This week on “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll sample from two authorized recordings made at the Marlboro Music Festival and issued commercially on Columbia Records and Sony compact disc.
Legendary cellist Pablo Casals was affiliated with the Marlboro festival for the last 13 years of his life, from 1960 to 1973. We’ll hear Casals conduct Marlboro musicians in one of the orchestral suites of Johann Sebastian Bach. It was Casals who, at the age of 13, rediscovered Bach’s cello suites in a thrift shop in Barcelona. His 1939 recordings established the works as cornerstones of the modern repertoire. Casals’ loving, humanistic interpretations of Bach’s orchestral works (as well as those of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Schumann) form a remarkable capstone to an enviable career.
We’ll also listen to Paul Hindemith’s Octet for Winds and Strings, composed in 1957-1958. The work is scored for clarinet, bassoon, French horn, violin, two violas, cello, and double bass. Played by an impromptu group of eight talented Marlboro musicians, it’s as fine a performance of the piece as you’re ever likely to hear.
I hope you’ll join me for “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
