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Tag: Marlboro Music Festival

Dvořák & Bartók at Marlboro: Serenades & Divertimento

This week on “Music from Marlboro,” two Central European composers look back to the 18th century – in a sense. We’ll hear a serenade by Czech master Antonin Dvořák, and then a divertmento by Hungarian master Béla Bartók.

I say in a sense, because both designations, “serenade” and “divertimento,” have their roots in the 18th century as entertainment music. The classical prototypes, as they were originally intended, avoided weighty arguments, profound introspection, and showy virtuosity of the type one might expect of more substantial forms, like the symphony, the concerto, or the string quartet.

Dvořák’s unpretentious “Serenade for Winds” was given its first performance in 1878, when the composer was 37 years-old. The serenade is written in the tried-and-true “Slavonic style” that established Dvořák’s fame. Its instrumentation and emphasis on melody recall occasional and ceremonial serenades of the 18th century.

We’ll hear a recording made in 1957, by Marlboro wind players directed by Louis Moyse.

In addition to being one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, Bartók was a pioneering ethnomusicologist, who did much to expand and deepen our musical understanding, through his documentary journeys and insights into the cultures of Eastern Europe and North Africa.

He also happened to be one of the most innovative of musical thinkers, beating an alternative route to modernism through the assimilation of folk music and forging a highly personal idiom that owes little to either Stravinsky or Schoenberg.

Bartók’s “Divertimento for String Orchestra,” from 1939, is a fascinating chimera. It takes its name from an 18th century form (appropriate for its neo-classical ambitions), shares qualities with the Baroque concerto grosso (with its small group of soloists at times contrasting with the greater body of strings), and yet remains distinctly of its time. Even here, the composer’s love of folk music is evident.

The “Divertimento” was Bartók’s final composition before fleeing Nazi Europe for the United States. He was 58 years-old. He completed the piece in only fifteen days, while a guest at the Swiss chalet of conductor Paul Sacher, who had commissioned the work. Though it was composed very quickly, as befits a divertimento, Bartók left meticulous instructions for its performance.

We’ll hear it played at Marlboro in 1974, by a string orchestra conducted by Sándor Végh. Végh actually knew Bartók. He participated in the first Hungarian performance of the composer’s String Quartet No. 5.

I hope you’ll join me for a diverting hour, on the next “Music from Marlboro.” If you’re Hungary for worthwhile music, Czech it out, this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

PHOTOS: Dvořák and Bartók go al fresco

November 13, 2019
Horszowski, Pizzetti, and a Forgotten Generation

One of the greatest pianists of his generation serves a forgotten master of “la generazione dell’Ottanta” on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.”

But what generation is that, exactly?

Mieczyslaw Horszowski had one of the longest careers of any performing artist. A pupil of Theodor Leschetizky, who studied with Carl Czerny, who was a pupil of Beethoven, Horszowski played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in public for the first time in 1901.

His first teacher was his mother, who herself had studied with Karol Mikuli, a pupil of Frederic Chopin. So Horszowski’s artistry was forged at the intersection of two great traditions.

He may have been small of stature, even in maturity, standing barely five feet tall – his limited reach ruled out some of the more virtuosic repertoire – but his performance history was more diverse than his discography might suggest.

Horszowski joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 1942 and remained there for over 50 years, giving his final lesson only a week before his death in 1993, one month shy of his 101st birthday. Among his pupils were Murray Perahia, Richard Goode, Peter Serkin and Cecile Licad.

He was distinguished by lineage, longevity and legacy, then. However, what made him truly exceptional as a performer was his ability to bring out the poetry in anything he touched. That certainly proves to be the case in his performance of the Piano Trio in A by Ildebrando Pizzetti, a romantic gem that somehow rolled off the musical map.

A contemporary of Ottorino Respighi, Alfredo Casella and Gian Francesco Malipiero, Pizzetti lived from 1880 to 1968. Collectively, they formed the so-called “Generation of the Eighties.” These artists of the post-Puccini era made their mark in the concert halls, as opposed to the opera houses – certainly a change of pace for Italy.

Pizzetti was probably best-known as an associate of Gabrielle d’Annunzio, providing incidental music for d’Annunzio’s plays, setting his libretto for the tragedy “Fedra,” and writing a musical setpiece for the silent film classic “Cabiria” (after a d’Annunzio screenplay).

The Piano Trio in A, written in 1925, is one of Pizzetti’s most autobiographical pieces. The work reflects the unexpected joy the composer felt at finding love again with the woman who would become his second wife (she’s represented by the violin; he by the cello), following the untimely death of his first. There is plenty of drama, lyricism and warmth throughout the 30-minute piece, which is very seldom performed.

Horszowski played it at the Marlboro Music Festival in 1968, with violinist Pina Carmirelli and cellist Leslie Parnas.

As if that isn’t enticement enough, the hour will begin with Horszowski and the Marlboro Festival Orchestra conducted by Felix Galimir in 1982 – the pianist a mere 90 years-old at the time – in the Keyboard Concerto No. 7 in G minor, BWV 1058, by Johann Sebastian Bach.

