Don’t let those grey whiskers fool you.
From a certain limited perspective, I suppose, Gabriel Fauré might have been considered a little long in the tooth when he came to compose the music we’ll hear on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.” But, as he so eloquently demonstrated, when it comes to art, age is only a number.
At 76 years-old, Fauré surprised just about everyone when he unveiled his Piano Quintet No. 2 in C minor in 1921. For one thing, no one except his wife knew he was even at work on anything. He was supposed to have 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.
We’ll hear it performed at the 2015 Marlboro Music Festival by pianist Roman Rabinovich, violinists YooJin Jang and Scott St. John, violist Shuangshuang Liu, and cellist Will Chow.
The program will open with Charles Gounod’s classically proportioned and wholly delightful “Petite symphonie” for nine wind instruments. Gounod, best known for his opera “Faust,” “Funeral March of a Marionette” (appropriated by Alfred Hitchcock), and for his setting of “Ave Maria,” was 66 when his “little symphony” was first performed in 1885. Though structurally the work travels a well-worn path, beaten 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. Despite its evident nostalgia, its spirit of youth is ever-green.
It was played at Marlboro in 2013 by flutist Marina Piccinini, oboists Nathan Hughes and Joseph Peters, clarinetists Anthony McGill and Alicia Lee, bassoonists Brad Balliett and Steven Dibner, and hornists David Cooper and Radovan Vlatković.
This summer’s Marlboro Music Festival will run through August 11, as always on the campus of Marlboro College in Marlboro, Vermont. This weekend will include performances of music by Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Marlboro composer-in-residence Jörg Widmann, on Saturday at 8 p.m.; and Schubert and more Widmann, on Sunday at 2:30 p.m. For more information, visit marlboromusic.org.
To get you in the mood, join me for an hour of French music that belies and defies the passage of time, on the next “Music from Marlboro, this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network.
Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page
Timeless beauties: Gabriel Fauré (left) and Charles Gounod
