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Tag: Mozart

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
Beyond String Quartets: Marlboro’s Chamber Music Hour

String quartets, we bite our thumbs at thee!

On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we smash the hegemony of chamber music’s most prevalent foursome to bring you an hour of contumely quartets.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart spent five months in Mannheim in 1777, hoping to chase down a steady position there. He didn’t get the job, but he did receive a fistful of commissions from gentleman-flutist Willem van Britten Dejong. The 21 year-old composer was broke, in love, and, as usual, being badgered by his old man to make something of himself already. These external pressures may explain, in part, Mozart’s alleged aversion to the flute. He certainly responded to the new commissions as if they were more of a burden than a godsend. Still, he had too much integrity not to lend the works his usual polish.

We’ll hear the Flute Quartet No. 1 in D major, K. 285, performed at the 1989 Marlboro Music Festival, by flutist Marina Piccinini, violinist Scott St. John, violist Christof Huebner, and cellist Peter Wiley.

Bernard Garfield was longtime principal bassoonist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He served with the orchestra for 43 years, from 1957 to 2000. Concurrently, he taught at Temple University and, for over three decades, at the Curtis Institute of Music. He also founded the New York Woodwind Quintet.

It’s hardly surprising that a career bassoonist would write music for his own instrument. Garfield composed three bassoon quartets. We’ll hear the first of these, from 1950. It was performed at Marlboro in 2010 by bassoonist Natalya Rose Vrbsky, violinist David McCarroll, violist Dmitri Murrath, and cellist Judith Serkin.

Finally, Carl Maria von Weber earned his place in the history books as one of the progenitors of German Romantic opera. With its lurid Wolf’s Glen sequence, “Der Freischutz” reverberated in its nightmarish extravagance, making it one of the most influential operas of the 19th century.

Twelve years before “Freischutz,” in 1809, Weber, then 22, wrote a comparatively benign Piano Quartet in B flat major. His model was clearly Mozart, but already his head had grown too hot for his tricorn, as he also indulges in flights of post-Beethovenian temperament.

We’ll hear Weber’s quartet, as played at Marlboro in 1989, by pianist Igor Ardašey, violinist Takumi Kubota, violist Ulrich Eichenauer, and cellist Siegfried Palm.

Strike a blow against the tyranny of the string quartet! It’s an hour of revolting chamber music 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

September 18, 2019
Peter Serkin & Marlboro Music Festival

For some reason, I always equate Peter Serkin in my mind with Peter Fonda. Perhaps it’s because he’s like the Easy Rider of pianists. At one point, he even totally dropped out, moving to Mexico and not playing for a couple of years. When he returned, as often as not, he was a kind of countercultural champion of modernist works (he was one of the founders of the new music ensemble Tashi). But he is, after all, his father’s son (sired by legendary pianist Rudolf Serkin), so Bach and Beethoven have been just as important to him as an artist and as a person.

Hard to believe that Peter Serkin is 72 years-old today. On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll hear a performance of Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos (the Piano Concerto No. 10), KV 365, with Peter, at 15, joined in music-making by his Marlboro co-founding father.

Then we’ll keep our spirits high, as Pablo Casals conducts the Marlboro Festival Orchestra in Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 5. Schubert was totally under the spell of Mozart at the time of its composition, remarking in his diary, “O Mozart! Immortal Mozart! what countless impressions of a brighter, better life hast thou stamped upon our souls!”

This summer’s Marlboro Music Festival is about to enter its third weekend, with three concerts on the agenda. The festival’s annual town benefit concert will be held on Friday at 8 p.m., featuring music by Schumann, Stravinsky, Mozart, and György Kurtág. Marlboro co-directors Mitsuko Uchida and Jonathan Biss will appear on separate concerts on Saturday and Sunday. Uchida will be the pianist in Schumann’s Piano Quintet on a program which will also feature music by Schoenberg, on Saturday at 8 p.m. Biss will perform Dvořák’s Piano Trio in F minor on a concert which will also include works by Mozart and Marlboro composer-in-residence Jörg Widmann, on Sunday at 2:30 p.m. For complete listings and more information, visit marlboromusic.org.

For today, musicians from the renowned chamber music festival take a break from playing chamber music. It’s a well-orchestrated program 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: Young Peter Serkin performs Mozart on today’s broadcast of recordings from the archive of Marlboro Music.

July 24, 2019
Mozart’s Gran Partita Marlboro Festival

“This was no composition by a performing monkey. This was a music I’d never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God.”

In Peter Schaffer’s “Amadeus,” it is the work that threw Antonio Salieri into ecstasies. “On the page it looked nothing – just a pulse, bassoons and basset-horns, like a rusty squeezebox. Then suddenly, high above it, an oboe, a single note, hanging there unwavering, until a clarinet took it over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight!”

Salieri (the character) had difficulty reconciling such sublime music with its composer’s vulgar personality. By extension, it’s easy to imagine Salieri smiling ruefully at the incongruity of a work of such sustained beauty being identified by the equivalent of an 18th century typo – the “Gran Partita.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s seven-movement tour de force will be featured on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.” We’ll hear it performed by an all-star cast of twelve wind players – and a double bassist – under the direction of Marcel Moyse, from the 1975 Marlboro Music Festival.

Moyse was Marlboro royalty. Alongside Rudolf Serkin and Adolf Busch, the legendary flutist cofounded the Marlboro Music School and Festival in 1951. A veteran of Paris’ Opéra Comique, he would instruct his wind players to emulate the phrasings of the human voice in song.

This summer’s Marlboro Music Festival will take place from July 13 to August 11, as always on the campus of Marlboro College in Marlboro, Vermont. This weekend will include two concerts: on Saturday at 8 p.m., featuring music by Haydn, John Harbison, Schubert, and Beethoven; and on Sunday at 2:30 p.m., with music by Ernest Chausson, Mendelssohn, and again Beethoven. More information is available at marlboromusic.org.

Learn more about Marcel Moyse, who worked with some of the greatest artists of his time, in this generous biographical sketch by Marlboro Senior Administrator Frank Salomon:

From the Archives: Marcel Moyse

Then tune in and have a gran’ ol’ time with Mozart’s “Gran Partita,” on “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

July 10, 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

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