTO: Serkin (center) with his Marlboro family, co-founders Marcel Moyse, Louis Moyse, Blanche Moyse, Adolf Busch, and Hermann Busch (with cellist Nathan Chaikin second from left)