 | This is my post from this week's Tuesday Blog. |
Five
Years of Tuesday Blogs
I joined TalkClassical
in May of 2011, and started my Tuesday Blog a few weeks later. The
landscape hasn’t changed much – some of the TC lurkers have come and gone, but
I have tried to stay the course, though my contributions have been limited to a
few per month over the last while. Balancing work, home and my pastimes can be
a challenge!
Allow me to
take a moment to thank my fellow TC’ers – past and present – for their
continued support and readership, as well as for their (too few) comments on my
many posts. Looking ahead, I have many playlists on deck, so I plan to be
around these parts for a while yet!
An Old
Formula Returns… if only for this week
Since last
fall, I’ve been posting on TC about twice a week, and my posts have either
explored my old vinyl collection (in posts I like to call Vinyl’s Revenge)
and old downloads from defunct music web sites (Once Upon the Internet).
However, not so long ago, we used to prepare playlists based on “music
hyperlinks” around a common theme. We did a lot of those over the years,
combining YouTube videos with hot links from open source sites. One of
my “go to” sites in preparing those playlists was the Music Library of
the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, which has a very impressive
collection of live chamber performances. For a few summers, we made a point of
doing chamber music playlists (remember the Summer of the String Quartet?
Or the “In Camara” series?)
This week,
allow me to indulge in one of those ”throwback” hyperlink posts, showcasing
three performances from the ISGM, which have a common theme: musical democracy
in the form of “large” chamber works. By large, I mean something requiring more
than four players.
The works I
chose present the challenge of democracy in music in two distinct ways – are
these works featuring five or six independent performers each having
their moment in the Sun so to speak, or are they ensemble pieces, where
the individual artists forego their individual play in favour of that of the
group as a whole. You decide!
To begin, I
chose Carl Nielsen’s Wind Quintet, performed by the “Musicians from Marlboro”. This
ensemble, with a varying lineup, was created as an extension of Vermont’s
Marlboro Music Festival, offering valuable touring experience to artists at the
beginning of their careers, and for featuring programs of unusual as well as
beloved chamber repertoire.
Since their
inception, the Musicians from Marlboro have introduced such great talents as
Yefim Bronfman, Pamela Frank, Richard Goode, Jaime Laredo, Murray Perahia,
Paula Robison, András Schiff, Peter Serkin, Richard Stoltzman, Christian
Tetzlaff, Benita Valente and Harold Wright, among others.
Next, I
programmed a pair of string sextets performed by “ad-hoc” ensembles featuring
well-known interpreters. When you browse the line-up of these sextets, you will
see some names that garner marquee appeal, as well as great craftspeople, known
for their chamber play. The two works, though merely separated by a few years,
span both ends of the late Romantic period – Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir
de Florence and Schönberg’s still very tonal Transfigured Night.
Despite the fact that the artists featured don’t usually perform as an ensemble
– in fact, these are pick-up sextets - you will be pleased to hear how
“together” they actually sound!
Happy
Listening!
Carl
NIELSEN (1865-1931)
Kvintet
for Flöte, Obo, Klarinet, Horn og Fagot (Wind Quintet) in A Major FS 100 [op. 43]
Musicians
from Marlboro
Pyotr
Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)
Souvenir de
Florence for string sextet in D Major, TH 118 [op. 70]
Featuring
Kyoko Takezawa, Cho-Lang Lin, Paul Neubauer, Scott Lee, Gary Hoffman, and Alisa
Weilerstein
Arnold
SCHOENBERG (1874-1951)
Verklärte
Nacht for String
Sextet, op. 4
Featuring
Ida Kavafian, Ani Kavafian, Paul Neubauer, Roberto Diaz, Ronald Thomas, and
Fred Sherry
Internet Archive hyperlink - https://archive.org/details/02SouvenirDeFlorenceForStringS
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