Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Marlboro Music Festival

Rediscovering Louis Spohr and Beethoven

He was born Ludwig, but became recognized everywhere, outside of his native Germany, as Louis (pronounced “Louie,” as in the French).

In his day, he was as highly regarded as Beethoven. A triple threat – a violinist, a conductor, and a composer – he churned out music in all genres. He wrote nine symphonies, ten operas, fifteen violin concertos, four clarinet concertos, and 36 string quartets. Add to that, innumerable chamber works for all sorts of instrumental combinations – with a special emphasis on the harp, since it was the instrument of his wife, with whom he often appeared in concert.

Following his death, in 1859, his reputation plummeted. It wasn’t until the late 20th century that his music underwent a significant revival.

This week on “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll hear the Sextet in C major, Op. 140, by Louis Spohr, a comparatively late work, but one infused with a remarkably youthful spirit. A supporter of German unification, republicanism, and democratic causes, Spohr was inspired by the revolutions that swept across Europe in 1848.

From the 1980 Marlboro Music Festival, we’ll enjoy a performance by violinists Pina Carmirelli and Veronica Knittel, violists Philipp Naegele and Karen Dreyfus, and cellists Peter Wiley and Georg Faust.

Spohr was a friend and colleague of Beethoven. He participated in a memorable run-through of Beethoven’s “Ghost” Trio, with the composer banging away at an out-of-tune piano. He also played in the premiere of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

With their association in mind, we’ll also hear Beethoven’s Quintet in E-flat for Piano and Winds, Op. 16, from 1796, a work allegedly inspired by Mozart’s Quintet, K. 452. The 2012 Marlboro performance will feature pianist Jonathan Biss, with oboist Mary Lynch, clarinetist Tibi Cziger, hornist Wei-Ping Chou, and bassoonist Natalya Rose Vrbsky.

Beethoven’s Quintet will be among the highlights on a program to be toured by Marlboro musicians, beginning this Saturday, with stops in Brattleboro, VT, Greenwich, CT, New York City (at Carnegie Hall), Philadelphia, PA (at the Kimmel Center), Washington, DC, and Boston, MA. Also on the program will be György Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet, Samuel Barber’s “Summer Music,” and Francis Poulenc’s Sextet for Piano and Wind Quintet. You’ll find more information at marlboromusic.org.

In the meantime, I hope you’ll join me for music by the two Ludwigs, this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

Cravat-wearing clothes horses Beethoven (left) and Louis Spohr

November 8, 2017
Saint-Saëns Mozart & Marlboro

On this All Saints’ Day, we’ll have music by Saint-Saëns, to open this week’s “Music from Marlboro.” In fact, works by two former prodigies will frame tonight’s program.

Saint-Saëns demonstrated perfect pitch at the age of two and gave his first public concert at the age of 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, from the 1982 Marlboro Music Festival.

Mozart, of course, was composing from the age of five; he wrote his first symphony at the age of eight. He lived less than half as long at Saint-Saëns (who died at 86), but in his comparatively brief span managed to hit greater heights. We’ll conclude with Mozart’s Piano Trio in B-flat major, K. 502, written in 1786, when he was about 30 years-old and at the peak of his powers. We’ll hear a recording made at Marlboro in 1968, with pianist (and Marlboro co-founder) Rudolf Serkin, violinist Jaime Laredo, and cellist Madeline Foley.

In between, we’ll have “Ainsi la nuit” (Thus the Night) by Henri Dutilleux. The seven-movement string quartet was meticulously crafted by the composer between 1973 and 1976, after intensive study of the works of Beethoven, Bartok, and Webern, and a series of preliminary sketches he called “Nights.” Nevermind the prodigy status; Dutilleux was about 60 at the time he completed the piece. All the hard work certainly paid off – the quartet was embraced as a modern masterpiece. We’ll hear it performed at Marlboro in 2001 by violinists Joseph Lin and Harumi Rhodes, violist Richard O’Neill, and cellist Marcy Rosen.

I hope you’ll join me for music by Saint-Saëns, Dutilleux, and Mozart, on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

Caricature of Saint-Saëns playing the harp, by his pupil, Gabriel Fauré

November 1, 2017
Halloween Hauntings from Marlboro Music

The end of October is marked by deepening shadows, withered cornstalks, and the leer of carved pumpkins. On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” with Halloween right around the corner, we’ll get into the spirit of things with chamber music of a supernatural bent.

French composer André Caplet was winner of the esteemed Prix de Rome in 1901, placing ahead of Maurice Ravel. He played percussion with the Colonne Orchestra and trained as a conductor under Arthur Nikisch. From 1910 to 1914, he served as director of the Boston Opera. While serving in the First World War, he was engulfed in poisonous gas, which resulted in the pleurisy that plagued him for the remainder of his short life. Caplet died in 1925, at the age of 44.

As the Prix de Rome would suggest, Caplet composed music of considerable merit. Nonetheless, he was fated to be remembered for his work as an orchestrator for Claude Debussy. Debussy’s “Children’s Corner,” “The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian,” “La Boiîte à joujoux,” and “Clair de lune” would all be draped in Caplet’s finery.

Of Caplet’s original music, only his “Conte fantastique” (Fantastic Tale), after Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” retains a foothold on the repertoire. Composed in 1908 for harp and string orchestra, it was arranged for harp and string quartet in 1922. The work crackles with atmosphere, invention and suspense. In fact, the program is brought so vividly to life that one can’t help but think that Caplet would have made an excellent film composer. Savor the chill as Prince Prospero’s decadent revels are curtailed by the implacable chimes of midnight!

