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Tag: The Shepherd on the Rock

Benita Valente Soprano Passes Away at 91

I am so very sorry to learn of the death of soprano Benita Valente. Valente, who only just turned 91 on October 19, died at her home in Philadelphia yesterday.

Despite her unfailingly pure sound, no one could ever accuse her of lacking versatility. She was praised for her Mozart heroines. Over the course of her career, she sang Pamina 200 times, including at the Metropolitan Opera, belatedly (she’d already sung the role for some 20 years), beginning in 1973. She also impressed with her Gilda in Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” her Violetta in Verdi’s “La traviata,” and her Mimi in Puccini’s “La bohème.”

But her voice was also ideally suited to Bach cantatas and lieder recitals encompassing a broad swath of the repertoire, including songs of Schubert, Schumann, and Wolf.

She received a Grammy Award for her recording of Arnold Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 2 and was nominated for her recording of Haydn’s “Seven Last Words of Christ,” both with the Juilliard String Quartet.

Composers who wrote music specifically for her include William Bolcom, Alberto Ginastera, John Harbison, Libby Larsen, and Richard Wernick.

I was lucky to have heard her sing Handel’s Ginevra opposite Tatiana Troyanos’ Ariodante with the Opera Company of Philadelphia in 1989. It seemed the two singers were pretty much joined at the hip during that period.

But of course, it is in the classic recording of Schubert’s “The Shepherd on the Rock,” with clarinetist Harold Wright and pianist Rudolf Serkin, that she had really touched my heart.

She was married to Anthony Checchia, founding artistic director of the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and administrator for the Marlboro Music Festival, who died last year at the age of 94.

Valente was so much a musical presence – and a source of Philadelphia pride for so long – that her passing is inconceivable.

R.I.P.

Schubert, “The Shepherd on the Rock”

Brahms, “Liebeslieder Waltzes,” with alto Marlena Kleinman, tenor (later beloved radio host) Wayne Conner, bass (also Valente’s teacher) Martial Sigher, and pianists Serkin and Leon Fleisher

Handel, “Lascia ch’io pianga” from “Rinaldo”

Handel, “Radamisto”

PHOTO: Valente (front left) with Tatiana Troyanos in “Ariodante” at Santa Fe Opera in 1987

October 25, 2025
Schubert’s Light & Shadow From Marlboro

When we think of the music of Schubert’s final year, what comes across most strikingly, perhaps, is the complexity of feeling. Sensitively modulated light and shadow – the unpredictable contrasts of major and minor, agitation and calm, ecstasy and depression – create a sensation not unlike that experienced when wisps of cloud sweep across the sun on a mild autumn day. We find it in the late piano sonatas; we find it in the transcendent String Quintet in C major. It’s a beauty so intense that it actually kind of hurts.

Every rule has its exception, of course, and on this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we catch Schubert in a comparatively light-hearted mood – which I think appropriate on the occasion of his birthday – with his Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat major, D. 898. While the trio does venture into remote keys and has its share of turbulence, the overarching spirit is very, very far from the eerie resignation of “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man.” In fact, it’s a pretty happy piece. We’ll hear it performed at the 2008 Marlboro Music Festival by pianist Jonathan Biss, violinist David Bowlin, and cellist Marcy Rosen.

Then we’ll round out the hour with what might possibly have been the final music Schubert ever wrote. “The Shepherd on the Rock,” D. 965, on a text by Wilhelm Müller and Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, was composed barely a month before the composer’s death at the age of 31. The multi-sectional “lied” traverses a wide range of moods, as a shepherd listens to echoes from the valley below, grapples with his feeling of loneliness, and finds hope in the prospect of Spring and rebirth.

Marlboro veterans, soprano Benita Valente, clarinetist Harold Wright, and pianist Rudolf Serkin, set down a classic – indeed legendary – recording of the work in 1960. This live performance was captured at Marlboro nine years later. In the words of Rudolf Serkin, “An artistic achievement cannot and should not be repeated. Isn’t it a miracle that a performance never is the same?”

Get ready to share his wonder. It’s an all-Schubert hour, on this week’s “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

January 31, 2018

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