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Tag: Marlboro Music Festival

Brahms’ Intense Piano Quintet at Marlboro Music

Don’t expect anything too drowsy on this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” when the focus will be on Johannes Brahms’ unusually intense Piano Quintet in F minor.

This is not music of wistful reflection. The quintet is often tempestuous and even tragic, fueled by all the passion and earnestness of an excitable young man. Brahms began his quintet in 1862. He was 29 years-old.

That’s not to say the composer ever teeters over into sentiment or excess of a kind common to his fin-de-siècle successors. Even in his 20s, Brahms was too much himself ever to allow that to happen.

Instead he takes the prototype of the piano quintet – established by his friend and mentor, Robert Schumann – and fashions it into something unsettled and at times downright sublime. We are in the presence of something great, but also perhaps a little terrifying.

This masterpiece of Brahms’ early maturity began life as a string quintet, written under the spell of Schubert’s famous Quintet in C. Brahms showed the work in this form to Clara Schumann and his friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim. Both were full of praise, at least at first, but gradually their compliments became outpaced by their suggestions. Joachim, in particular, admired the work’s power, but confessed he found little in it to charm.

Undaunted, Brahms took the piece and arranged it for two pianos in 1863-64, consigning the original version, for strings alone, to flames of woe. This two-piano reworking was more politely than enthusiastically received, and Clara, thinking it sounded more like a transcription now than an original composition, begged him to recast it once more.

The third time proved to be a charm. The resulting quintet, which achieved its final state in the summer of 1864, was met with resounding acclaim. At last, the piece had arrived at a perfect marriage of expression and form.

While Brahms retains the classical poise for which is so well known, he stiffens the sinews and conjures the blood, so to speak. In fact, there are times when he ratchets up the tension so effectively it seems the music might just fly off the rails.

We’ll hear an exciting performance from the 2007 Marlboro Music Festival, featuring pianist Richard Goode, violinists Augustin Hadelich and Benjamin Beilman, violist Samuel Rhodes, and cellist Amir Eldan.

Proceed at your own risk. Safety gear will not be provided, on this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

June 12, 2019
Shostakovich’s Misery Marlboro’s Joy

Dmitri? DMITRI! Pull yourself together. Don’t look so miserable.

This week on “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll be featuring your Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor. Sure, it’s dedicated to Ivan Sollertinsky, a close friend of yours who died an untimely death, and it was given its premiere in Leningrad in 1944, not the cheeriest place in the months following a years-long siege that killed probably a million and a half people, maybe two, created subhuman conditions, and instilled unfathomable desperation in the populace.

This is the piece that lent your String Quartet No. 8 its inexorable, klezmer-influenced “danse macabre.” After all, among Sollertinsky’s many other talents and enthusiasms – as a musicologist, a critic, a linguist, a professor, and the artistic director of the Leningrad Philharmonic – he was an ardent enthusiast of the music of Gustav Mahler. Sollertinsky had been evacuated during the siege. Unfortunately, he died suddenly of a heart attack in Siberia at the age of 41.

With Sollertinsky’s death, the barricades of misery were shattered, and you mourned as only you could. It’s not exactly uplifting music, but boy does it make an impression.

We’ll hear it performed at the 2011 Marlboro Music Festival by pianist Bruno Canino, violinist Ying Fu, and cellist Matthew Zalkind.

Then Alexander Glazunov – representative of an earlier generation, oblivious, and perhaps not entirely sober – will clear the air with his String Quintet in A major. Glazunov knew you well, did he not? As director of the Petrograd Conservatory, he saw to it that you were allowed to bypass preparatory theoretical courses and enter directly into the conservatory’s composition program.

What a nice guy! Too bad you were lukewarm on his music. But you did have kind things to say about the man, and even opined that his scherzos weren’t too bad.

Glazunov’s quintet is full of serene lyricism, generously melodic and quite beautiful. Then again, Glazunov never had to worry about Nazis and probably never had to eat anyone to survive. We’ll hear it performed at Marlboro in 1982, with violinists Sylvie Gazeau and Ernestine Schor, violist Toby Hoffman, and one-and-future cellists of the Guarneri Quartet, David Soyer and Peter Wiley.

