MARLBORO MUSIC 60th AnniversAry reflections on MA rlboro Music 85316_Watkins.indd 1 6/24/11 12:45 PM 60th ANNIVERSARY 2011 MARLBORO MUSIC Richard Goode & Mitsuko Uchida, Artistic Directors 85316_Watkins.indd 2 6/23/11 10:24 AM 60th AnniversA ry 2011 MARLBORO MUSIC richard Goode & Mitsuko uchida, Artistic Directors 85316_Watkins.indd 3 6/23/11 9:48 AM On a VermOnt HilltOp, a Dream is BOrn Audience outside Dining Hall, 1950s. It was his dream to create a summer musical community where artists—the established and the aspiring— could come together, away from the pressures of their normal professional lives, to exchange ideas, explore iolinist Adolf Busch, who had a thriving music together, and share meals and life experiences as career in Europe as a soloist and chamber music a large musical family. Busch died the following year, Vartist, was one of the few non-Jewish musicians but Serkin, who served as Artistic Director and guiding who spoke out against Hitler. He had left his native spirit until his death in 1991, realized that dream and Germany for Switzerland in 1927, and later, with the created the standards, structure, and environment that outbreak of World War II, moved to the United States. remain his legacy. He eventually settled in Vermont where, together with his son-in-law Rudolf Serkin, his brother Herman Marlboro continues to thrive under the leadership Busch, and the great French flutist Marcel Moyse— of Mitsuko Uchida and Richard Goode, Co-Artistic and Moyse’s son Louis, and daughter-in-law Blanche— Directors for the last 12 years, remaining true to Busch founded the Marlboro Music School & Festival its core ideals while incorporating their fresh ideas in 1951. and inspiration. 4 85316_Watkins.indd 4 6/23/11 9:48 AM On a VermOnt HilltOp, a Dream is BOrn The Marlboro College Dining Hall, where concerts were given until Persons Auditorium was built in 1962, remains at the heart of the Marlboro Music community. The 80 musicians, 30 staff, and their families share meals, life experiences, and dining hall chores—as well as music—in what was formerly one of the barns of the Dalrymple Farm. Everyone, even Directors Goode and Uchida, take turns setting tables and serving at mealtimes. t Blanche Moyse, Rudolf Serkin, Herman Busch 5 85316_Watkins.indd 5 6/23/11 9:48 AM p Marlboro’s founders: Marcel Moyse, Louis Moyse, Rudolf Serkin, Blanche Moyse, Adolf Busch, Herman Busch (with cellist Nathan Chaikin second from left) Marcel Moyse leads a rehearsal of the Beethoven Octet, op. 103 6 85316_Watkins.indd 6 6/23/11 9:48 AM The annual square dance at the end of the first week is as much a vital annual tradition as Choral Fantasy the Beethoven , which concludes the summer with everyone participating in either the orchestra or chorus. Softball and soccer games, as well as picnics, are also an essential part of each Vermont summer. p James Levine, Van Cliburn Metropolitan Opera music director Levine, seen here at age 13, has said that the first time he ever conducted was at Marlboro: the Cosi offstage chorus in an opera workshop of fan tutte. 7 85316_Watkins.indd 7 6/23/11 9:48 AM marlBOrO at sixty by Arnold steinhardt “Marlboro is the perfect training ground for our future musical giants.” n August, 1957, Jaime Laredo and I, two young dining room stage and implausibly gave a creditable violinists hoping for a career in music, visited performance of Bartók’s Second String Quartet. The Ithe Marlboro Music School for the first time. We great Marlboro experience had just begun for me. wanted to see for ourselves the place where outstanding During six subsequent summer, I studied innumerable musicians young and old, famous and unknown, gathered works with innumerable musicians and performed in idyllic surroundings to play chamber music all summer thirty-eight times. long. Jaime and I had driven from Meadowmount, a string camp in the Adirondack Mountains where we The images of my past Marlboro experiences come had just spent the summer. Listening to the concert that flooding back easily if I let them: Flutist Marcel Moyse, evening in Marlboro’s unprepossessing dining room, another founding member, leaning over my viola part I was struck by the difference between the two places. of the Debussy Trio for Flute, Harp, and Viola and At Meadowmount, we spent hours daily learning to play instructing me to ignore a printed crescendo. Debussy the violin as well as possible. At Marlboro, the magic of himself had told Moyse that he changed his mind about the performances we were hearing brought home why the marking. Violinist Felix Galimir critiquing bar for any of us learn a musical instrument to begin with. Such bar and by memory a performance we had given of was the impression left with me that now, over fifty