MARLBORO — Since its founding in 1951, Marlboro Music has been a major influence on four generations of young musicians who have gone on to become leading figures in all areas of music.
The retreat's second weekend of programs reflects the tradition it pioneered of master artists playing alongside exceptional young professionals.
The concerts on Saturday, July 22, at 8 p.m., and Sunday, July 23, at 2:30 p.m., on the campus of Marlboro College, will include Artistic Director Mitsuko Uchida; former St. Lawrence Quartet violinist Scott St. John; violist Samuel Rhodes, a member of the Juilliard Quartet for over 40 years; cellist Judith Serkin; and pianist and vocal coach Lydia Brown of the Met Opera and Cincinnati Conservatory.
All of them originally came to Marlboro as young musicians and have returned to pass on traditions and share insights with emerging artists who have come from around the world to spend seven weeks exploring music in depth at what The New Yorker called “the classical world's most coveted retreat.”
The program on Saturday will open with Haydn's Quartet in D, Op. 50, No. 6, with Stephen Tavani and Sirena Huang, violins; Samuel Rhodes, viola; and Matthew Zalkind, cello, followed by Elliott Carter's Eight Etudes and a Fantasy, with clarinetist Charles Neidich joined by flutist Francesco Camuglia; oboist Emily Beare; and bassoonist Catherine Chen.
The second half offers one of Dvorák's most treasured chamber works, the String Sextet in A, Op. 48, written in only 14 days in 1878 and premiered by the noted violinist Joseph Joachim. It will be performed by Stephen Tavani and Scott St. John, violins; Rosalind Ventris and Rebecca Albers, violas; and Alice Yoo and Judith Serkin, cellos.
Sunday's 2:30 p.m. concert offers Benjamin Britten's Canticle III: Still Falls the Rain with Miles Mykkanen, tenor; Nicolee Kuester, horn; and Lydia Brown, piano; Bartók's Quartet No. 2 with Sirena Huang and Scott St. John, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; and Matthew Zalkind, cello; and the great Schubert Piano Trio in B flat, D. 898 with violinist Alexi Kenney, cellist Efe Baltacigil, and Mitsuko Uchida, who played the Trio in her first Marlboro summer in 1974 when she was 25.