Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Marlboro Music Festival

Schoenberg’s Serenade: Tradition & Tone

Don’t call him revolutionary. He didn’t care for that. Arnold Schoenberg did not see himself as a troublemaker. Rather, if you could bring yourself to ask him, he might have described himself as a traditionalist who was merely extending the legacy of an inherited past. Then he might have painted your portrait or challenged you to a game of tennis.

On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll hear Schoenberg’s Janus-like Serenade, Op. 24. Sure, the Serenade contains the first published example of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method to employ multiple instruments (and human voice): a setting of Petrarch’s Sonnet No. 217, according to the composer, always so concerned with precision. In actuality, it’s the Sonnet No. 256, if we’re to go by the standard Italian edition of the poet’s works, but who’s counting?

The other five movements push tonality beyond the breaking point, true, but they are not “twelve-tone.” If you find yourself hanging on by your fingernails at the seeming lack of identifiable landmarks, it might be better for you to just let go and allow all the colors to wash over you. Schoenberg employs, in addition to a vocal basso in the three-minute Petrarch setting, B-flat and bass clarinets, mandolin, guitar, violin, viola, and cello.

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 for the fourth movement “Sonnet.” The third movement is a set of “Variations,” and the sixth a “Song (without Words).” A “Finale” caps the piece,” which, by Schoenberg standards, is fairly light and easygoing.

We’ll hear a performance from the 1966 Marlboro Music Festival, with Leon Kirchner directing the ensemble. Coincidentally, today is Kirchner’s birthday.

To round off the hour, we’ll also have a delightful work by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – his Sonata in B-flat for Bassoon and Cello, K. 292. The 1975 performance will feature bassoonist Alexander Heller and a 19 year-old cellist named Yo Yo Ma.

Ma plays Mozart, and we take a shine to Schoenberg, on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

Arnold Schoenberg: music’s menace loved his tennis

January 24, 2018
Bach, Reger & Busch at Marlboro Music Festival

On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” after being put through the contrapuntal ringer by Max Reger, we’ll definitely be Busched – as in Adolf Busch, cofounder of the Marlboro Music Festival. Get ready to breathe a collective sigh of relief with Busch’s lighthearted “Divertimento for 13 Solo Instruments.”

First, there are times when Reger’s music can be beyond rigorous. In fact, it might be better termed “Regerous.” Perhaps the craziest exemplar of vertiginous Teutonic counterpoint, he could write organ music of such density that the individual voices get lost in a tangle, deep inside a knot, somewhere in an impenetrable thicket.

However, on two pianos, it all seems to make sense. We’ll hear a 1977 performance of Reger’s “Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue,” Op, 96, performed by Marlboro stalwart Luis Batlle and a 19 year-old Yefim Bronfman.

Reger composed a lot of fugues and sets of variations, seeing himself as the heir of Beethoven and Brahms. But it is the Baroque masters he most closely resembles, in his own gargantuan, overcooked way. Therefore, we’ll open the hour with one of the Brandenburg Concertos of Johann Sebastian Bach, conducted by Pablo Casals.

Despite the fact that in most of his photos Reger looks like he’s got a mouth full of sauerkraut, he actually had a sharp sense of humor. His most famous retort to a critic came in the form of a letter written in 1906. It reads: “I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me.” Reger, you rascal. Why couldn’t you get more of that into your music?

I hope you’ll join me for performances of works by Bach, Reger, and Busch, from the legendary Marlboro Music Festival, this Wednesday evening at 6:00, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

The many moods of Max Reger (1873-1916)

January 17, 2018
Carl Reinecke: An Unsung Musical Titan

Carl Reinecke lived an unusually long life for his day. Or perhaps it is just the amount of incident crammed into that life that makes it seem so.

A musical prodigy who composed from the age of 7 and performed in public from the age of 12, Reinecke lived and worked in Copenhagen, Paris, Cologne, and Leipzig. He studied with Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Liszt. His concert tours took him throughout Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the British Isles.

He taught in Cologne, Breslau, and Leipzig. Among his pupils were Isaac Albéniz, Max Bruch, Ferruccio Busoni, Mikalojus Čiurlionis, Edvard Grieg, Leoš Janáček, Julius Röntgen, Christian Sinding, Charles Villiers Stanford, Johan Svendsen, and Felix Weingartner. In addition, he was music director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra for over three decades.

Somewhere along the way, he found time to compose – three hundred published works, including operas, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, and instrumental pieces. When he was born, Beethoven and Schubert were still alive. Toward the end of his life, he was making piano rolls, the earliest born musician to have his artistry preserved in any format. Reinecke died in 1910 at the age of 85.

For having lived such a monumental life and having wielded such an enormous influence, Reinecke’s own compositions can seem so effortless – modest, even.

On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll enjoy his utterly charming Octet for Winds, Op. 216. Also on the program will be a performance of Beethoven’s “Three Marches for Piano Four Hands,” with the 87 year-old Mieczyslaw Horszowski and the 18 year-old Cecile Licad.