Alban Berg’s String Quartet, Opus 3. He had worked years later, I can still remember the program: Brahms with Berg personally and knew every note of the quartet Horn Trio, Opus 40, Beethoven Clarinet Trio, Opus 11, intimately. Pablo Casals, the great Catalonian cellist, and Schubert Octet, Opus 166, and I remember some of exhorting me to play Bach with the kind of freedom the concert’s performers as well: Rudolf Serkin, pianist, usually reserved for gypsy violinists. Reading through Alexander Schneider, violinist, Herman Busch, cellist, Beethoven Sonatas with Rudolf Serkin in the great Harold Wright, clarinetist, and Myron Bloom, French German violinist Adolf Busch’s studio on a hot late horn. The next afternoon’s closing summer concert was summer day, all the while hoping that some of the magic also indelibly etched in my mind with a performance of Serkin’s playing and Busch’s aura would somehow rub of Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, Opus 80. Rudolf Serkin, off on me. one of the school’s founders, was the piano soloist. Serkin’s playing seemed more like an awe-inspiring act At Marlboro, we learned from these great mentors, from of nature rather than simply a fine performance. I left the inspired chamber music repertoire, and inevitably the concert that day feeling as if I had arrived at a place from each other. Chamber music taught us how to inhabited by musical giants. wear many hats—that of a brilliant soloist, of a team ensemble player, and of a humble accompanist—and it Two years later, I was invited to be a participant demanded that we be able to change those hats quickly at Marlboro, and to my astonishment, the school and nimbly. It taught us the art of suggesting rather than expected me, an inexperienced violinist of twenty- demanding in rehearsals, and the value of accepting two, to make music with those very giants. Almost criticism gratefully rather than with hurt feelings. Out immediately, Alexander Schneider, Sasha as he was of Marlboro’s fertile soil, participants not only became known to everyone, informed three of us that we were more complete musicians but many crafted life-long to study Bartók’s Second String Quartet, Opus 17, with chamber music careers as well. Jaime Laredo and I, him, a work none of us knew. As second violinist of the two young and curious kids who visited Marlboro the Budapest String Quartet, Sasha had performed the in 1957, were among those who eventually formed Bartok innumerable times. During rehearsals, Sasha long-lasting professional chamber music ensembles. In coaxed, advised, admonished, and sometimes yelled 1964, four of us, with Marlboro’s encouragement and instructions concerning complex rhythms, shifting guidance, became the Guarneri String Quartet, a group tempos, and the music’s essential nature. The three of that would perform on the world’s concert stages for the us were swept along by his energy and forceful vision next forty-five years. of the work. Not long after, we walked out onto the 8 85316_Watkins.indd 8 6/23/11 9:48 AM Not once in all the years I studied the violin did any in America solely from concert fees. There was the marlBOrO at sixty of my teachers mention chamber music as an essential Budapest Quartet, perhaps the very young Juilliard, and part of a young musician’s education. Indeed, I entered then many others that had to supplement their quartet by Arnold steinhardt the Curtis Institute of Music at the age of seventeen income with teaching and other work. “Marlboro is the perfect training ground for our future musical giants.” without ever having studied or performed even a single string quartet. I learned years later that several of my It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of violin teachers played chamber music for their personal Marlboro in the formation of many professional chamber enjoyment, but my lessons were only about the solo music ensembles, including the Guarneri Quartet. But repertoire—concertos, challenging and brilliant etudes, even more significant is the role it played in changing and dazzling show-pieces. That was fine with me. Like people’s attitudes about chamber music in general. The many of my violin-playing friends, I wanted to be the classical music profession was a somewhat segregated next great soloist. And Curtis, geared to be the ultimate place when I was in school. Concert managers strongly training ground for future soloists and top-notch advised musicians trying to nurture a solo career not orchestral players, did nothing to dispel that notion. I to play chamber music in public. They warned that it entered the school in 1954, a time when chamber music would send the wrong message. After all, those who was considered more an elective than anything else.