A full day at Marlboro

Ellen and I are both at Marlboro for the day, starting at 9:00a.m. and going until 5:30p.m.

Here is the schedule:

Friday, August 13 

9-10am: Schumann Piano Trio in G Minor, Op. 110 

10-11am: Bridge Three Songs
11am-12pm: Mozart Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, K.493 

12-1pm: Brahms Liebeslieder Walzer 

2:30-4pm: Dvořák Serenade
4:30-5:30pm: Bartók String Quartet No. 3
5:30-6:30pm: Stravinsky Three Songs from Shakespeare 

All schedules at Marlboro are subject to change, but as it now stands, three of these pieces are not included in the Saturday or Sunday concerts this weekend: the Schumann Piano Trio, the Mozart Piano Quartet. and the Bartok String Quartet.  We've never been clear about why this is the case, but it may be that these three pieces are still in the running for being included in the weekend concerts and a last-minute decision will be made about including one or more of them.  Since the Schumann is not on the printed schedule for the weekend, however, the notes prepared for those concerts do not include anything about that piece, including the names of the performers. So I'll have to see if I recognize them. 

Later:

Ah, the pianist has come out and I would say that it must be Janice Carissa, whom we heard at the end of July in the Faure Piano Quartet. She is Indonesian, and studied at the Curtiss Institute. I do not immediately recognize the violinist or the cellist. 

Janice Carissa

Later:

We heard some good sections of the Schumann but not the whole piece. What we heard was beautiful!

Coming up next is Frank Bridge, Three Songs. The mezzo is Rebecca Printz, the violist is Jing Peng and the pianist is Lydia Brown. 

Frank Bridge (1879-1941) 

Frank Bridge, Three Songs for Medium Voice, Viola and Piano:  Far, far from each other, Where is it that our soul doth go? and Music when soft voices die. (1906/7).

"The first performance of the three songs in December 1908 marked a rare occurrence, as Frank Bridge played the piano part himself. Far, far from each other is the most ambitious of the three pieces for all three musicians. The words are excerpts from Matthew Arnold’s ‘Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems Parting’. Where is it that our soul doth go? is the shortest of the three songs and the words are a translation of the last stanza of Heinrich Heine’s Clarisse, translated by K. F. Kroeker. While the first two songs are original settings, Bridge first wrote Music when soft voices die for High Voice, Piano and Cello in 1903. The present version was transcribed in 1907. Music when soft voices die: the short poem providing the words for this piece is one of the most influential and well-known of Shelley’s works."

Here is Shelley's poem:

    Music, when soft voices die,
    Vibrates in the memory—
    Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
    Live within the sense they quicken.

    Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
    Are heaped for the belovèd’s bed;
    And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
    Love itself shall slumber on.

These are very touching songs, quite somber in tone. 

 

Later:

Now, it's the Mozart Piano Quartet. Looks like Jonathan Biss at the piano. The string players I do not recognize, but they are all men. I think this is the first group we have heard composed entirely of men. 

This is, of course, a delightful piece of music. 

"Typically of Mozart in E flat, the Quartet K493 is a far more mellow and genial work with, in the first movement, something of the relaxed grandeur of the recently composed E flat Piano Concerto, K482. As in the concerto, the first movement has an almost reckless profusion of lyrical themes, which expand and proliferate at leisure. Most pervasive and influential is the theme that establishes the dominant key, B flat, initiated by the piano and immediately echoed by the violin. This idea fertilises the whole of the widely modulating development (moving from B flat minor and D flat major as far afield as D minor), where strings engage in close imitative dialogue against a background of rapid keyboard scales and arpeggios—a common texture in Mozart’s piano concertos. When this theme reappears in the recapitulation on violin and viola, with the cello following in imitation, it again starts in B flat—all wrong for this point in the movement—before the piano smoothly restores the home key of E flat. This ‘wrong key’ entry in the recapitulation demands a resolution in the coda, where the strings reiterate the theme in three-part canon with the simplest tonic and dominant harmony. 

The A flat Larghetto, in full sonata form, shares the warmth and chromatic richness of the G minor Quartet’s Andante. But it is a more intense, less decorative, movement, with an impassioned development that begins with a dramatic re-interpretation of the opening phrase—a moment echoed, with another new twist, at the start of the coda. Mozart’s sketches reveal that he discarded two drafts of the finale’s gavotte-like theme before arriving at a version that satisfied him. Again there is an abundance of graceful and piquant melody, though the movement’s chief protagonist is an idea that at first seems to be merely transitional: a brusque unison for the three strings answered by a pleading syncopated phrase on the piano. This idea is rarely absent for long, chromatically expanded just before the initial return of the main theme and, in an echo of the first movement, sounded in close canonic imitation in the coda."

I guess there is an art to writing these descriptions of a piece of music. I have to sort of smile at them though - there is something about them that is sort of absurd. 

The four men are having a lot of fun with this piece and there is a lot of banter and chatter in between movements. 

Later:

It is now almost noon, and the Mozart has been played through and they are now just working on some specific passages. Jonathan Biss is an incredible pianist. He has arpeggios in this piece that are just amazing - so smooth and effortless, up and down the full-length of the keyboard over and over. 

Coming up at noon: the Brahms Liebslieder Waltzer, which I love, and which I know pretty well, because I have sung them. Can't wait! Ellen heard them yesterday and said they were electrifying! 

Later: (2:25p.m.)

The Liebeslieder Walzer was great! I sat up closer with Ellen (I usually sit in the back so that my laptop doesn't distract anyone) and it was fantastic. The vocal quartet is the same one we have heard several times now and they are really good - they have gotten so accustomed to each other that all their attacks and releases are perfect. 

We had a little picnic lunch under a tent where there was shade and it was lovely despite the heat - there was a nice breeze. I even had a chance to go through my exercises. 

And now we are in for a real treat - the Dvorak Serenade for string orchestra. A real favorite. 

"1875 was a fruitful year for Dvořák, during which he wrote his Symphony No. 5, String Quintet No. 2, Piano Trio No. 1, the opera Vanda, and the Moravian Duets. These were happy times in his life. His marriage was young, and his first son had been born. For the first time in his life, he was being recognized as a composer and without fear of poverty. He received a generous stipend from a commission in Vienna, which allowed him to compose his Fifth Symphony and several chamber works as well as the Serenade.

Dvořák is said to have written the Serenade in just 12 days, from 3 to 14 May. The piece was premiered in Prague on 10 December 1876 by Adolf Čech and the combined orchestras of the Czech and German theatres. It was published in 1877 in the composer's piano duet arrangement by Emanuel Starý in Prague. The score was printed two years later by Bote and Bock, Berlin.

Dvořák's Serenade for Strings consists of five movements:

1. Moderato
2. Tempo di Valse
3. Scherzo: Vivace
4. Larghetto
5. Finale: Allegro vivace

With the exception of the finale, which is in modified sonata form, each movement follows a rough ABA form. It is believed that Dvořák took up this small orchestral genre because it was less demanding than the symphony, but allowed for the provision of pleasure and entertainment. The piece combines cantabile style (first movement), a slow waltz (second movement), humorous high spirits (third movement), lyrical beauty (fourth movement) and exuberance (fifth movement).^[1]

Forty-one string players performing the Dvorak Serenade -  no conductor!