Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Marlboro Music Festival

Brahms’ American Sextet at Marlboro

Brahms, the American composer?

Brahms’ String Sextet No. 2 in G major was given its first performance in Boston in 1866. Actually, Brahms composed most of the work in the bucolic setting of Lichtental, near Baden-Baden, in 1864-65. This transatlantic sextet will be my featured work on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.”

Brahms, ever in love, concealed the name of his most recent crush, Agathe von Siebold, in the first movement. She’s represented by the notes A-G-A-H-E. (In German, “H” is B-flat.) The move may have been a little tacky, since at the time he happened to be staying with his other crush, Clara Schumann. But he was, after all, 33 years-old. Brahms being Brahms, nothing came of either infatuation – at least that we know of.

Brahms’ Sextet received its European premiere the next month in Zurich, but I’m claiming it as American music.

We’ll hear it performed at the 1967 Marlboro Music Festival by violinists Pina Carmirelli and John Toth, violists Philipp Naegele and Caroline Levine, and cellists Fortunato Arico and Dorothy Reichenberger.

Brahms puts the “sex” in “sextet,” 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

PHOTO: Brahms, rocking a widow’s peak, in 1866

March 11, 2020
Mendelssohn & Janáček: Youth & Music from Marlboro

Ah! Sweet bird of youth!

We’ll be casting fists full of seed and suet on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.”

Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings is still regarded as one of the most amazing feats by one the great composer prodigies in all of music. Mendelssohn completed the work in the fall of 1825, when he was 16 years-old. He cemented his reputation the very next year, in 1826, with his spritely overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Around the time of the overture – as a matter of fact, written just before – Mendelssohn produced a String Quintet in A major. The Octet had been conceived as a birthday gift for the composer’s friend and violin teacher Eduard Rietz. Rietz would have an unwitting influence on the Quintet, as well, as Mendelssohn replaced the slow movement six years later, following Rietz’s death, with a new one composed in his memory. It was in this form that the Quintet would be published in Beethoven’s home town of Bonn, Germany, in 1832.

We’ll hear it performed in a spin-off recording from the 1978 Marlboro Music Festival, featuring violinists Jaime Laredo and Ani Kavafian, violists Heiichiro Ohyama and Kim Kashkashian, and cellist Sharon Robinson.

Leoš Janáček was actually 70 by the time he came to write “Mladi,” or “Youth,” in 1924. The Czech master was at the height of his belated fame, having struck paydirt with a series of operas, including “Jenůfa,” “Káťa Kabanová ,” and “The Cunning Little Vixen.” The Sinfonietta, the “Glagolitic Mass,” and the String Quartet No. 2 “Intimate Letters” were yet to come.

“Mladi” was the outgrowth of a trip down memory lane, reflections on his younger days, which he was in the process of sharing for a projected biography. The work is a kind of musical reminiscence of his life as a schoolboy at the Augustinian monastery of St. Thomas in Old Brno, where he received his earliest education.

We’ll hear it performed by Marlboro wind players in 1997, including flutist Paula Robison, oboist Jennifer Kuhns, clarinetist Igor Begelman, clarinetist and bass clarinetist Michael Rusinek, bassoonist Daniel Matsukawa, and hornist Radovan Vlatković.

It’s an hour of youth, age, loss, gain, and reflection. Two composers exercise their burgeoning and undiminished creativity, at either end of their careers. Birds of a feather flock together, on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

BTW – Marlboro musicians will be in Philadelphia, at the American Philosophical Society, to perform works by Schubert, Handel, Brahms, and Kate Soper, tonight at 7:30 p.m. The concert is part of a Marlboro tour, with further stops in DC (on Thursday), Chicago (on Friday), and Boston (on Sunday). To learn more, visit marlboromusic.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

March 4, 2020
Mozart & Schubert at Marlboro This Week

It all goes back to Mozart, on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.”

As a boy, Franz Schubert so impressed his teacher, Antonio Salieri – Mozart’s friend and rival – that Salieri recommended him for a scholarship to the Imperial Seminary. There, he was introduced to the symphonies of Mozart and Haydn. By the time he attained leadership of the seminary’s orchestra, he had developed a clear affinity for Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor.

Mozart’s 40th was obviously in the back of Schubert’s mind when, in 1815, at the age of 18, he came to compose his own String Quartet in G minor, D. 173. The opening theme of Schubert’s first movement emulates that of the last movement of Mozart’s 40th.

You can hear for yourself, as we enjoy a performance from the 1981 Marlboro Music Festival, with violinists Yuzuko Horigome and Margaret Batjer, violist Philipp Naegele, and cellist Gary Hoffman.

First, Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D major, K. 448, was written in 1781, when the composer was 25 years-old. He first performed it in tandem with his pupil, Josepha Auernhammer.