Age is just a number, at the legendary Marlboro Music Festival, this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

Carl Reinecke: He had the chops – mutton and otherwise

January 10, 2018
Fauré, Gounod: Ageless French Music

When Gabriel Fauré, then 76, unveiled his Piano Quintet No. 2 in C minor in 1921, he surprised just about everyone. For one thing, no one except his wife knew he was even working on anything. For another, he was supposed to be retired, having stepped down from the directorship of the Paris Conservatory only the year before.

Though the composer’s health in his later years was far from the best, thanks in part to decades of heavy smoking, the Quintet conveys a surprisingly youthful spirit, full of tenderness and ardor. Paradoxically, a knowing serenity hangs over the piece, lending it a kind of wisdom and balance. I am reminded of Wordsworth’s assessment that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility.

It’s one of two works by seasoned French composers that we’ll enjoy on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.”

We’ll also hear Charles Gounod’s classically proportioned and wholly delightful “Petite symphonie.” Gounod, who is best known for his opera “Faust” and for his setting of “Ave Maria,” was 66 at the time of the work’s premiere in 1885. Though the structure is well-worn, based on the standard symphonic form developed a hundred years earlier by composers like Haydn and Mozart, its long-limbed melodies and occasional harmonic surprises mark it as a product of its time. In spite of its evident nostalgia, it’s another work in which the spirit of youth seems ever-green.

Gounod’s “Petite symphonie” will be performed by Marlboro wind players, including “the Heifetz of the flute” (Gramophone) Marina Piccinini, principal oboist of the Metropolitan Opera Nathan Hughes, principal oboist of the Minnesota Orchestra Joseph Peters, principal clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic Anthony McGill, New York-based freelance clarinetist Alicia Lee (Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, The Knights, NOVUS and ACME), principal bassoonist of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra Brad Balliett, San Francisco Symphony bassoonist Steven Dibner, newly appointed principal hornist of the Berlin Philharmonic David Cooper, and former principal horn of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (and now concert soloist) Radovan Vlatković, from a concert given in 2013.

Fauré’s Quintet in C minor will be performed by pianist Roman Rabinovich (top prizewinner at the 2008 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition), violinists YooJin Jang (winner of the 2017 Concert Artists Guild Competition) and Scott St. John (formerly of the St. Lawrence String Quartet), violist Shuangshuang Liu (associate principal violist with the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra), and cellist Will Chow (of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra), from a concert given in 2015.

I hope you’ll join me for a program of French music that belies and defies the passage of time, in performances from the archives of the legendary Marlboro Music Festival, this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

FOREVER YOUNG: Gabriel Fauré (left) and Charles Gounod

January 3, 2018
Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony: Marlboro Festival

With the new year bearing down upon us, I can think of nothing more appropriate – indeed more necessary – than the energetic striving and eternal optimism of the finale of Mozart’s last symphony, the Symphony No. 41, subtitled the “Jupiter.”

Incredibly, Mozart composed the “Jupiter” along with the Symphonies Nos. 39 and 40 in a burst of sustained inspiration over the summer of 1788. Though he had nothing to do with the work’s lofty moniker, it is the composer’s longest symphony, and quite possibly his greatest.

Mozart’s magnum opus will be the main attraction on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.” The Marlboro Music Festival, of course, is renowned primarily as a retreat for some of the world’s most revered artists and promising young talent, who come together each summer to explore works from the vast chamber music repertoire. Every once in a while, though, many of the musicians assemble to perform an enduring orchestral masterpiece.

Leon Fleisher, himself a pianist and beloved teacher, was forced to diversify with the onset of focal dystonia, a chronic neurological condition that impaired the mobility of his right hand. He continues to achieve much – even to the point of reclaiming in recent years some of his former, two-handed piano repertoire. He will take up the baton, at the age of 87, to lead Mozart’s “Jupiter” in an inspirational performance from the 2015 Marlboro Music Festival.

The program will open with several part-songs, composed around 1801, by Mozart’s friend and sometimes mentor Franz Joseph Haydn.

“Alles hat seine Zeit” (Everything has its time) sets a text by Johann Arnold Ebert:

Live, love, drink, clamor,
Circle with me,
Enthuse with me when I enthuse,
I am wise with you.

Haydn’s setting of “Die Harmonie in der Ehe” (Harmony in Marriage), on a text of Johann Nikolaus Götz, includes an ironic discord on the word “harmony,” perhaps reflective of his own problematic union:

Oh, wondrous harmony, what he likes, she likes too,
He likes to drink, she too, he likes cards, she too,
He likes to fill his purse and to act like a great man. This is also her custom.
Oh, wondrous harmony.

Finally, “Abendlied zu Gott” (Evening Song to God), sets a text by Christian Fürchtegott Gellert:

Lord, You who have given me life
Up until this very day,
Child-like, I pray to You.
I am much too unworthy of the faithfulness that I sing of,
And that You grant me today.

The performances, from the 1976 Marlboro Music Festival, will feature soprano Claudia Visca, mezzo-soprano Constance Fee, tenor Michael Sylvester, bass John Paul White, and pianist Luis Batlle.

Haydn and Mozart give us the strength to endure on this week’s “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

December 27, 2017

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