On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll take a trip to Tuscany. Book yourself a room with a view, via works of Luigi Boccherini and Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky.
Though Boccherini was born in Lucca in 1743, by the time he was 14 he was already working alongside his father as a cellist at the court theater in Vienna. He and his father made several trips to Vienna, and Boccherini made his debut as a composer there at 17.
Following his father’s death, he left Lucca for Paris. There, he found some success and his works began to be published. It was the Spanish ambassador who invited him to Madrid in 1768. Soon he was in the employ of the infante, Don Luis, at the intrigue-ridden court of Charles III. Boccherini would die in Madrid, after a series of misfortunes, in 1805. It was Mussolini (!) who had his remains repatriated for burial in his hometown. A Tuscan son interred under the Tuscan sun.
In all, Boccherini composed 30 symphonies, 12 cello concertos, and an enormous quantity of chamber music. Above and beyond the “celebrated minuet,” there are over 100 string quintets, nearly 100 string quartets, and 12 guitar quintets.
We’ll get a taste of this “Haydn of the Mediterranean,” with a performance of his genial Guitar Quintet No. 5 in D major, G. 449. This may have been the piece that annoyed the Prince of Asturias (later Charles IV), because of the repetitive nature of his violin part, which he demanded that the composer change. Boccherini responded by doubling down and actually expanding it, which infuriated his patron and led to his immediate dismissal.
The quintet was recorded at Marlboro in 1979 by guitarist David Starobin, violinists Pina Carmirelli and Joseph Genualdi, violist Philipp Naegele, and cellist Marcy Rosen.
Tchaikovsky, obviously, was not a Tuscan native. He was 50 years-old when he composed his Sextet for Strings in D minor in the summer of 1890. He called the piece “Souvenir de Florence” because he had sketched one of its principal themes – the one that would evolve into the work’s slow movement – while abroad in the city of Dante and Cellini, where he was at work on his opera “The Queen of Spades.”
We’ll hear his musical souvenir performed at the 1989 Marlboro Music Festival, by violinists Ivan Chan and Marcia Weinfeld Goode, violists Pierre Lenert and Judith Busbridge, and cellists Katja Linfield and David Soyer.
It’s hard not to lose your head over the quality of the music-making. Pour yourself a nice Chianti. All the eggs will be Florentine, on this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network.
Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page
