Our Last Marlboro rehearsal!

Here we are - our last rehearsal of this season! It is a very popular event today - lots of people have come to hear the Mozart Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488 with Mitsuko Uchida, piano, and the Marlboro Music Festival Orchestra, led by Itamar Zorman, violin. They have just started, and Mitsuko is actually conducting at the moment, but she will have to sit down and play eventually. This is the largest orchestra we've seen this summer, I think. It's hard to count from where I'm sitting, but there could easily be 35-40 people up there. They do not list their names in the program. This concerto is very familiar. Here is a bit about it from Wiki: "The Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major K. 488 was finished, according to Mozart's own catalogue, on March 2, 1786, two months prior to the premiere of his opera, Le nozze di Figaro, and some three weeks prior to the completion of his next piano concerto. It was one of three subscription concerts given that spring and was probably played by Mozart himself at one of these." Little did Mozart know that exactly 147 years after the day he completed this concerto, I would be born! He himself was 30 years old, and would die only five years later.

Mitsuko Uchida conducting the Marlboro Music Festival Orchestra in the Mozart Piano Concerto, No. 23.

Mitsuko Uchida.********************************* This is not just our last rehearsal; this piece will close the Festival at the last concert of the season this coming Sunday. That is interesting, because for decades, since the beginning of the Festival, I think, they always ended the Festival with Beethoven's Choral Fantasy. The Choral Fantasy is, of course, a precurser to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and includes a choral version of the famous Hymn to Joy. They put that tradition on hold a couple of years ago - very possibly because of COVID-19: choral singing was a big spreader of the virus. Ellen and I are still singing with masks, indoors, in the groups we sing in. I suspect that if the Choral Fantasy ever returns as a tradition, it will not be before COVID is no longer an issue. I doubt that they will ever have a chorus singing with masks at the Festival. So Mozart has replaced Beethoven as a Festival closer, and no voices are involved. One of the regrets of my life is that I never sang in the chorus for the Choral Fantasy. The Festival needed to bring in additional voices for the chorus because there were not enough singers available from the Festival membership itself to make a chorus. As a member of the Blanche Moyse Chorale, I always got an invitation to sing in the chorus for that concert, and I never did. It's true that we were often on vacation in August, but not always. There were years I could have done it, but didn't. Quelle domage! **************************************** After today's rehearsal, we will meet John and Cynthia at the Top of the Hill Grill in Brattleboro for supper - a last. chance to see them before we go on our trip west tomorrow. John is in the throes of deciding whether to put significant money into his 2001 (I think) Honda Insight to get it past state inspection and in reasonably good running condition. It needs some big work like a new catalytic converter, and brakes. It is a cool little car, and very fuel efficient, but it has been a huge pain to maintain because Honda no longer makes parts for it, and everything about it is expensive to fix. The trouble is that replacing it is also very expensive. Fixing it may still be the best option. He is looking for someone who has the know-how to advise him on that issue (if such a person exists! That model car is very rare today; most mechanics know nothing about them, and/or don't want to).

John's Honda Insight. This photo was taken when John bought the car in 2019. The body is made of aluminum, so there isn't any body rust and it still looks better than one might expect.