All hail Horszowski! Mieczyslaw Horszowski plays Bach and Pizzetti 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

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

November 6, 2019
Support Classical Music WWFM ListentoMarlboro

It may be a day early for trick-or-treat, but it’s always a treat to hear from you. Have you taken a moment yet to support The Classical Network? We’re in the midst of our fall membership campaign. That means it’s renewal time. We’re also always happy to welcome new members!

Our featured highlight on this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” coming your way at 6:00 EDT, will be André Caplet’s “Conte fantastique,” inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death.”

Prince Prospero may have come to a bad end, but you can help us prosper, by calling us right now at 1-888-232-1212 or joining us online at wwfm.org.

Thank you for supporting WWFM – The Classical Network!

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

October 30, 2019
Marlboro Music Festival: Mozart, Schubert, and Autumn

Autumn comes to Vermont on this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” as Pablo Casals conducts the Marlboro Festival Orchestra in a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor.

Of Mozart’s 41 numbered symphonies, only two are cast in a minor key. (The other, in case you’ve forgotten, is the Symphony No. 25, also in the key of G minor.) This is the Mozart of shadows and dark poetry. The performance, from 1968, is a strong one, propulsive and compelling, with a powerful sense of purpose. It’s hard to believe the maestro was 91 years-old!

Some of Casals’ recordings as conductor can be a little raggedy from time to time – this was, after all, a makeshift ensemble, albeit one made up of some of the world’s greatest musicians – but any rough edges are of secondary consideration, when taking into account the spontaneity and excitement of the live concert experience. In the case of Mozart’s 40th, the players follow their leader with uncanny precision and plenty of fire.

Franz Schubert’s “Introduction and Variations on ‘Trockne Blumen’” takes its theme from his song cycle “Die schöne Müllerin.” These settings of poems by Wilhelm Müller form a narrative about a wanderer who falls in love with a miller’s beautiful daughter (hence, the title). Unfortunately, he is supplanted in her affections by a strapping hunter bedecked in green. The color becomes something of a morbid obsession. The wanderer fantasizes about his own death and ultimately drowns himself in the stream that had led him to the mill.

“Trockne Blumen” (“Withered Flowers”) is one of the last songs in the cycle. The wanderer imagines reclaiming his dried-up flowers from the miller’s daughter and bearing them to his grave, from which, he muses, they will spring afresh as witnesses to his true love.

Schubert’s variations on his own song were performed at the Marlboro Music Festival in 1968, by flutist Paula Robison and pianist Rudolf Serkin.

Remember that the first of this season’s Marlboro tours will take place from October 19th to October 27th, with stops in Groton, Massachusetts; Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York City; the Perleman Theater at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia; the Freer Gallery’s Meyer Auditorium in Washington D.C., and at Longy School of Music in Boston.

On the program will be Mozart’s Oboe Quartet in F major, Beethoven’s String Quartet in F, Op. 59. No. 1, and a work by Brett Dean, for soprano and string quartet, “And Once I Played Ophelia” – Dean’s String Quartet No. 2. Brett Dean was composer-in-residence at Marlboro in 2017. For tickets and information, visit marlboromusic.org.

It’s withered flowers and minor keys, on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.” Mozart and Schubert get their brood on, this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

October 16, 2019
Brahms: Beyond the Bearded Bear

It’s amusing that the most enduring image of Johannes Brahms is that of a gruff and portly, bearded old bear, incongruously disposed to writing lullabies.

Lest we forget, Brahms was once a slender young man with piercing blue eyes, who wore his hair long and caused Clara Schumann, 17 years his senior, to confide to her diary, “He is so masterful that it seems God sent him into the world complete.”

Also, he liked his coffee strong.

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

This is not music of wistful recollection. 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, when 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 the compliments gave way to 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 politely rather than enthusiastically received, and Clara, thinking now it sounded more like a transcription 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 he 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.

In tandem with the whole “bearded bear” thing, Brahms is generally pigeonholed as the Classicist among Romantics. With this in mind, I’ll open the hour with a work by Walter Piston, the great American classicist, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, who gained esteem as one of our worthiest symphonists. These days, his symphonies are hardly ever played (more’s the pity), but we sure do hear his ballet “The Incredible Flutist” – probably his least characteristic composition.

Piston’s 1946 “Divertimento for Nine Instruments” was performed at the Marlboro Music Festival in 1977, by violinists Young Uck Kim and Mitchell Stern, violist Karen Dreyfus, cellist Jerry Grossman, double bassist Julius Levine, flutist Julia Bogorad, oboist Roger Cole, clarinetist Stewart Newbold, and bassoonist Sol Schoenbach.

It is, after all, called “classical music.” Tune in for worthwhile works by a pair of classicists, 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

PHOTOS: Boy, Brahms… you really let yourself go!

October 2, 2019

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