The Marlboro performance, which dates from 2009, features Sivan Magen, harp; Liana Gourdjia and Bella Hristova, violins; Sally Chisolm, viola; and Paul Wiancko, cello. As an added bonus, the music will be prefaced by a reading from Poe’s creepy classic.

Fifteen years after death of Beethoven, the composer’s star pupil, Carl Czerny, noted that the slow movement of his Piano Trio in D, Op. 70, No.1, reminded him of the ghost of Hamlet’s father. Czerny may not have been all that far off the mark.

Actually, at the time of the work’s composition, in 1808, Beethoven had been kicking around the idea for opera on the subject of Macbeth. The words “Macbett” and “Ende” appear near sketches for the Largo. It’s been speculated that the music may have been a working out of ideas for a proposed scene featuring the three witches. The ominous mood is heightened by eerie and mournful touches, sudden pauses and outbursts, and the use of a ghostly tremolo. The operatic project collapsed when Beethoven’s librettist, Heinrich Joseph von Collin (to whom Beethoven had dedicated the “Coriolan Overture”), begged off of the project, thinking it was too dark.

We’ll hear Marlboro musicians Dénes Várjon, piano; Michelle Ross, violin; and Brook Speltz, cello. The performance was captured on tour in Washington, D.C., in 2015. The first of this season’s Marlboro tours will take place November 11-19, with concerts scheduled for D.C., Boston, Brattleboro, Greenwich, New York City, and Philadelphia. You can learn more at marlboromusic.org.

Join me, if you dare, for “haunting” performances from the legendary Marlboro Music Festival, this Wednesday evening at 6 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

Daniel Gardner, “The Three Witches from Macbeth” (1775)

October 25, 2017
Horszowski & Forgotten Italian Gems

Okay, I’m kind of excited about this one. Mieczyslaw Horszowski was one of the great poets of the keyboard. He also happens to be one of my favorite pianists.

On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll hear Horzsowski perform music by…

Chopin? No.

Schumann? No.

ILDEBRANDO PIZZETTI. Yes.

Who the hell is HE?

Pizzetti was one of the composers of the “generazione dell’Ottanta” (generation of the ‘80s), contemporaries of Ottorino Respighi, all born around 1880. These artists of the post-Puccini generation largely made a name for themselves in the concert halls as opposed to the opera houses. That was a change of pace for Italy.

Pizzetti was best-known as an associate of Gabrielle d’Annunzio, providing incidental music for a number of d’Annunzio’s plays and setting “Fedra” as an opera. Pizzetti’s Piano Trio in A major, written in 1925, is big music with big things to say. There is plenty of drama, lyricism and warmth throughout the 30-minute piece, which is almost never heard. It was performed at the Marlboro Music Festival in 1968, by Pina Carmirelli, violin; Leslie Parnas, cello; and Mieczyslaw Horszowski, piano.

Horszowski, who died in 1993, just shy of his 101st birthday, had one of the longest careers of any performing artist. He was a pupil of Theodor Leschetizky, who was a pupil of Carl Czerny, who in turn was a pupil of Beethoven. Horszowski played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in public for the first time in 1901! He joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 1942. He remained there for over 50 years, giving his last lesson a week before his death.

As if the idea of hearing Horszowski in this neglected repertoire isn’t compelling enough, we’ll also have a young Yo-Yo Ma among the personnel – alongside guitarist Javier Calderon, violinist Daniel Phillips, and violist Luigi Alberto Bianchi – in a 1976 performance of Niccolò Paganini’s Quartet No. 15 in A minor for guitar and strings.

That’s Marlboro, Italian-style, on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

PHOTO: Mieczyslaw Horszowski (center) with Marlboro co-founder Rudolf Serkin and an up-and-coming Ruth Laredo

October 18, 2017
Viola Love from Marlboro Music Festival

The viola gets some love on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.” We’ll hear two very different quintets, composed over a century apart, that yet reveal their creators’ shared affinity for the instrument’s dark, rich timbre.

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Phantasy Quintet,” written in 1912, was one of numerous works commissioned from England’s great composers by one Walter Wilson Cobbett, a businessman and amateur musician whose dual passions were chamber music and music of the Elizabethan era. (“Phantasy” was Cobbett’s preferred spelling.) The work is full of Tudor inflections and stamped by Vaughan Williams’ tell-tale love of folk music. Vaughan Williams doubles his violas, and the instrument is heard to great effect throughout the piece. We’ll hear a performance from the 1975 Marlboro Music Festival, with James Buswell and Sachiko Nakajima, violins; Philipp Naegele and Caroline Levine, viola; and Anne Martindale, cello.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, too, adds a second viola to his String Quintet No. 5 in D Major, K. 593. Composed in 1790, the work was recollected by the composer’s widow, Costanze, to have been written for another musical amateur, 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 a performance from Marlboro in 2005, with Sarah Kapustin and Diana Cohen, violins; Mark Holloway and Sebastian Krunnies, viola; and David Soyer, cello.

The two quintets will be divided by an evocative “Elegiac Trio” by Sir Arnold Bax, composed in 1916. The work, scored for flute, viola, and harp, appeared the year after Debussy’s trio for the same instrumental combination (which Bax may or may not have known). Its alluring melancholy emerged from a world at war. Bax was especially affected by escalating tensions between England and his beloved Ireland, which had just boiled over into violence with the Easter Rising. We’ll hear a performance of the trio from 1978, with Carol Wincenc, flute; Caroline Levine, viola; and Moya Wright, harp.

Leave your viola jokes in the comments section, if you must; then join me for more exceptional music-making from the archives of the Marlboro Music Festival, this Wednesday evening at 6 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

October 11, 2017

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