That’s a dazed piano trio, with a glaze of Glazunov, on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

RAINY DAY ACTIVITY: Post your most miserable photo of Shostakovich in the comments section below.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

PHOTOS: Sollertinsky (upper left) and the many moods of Shostakovich

June 5, 2019
Schoenberg, Paganini & Marlboro Music

Arnold Schoenberg’s “Serenade,” Op. 24, puts me in the mind of Lorca’s weeping guitar.

Schoenberg employs the guitar as part of a loony ensemble that also includes two clarinets, mandolin, violin, viola, cello, and – in the work’s most prescient movement – voice.

On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll hear this Janus-like piece. The Serenade may contain the first published example of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method to employ multiple instruments (with voice) – a three-minute setting of a Petrarch sonnet – but of the other five movements, though they may push tonality beyond the breaking point, none of them are actually “twelve-tone.”

If you find yourself hanging on by your fingernails at the seeming lack of identifiable landmarks, it might be better to just let go and allow all the colors to wash over you.

The composer looks back to classical form through the use of repetitions in the opening “March,” the second movement “Minuet,” and the fifth movement “Dance Scene.” There is also a seeming affirmation of the past through the deliberate choice of Petrarch as a source of inspiration. The third movement is a set of “Variations,” and the sixth a “Song (without Words).” A “Finale” caps the piece,” which, all in all – by Schoenberg standards – is fairly light and easygoing.

We’ll hear a performance from the 1966 Marlboro Music Festival. Guitarist Stanley Silverman is one with an ensemble that also includes violinist Jaime Laredo, violist Samuel Rhodes, cellist Madeline Foley, B-flat clarinetist Harold Wright, bass clarinetist Don Stewart, mandolinist Jacob Glick, and (singing Petrarch) bass Thomas Paul. Leon Kirchner directs.

The guitar moves to the front and center in Niccolò Paganini’s Quartet No. 15 in A minor. Paganini, of course, was one of the great violinists – some posit, the greatest who ever lived – but he was also an exceptional guitarist. He composed 15 quartets for guitar and strings.

The last of these is from 1820. We’ll hear it performed in 1976, by guitarist Javier Calderon, violinist Daniel Phillips, and violist Luigi Alberto Bianchi. The cellist, 20 years-old at the time, is Yo-Yo Ma.

Marlboro musicians get a chance to exhibit their pluck, on this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

In a 1930 poll conducted by the Viennese newspaper Neues Wiener Tagblatt, Arnold Schoenberg and Erich Wolfgang Korngold were elected two of the most influential Austrian composers of their time. The two artists couldn’t be more different, of course – Schoenberg, the godfather of dodecaphonic music, and Korngold, the progenitor of the “Hollywood sound.” Tune in a little early, at 4:00 EDT, to enjoy some of Korngold’s music, on his birthday. I’ll also be talking with Leon Botstein about this summer’s Bard Music Festival, at Bard College. The focus of this year’s festival will be on “Korngold and His World.”

May 29, 2019
Mozart’s Genius at Marlboro Music

“The most tremendous genius raised Mozart above all masters, in all centuries and in all the arts.”

– Richard Wagner

So glad to hear you say that, Richie. Then you won’t mind if we enjoy an all-Mozart hour for your birthday, on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.”*

Mozart doubles the violas in his String Quintet No. 5 in D Major, K. 593. Composed in 1790, the work was recollected by the composer’s widow, Constanze, as having been written for a musical amateur, often speculated to be Johann Trost. Trost must have been quite the gifted dilettante. He also knew Haydn from Esterhaza, and Haydn dedicated some of his quartets to him.

When Haydn and Mozart played through the D Major Quintet together before Haydn’s first visit to London, the two men took turns indulging in the first viola part. The work was known for centuries as the “Zigzag” because of an alteration to the original manuscript that modified what had been a descending chromatic figure in the final movement into something decidedly more humorous.

We’ll hear it played at the 2005 Marlboro Music Festival by Sarah Kapustin and Diana Cohen, violins; Mark Holloway and Sebastian Krunnies, violas; and David Soyer, cello.

Mozart wrote his Symphony No. 35 in 1782. Subtitled the “Haffner,” it is not to be confused with his “Haffner Serenade,” though both works had their origins in commissions from the eminent Haffner family of Salzburg.

