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Marlboro Music Festival Broadcasts

Since 1951, Marlboro Music has been a mecca for musicians and chamber music-lovers. The Classical Network is pleased to announce the debut of its newest broadcast concert series, “Music from Marlboro,” featuring performances from the Marlboro archive, beginning Wednesday evening at 6:00.

The Marlboro Music School and Festival brings together the world’s most acclaimed artists and exceptional young talent in the foothills of rural, southern Vermont, for seven weeks of relaxed, inspired and joyful music-making. Concerts of the Marlboro Festival can be enjoyed over five weekends, between mid-July and mid-August. This year’s festival will be held from July 15 to August 13, on the campus of Marlboro College (a separate institution). More information about Marlboro Music may be found at marlboromusic.org.

The Classical Network has been granted privileged access to the Marlboro archives, which contain many, many performances never before heard beyond the confines of the festival, all of them featuring chamber music luminaries and stars of tomorrow.

The series will commence with “Three Marches for Piano Four Hands,” by Beethoven, with an 87 year-old Mieczyslaw Horszowski and an 18 year-old Cecile Licad; the “Divertimento for 13 Solo Instruments,” by Marlboro co-founder Adolf Busch; and Carl Reinecke’s Octet for Winds in B-flat major, Op. 216. Future weeks will bring performances by Marlboro legends Rudolf Serkin, Marcel Moyse, Alexander Schneider and Pablo Casals, along with fascinating glimpses of rising stars and top musicians of tomorrow.

I hope you’ll join me Wednesdays at 6 p.m. EDT for “Music from Marlboro,” on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

PHOTO: Horszowski and Licad, teacher and pupil, share the stage at Marlboro

July 12, 2017
Carl Orff Birthday & Rare Music on WWFM

Today is the anniversary of the birth of one-hit wonder Carl Orff. We’ll hear something a little different than his oft-performed “Canina Burrito.” Tune in to enjoy his “Kleines Konzert,” a suite for wind instruments based on Renaissance lute music. If you’re a Respighi aficionado, you’ll recognize at least one of the movements, which is based on a melody which also appears in one of the “Ancient Airs and Dances” suites.

We’ll also mark the birthdays today of Polish virtuoso Henryk Wieniawski, Czech composer Iša Krejčí, and American banjoist Béla Fleck.

I’ll have mine with extra jalapeños, please, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Canine enjoys a bean burrito:

July 10, 2017
Hans Gál Rediscovered Composer

Composer, pianist and teacher Hans Gál was born outside Vienna in 1890. He studied with, among others, Eusebius Mandyczewski, lifelong friend of Johannes Brahms and a key figure in Brahms’ circle. Gál himself became a serious Brahms scholar, co-editing the master’s complete works, in cooperation with Mandyczewski, in ten volumes. He edited other scholarly volumes on Brahms, as well.

It was while Gál was director of the Mainz Conservatory of Music that the Nazis came to power. Forced out of his position, he returned to Austria. Then the Anschluss drove him to Great Britain.

He was held in an internment camp during the war. However, before that, he had managed to make friends with the Scottish musicologist Donald Francis Tovey. And although Tovey suffered a fatal heart attack, Gál was at last able to find permanent employment at Endinburgh University. He died in 1987 at the age of 97.

Gál composed in nearly every genre. He was an influential teacher in Great Britain, and was lauded by many of the greatest musicians of his day. Yet his music and reputation haven’t really pervaded the wider musical consciousness.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear two works by this neglected composer, issued on the Avie label, which has done much to document Gál’s orchestral, chamber and instrumental music.

First, we’ll have the Piano Sonata, Op. 28, from a complete, 3-CD set devoted to Gál’s output for the keyboard. Gál was about 37 years-old at the time of the sonata’s composition. It’s sobering to think he yet had 60 years of life ahead of him!

Then we’ll hear Gál’s Cello Concerto, from 1944. Gál’s mother died in 1942. Shortly after that, his aunt and sister took their own lives to avoid deportation to Auschwitz. Unable to bear up under the strain, the composer’s youngest son also committed suicide at 18 years-old. The concerto is elegiac, lyrical and deeply personal. For all the personal turbulence and tragedy in Gál’s life, he managed to craft a rewarding and mellifluous work, which on occasion offers glimpses of his beloved Brahms.

I hope you’ll join me for music by this remarkable figure, who weathered much to create works of lasting beauty. Gál went on to flourish in Great Britain. He was an influential teacher, a respected member of the faculty at Edinburgh University, where he remained for the rest of his very long life.

I hope you’ll join me for “Gál’s Worthy,” worthwhile music of Hans Gál, this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

July 9, 2017
Marlboro Music Chamber Series on WWFM

During the final hour of my shift this evening on WWFM, I’ll be previewing a special series that will commence next Wednesday, featuring chamber music performances from Marlboro Music.

Marlboro Music is the noted Vermont retreat, where the world’s most acclaimed and most promising artists come together for inspired music-making. The festival can be enjoyed over five weekends, from mid-July to mid-August. This year’s festival will be held from July 15 to August 13, on the campus of Marlboro College. You can find out more about Marlboro Music at marlboromusic.org.

This week, we’ll hear commercially issued recordings of performances from Marlboro, including Samuel Barber’s “Summer Music,” with Marlboro wind players, captured in 1981, and Franz Schubert’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat major, Op. 100, D. 929, featuring Marlboro co-founders Adolf Busch, Herman Busch and Rudolf Serkin, recorded in 1951.

Future weeks will bring privileged access to the Marlboro archives, which include many, many performances never before heard beyond the confines of the festival, all of them featuring chamber music luminaries and stars of tomorrow.

Join me for “Music from Marlboro” beginning next Wednesday, July 12, at 6 p.m. EDT. The preview will air this evening at 6, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

PHOTO: Marlboro founders Marcel Moyse, Louis Moyse, Rudolf Serkin, Blanche Moyse, Adolf Busch, Herman Busch (with cellist Nathan Chaikin second from left)

July 5, 2017
Classical Music Honors America and Birthdays

As you complete your training for tomorrow’s hot dog eating contest and three-legged race, consider joining me on The Classical Network as we get a jump on Independence Day with Elie Siegmeister’s “American Sonata” and Peter Schickele’s String Quartet No. 1, “American Dreams.” We’ll also hear the Symphony No. 3, “American,” by Trenton’s own George Antheil.

In addition, we’ll celebrate the birthdays today of Leoš Janáček, Philippe Gaubert, Carlos Kleiber, Ruth Crawford Seeger and George M. Cohan.

I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy (mostly), from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

July 3, 2017

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