On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll travel from Saint-Saëns to Saint Petersburg, with a performance by Lara St. John tossed into the mix.

Works by two child prodigies (well, one of them “former”) will be heard on the first half of the program.

Camille Saint-Saëns demonstrated perfect pitch at the age of two and gave his first public concert at five. He was 72, at the other end of a very long career, when he composed his Fantaisie, Op. 124. We’ll hear it performed by violinist Thomas Zehetmair and harpist Alice Giles, at the 1982 Marlboro Music Festival.

Gioachino Rossini would blossom into one the most productive of opera composers, but even as a boy there was evidence of his remarkable facility and fecundity. He wrote his six string sonatas, scored for two violins, cello, and double bass, in 1804, over a period of three days. Rossini was twelve years-old. The sonatas are rhythmically vital and full of the kinds of melodies that would soon endear him to audiences the world over. We’ll hear the third of these, the String Sonata in C major, in a 1989 performance, featuring violinists St. John and Ivan Chan, cellist Paul Tortelier, and double bassist Timothy Cobb.

Then we’ll round out the hour with Anton Arensky’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor. Arensky, a pupil of that icon of Russian nationalism, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, gravitated more toward the cosmopolitan sound of Rimsky’s rival, Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky. His trio is full of good tunes, always charming, regardless of whether the music is melancholy, turbulent, reflective, or good humored. It’s the kind of piece that will have you humming for the rest of the day. It was played at the 1982 Marlboro Music Festival by pianist Frederick Moyer, violinist Isodore Cohen, and cellist John Sharp.

We’re grasping for saints on this Krampusnacht. I hope you’ll join me for the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

In the meantime, here’s a link to Lara St. John’s new “Hanukkah Carol,” co-written with accordionist Ronn Yedidia and sung by countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page