The “Serenade” was composed in 1776 to celebrate the wedding of Marie Elisabeth Haffner. A second serenade was written four years later for her brother, Mozart’s friend, Sigmund Haffner the Younger, for the occasion of his ennoblement. Mozart complained to his father at the time that he was “up to his eyeballs in work.” On top of his usual teaching obligations, he was pressed to complete an arrangement of his opera “The Abduction from the Seraglio,” even as he was looking to move into a house in Vienna prior to his marriage to Constanze Weber. Nevertheless, he began churning out music, sending it piecemeal to his father.

It was only later, when Mozart found a moment of calm, that he was able to take a look at what he had actually written and realized that it wasn’t half bad. He arranged material from this second “Haffner” serenade and expanded the orchestration to create what we now know as the “Haffner” Symphony – his Symphony No. 35 – in 1783.

We’ll hear an inspired performance of the work, featuring an ad hoc orchestra under the direction of Pablo Casals. Together, they manage to convey joy, intimacy, and exuberance in a cherishable recording from the 1967 Marlboro Music Festival.

Get the most from Mozart, on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

(*For all you Wagnerites, tune in a little early to enjoy some of HIS music between 4 and 6!)

May 22, 2019
Strauss, Busch & Marlboro’s Divergent Paths

On the next “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll have works by two German composers who traveled widely divergent paths.

As the aging elder statesman of Romantic opulence, Richard Strauss was in his late 60s when the Nazis seized control of Germany in 1933. He was 75 at the outbreak of World War II. Controversially, he remained at home, hoping to preserve and promote German music (including his own) and to shield his Jewish daughter-in-law and grandchildren. While comprehending Strauss’ importance as a propaganda tool, Goebels wasn’t actually fond of his music, referring to him privately as a “decadent neurotic.”

All that was still decades in the future at the time Strauss wrote his Piano Quartet in C minor, in 1883-84, at the tender age of 20. Interestingly, for a composer who became celebrated for the apotheosis of the lavish tone poem, Strauss here channels his admiration for Johannes Brahms, and in a genre not generally associated with a follower of the post-Wagnerian “New Music School.” Brahms was at the height of his fame while the young Strauss was living in Berlin. In fact, Strauss attended the premiere of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony, following his appointment as music director in Meiningen at 21.

We’ll hear Strauss’ quartet, performed at the 1972 Marlboro Music Festival, with Walter Klien at the keyboard, in his early 40s and at the peak of his pianistic powers. The string players will include violinist Edith Peinemann, violist Philipp Naegele, and cellist Miklós Perènyi.

Violinist Adolf Busch lived with his family – and friend, future son-in-law Rudolf Serkin – in Berlin in the 1920s, as Serkin established himself as one of Europe’s outstanding young pianists. The musicians remained in Germany until 1927. The much-respected Busch, who was not Jewish, vehemently opposed the National Socialists. He was one of the first prominent non-Jews to do so. With the rise of Hitler, Serkin and the Busches relocated to Switzerland. Busch repudiated Germany entirely in 1933.

He and Serkin arrived in the United States, with the rest of Busch’s family, in 1938, with Europe on the brink of war. They settled in Vermont in the 1940s. There, alongside flutist Marcel Moyse, they founded the Marlboro Music School and Festival in 1951, having successfully eluded the horrors that had claimed so many others to create something of lasting beauty – a chamber music retreat in what must have seemed like a bucolic paradise.

In addition to being one of the great violinists, Busch was also a talented composer. We’ll hear his “Divertimento for 13 Solo Instruments,” from 1925, in a 1982 recording featuring Marlboro musicians: Isidore Cohen and Irene Serkin, violins; Caroline Levine, viola; Robie Brown Dan, cello; Carolyn Davis, double bass; Odile Renault, flute; Rudolph Vrbsky, oboe; Cheryl Hill, clarinet; Stefanie Przybylska, bassoon; Robin Graham and Stewart Rose, French Horns; Henry Nowak, trumpet; and Neil Grover, timpani, all under the direction of Sol Schoenbach.

The path of least resistance leads to misery, on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

More about Strauss’ complicated relationship with the Third Reich here:

http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/politics-and-propaganda/third-reich/reichskulturkammer/strauss-richard/

PHOTO: Adolf Busch and Rudolf Serkin in 1928

May 8, 2019

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