Auernhammer was sweet on Mozart. Though the composer described her privately as “a monster,” he praised her playing, albeit with a few reservations. (His friend, the clarinetist Anton Stadler, was unqualified in his approval.) The duo performed publicly on several occasions, and Mozart dedicated six of his violin sonatas to her.

Parenthetically, the Sonata for Two Pianos was the piece that was selected in 1993 for use in a scientific study to test the so-called “Mozart effect,” which posited that listening to Mozart’s music could improve short-term mental acuity. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling smarter already.

Tune in for a performance given at Marlboro in 1975 by the husband and wife team of Claude Frank and Lilian Kallir.

The music is Frankly wonderful. Mozart and Schubert will improve your mood, if not your I.Q., on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

February 26, 2020
Grace Williams Birthday Celebration on The Classical Network

Today is the birthday of Welsh composer Grace Williams. This afternoon on The Classical Network, I’ll be sharing her best-loved music, the “Fantasia on Welsh Nursery Tunes.” This will be part of an hour of works inspired by well-known children’s tunes, including Mozart’s “Variations on ‘Ah! Vous dirai-je, maman’” (we know it better as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”) and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ ballet “Old King Cole.”

We’ll also have music inspired by the movies, including “Cinéma” (featuring musical portraits of Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Rudolph Valentino, and Charlie Chaplin) by the French composer Louis Aubert, also born on this date, and a delightful morceau by Chaplin himself. Somewhere along the way, we’ll even celebrate the birthday of violinist Gil Shaham.

At 6:00, it’s chamber music from the legendary Marlboro Music Festival. It will be a program of contrasts – literally – as we juxtapose works by birthday celebrants György Kurtág and Luigi Boccherini and cap the hour with “Contrasts,” music commissioned by Benny Goodman from Béla Bartók.

We’ll call for our pipe, call for our bowl, and call for our fiddler’s three, this afternoon from 4 to 7 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

February 19, 2020
Kurtág and Boccherini: A Marlboro Birthday Bash

On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll have works by birthday celebrants – and strange bedfellows – György Kurtág and Luigi Boccherini.

Kurtág, the aphoristic Hungarian master, was born on this date in 1929; Boccherini, the “Haydn of the Mediterranean,” lived from 1743 to 1805.

Kurtág studied at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest. It was there that he met his wife and forged a lifelong friendship with György Ligeti. Following the Hungarian uprising of 1956, he spent an extended period in Paris, where he studied with Olivier Messiaen, Darius Milhaud, and Schoenberg pupil Max Deutsch. It was also during this time that he was introduced to the music of Anton Webern and the plays of Samuel Beckett. He returned to Budapest, where eventually he wound up teaching at his alma mater for 26 years.

It is fortunate that Kurtág has been so long-lived, since it wasn’t until an age when most people contemplate retirement, in his 60s, that his international reputation really began to take off. Gradually, he became regarded as one of the most respected composers of his time.

Kurtág is a meticulous artist. His works are like finely honed miniatures. But these are not pieces for display in the curio cabinet; rather exquisitely crafted microcosms, notable for their poetry and flashes of expressive intensity.

“Hommage à Mihály András,” written in 1977 for the 60th birthday of the Hungarian composer, conductor, and cellist, is a set of twelve “microludes.” Each one corresponds to the twelve degrees of the chromatic scale. Collectively, they span no more than ten minutes in length. Individually, they are the distillation of a lifetime’s worth of experience. The work was performed at Marlboro in 1997 by violinists Robert Waters and Catherine Szepes, violist Jessica Troy, and cellist Siegfried Palm.

Luigi Boccherini composed his music in another world, the court of Madrid, where he was in the employ of the Infante Don Luis, younger brother of the King of Spain. While the Guitar Quintet No. 7 in E minor, G. 451, of 1797, adheres to Classical form, its minor key suggests, at times, an undercurrent of wistfulness that feints toward an emotional preoccupation of a sort that would later come to dominate the Romantic era. We’ll hear a 1974 recording featuring guitarist David Starobin, violinists Pina Carmirelli & Philip Setzer, violist Philipp Naegele, and cellist Peter Wiley.

This unlikely duo, Boccherini and Kurtág, will be united, paradoxically, in contrasts – Béla Bartók’s “Contrasts.” Though separated by 45 years, Bartók and Kurtág were both born in the Hungarian-speaking Banat region of modern-day Romania.

“Contrasts,” of 1938, is a raw, fascinating work. Inspired by Hungarian and Romanian dance melodies, the piece was commissioned by Benny Goodman, of all people. This trio – for clarinet, violin, and piano – contains passages of bitonality and frenzied dances for scordatura violin. We’ll hear it performed at the 1998 Marlboro Music Festival by clarinetist Anthony McGill, violinist Catherine Cho, and pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

There will be ample pálinka to offset the paella, as we celebrate Kurtág and Boccherini on their birthdays, on the next Music from Marlboro, this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

Concise, but not curt: happy birthday, György Kurtág

February 19, 2020

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS