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
