“The projectile whizzed past Tessa Lark’s ear just as she was trying to put into words what makes the Marlboro Music School and Festival here so special,” writes Corinna da Fonseca-Wolheim in Wednesday’s (7/25) New York Times. “Ms. Lark, a violinist, was eating dinner … with musicians and their families…. ‘It’s so intense here,’ [the pianist Jonathan Biss] said, … ‘that behaving like an idiot is an essential release.’ Intensity and freedom may be the defining qualities of Marlboro. (As are the dinnertime paper fights, apparently a tradition.) … The most extravagant gift Marlboro offers participants is … time…. Some [chamber] groups spend the whole summer on a single piece…. I heard some of that ideal turned into sound…. [One] characteristic of all the performances was … the way a group would move … as one body. … It took on a wild edge in the Scherzo [of the Brahms Piano Quintet], when the string players ripped out sforzando accents with the cheery violence of a convoy of bikers revving their engines. It was the body language of the players as much as the music that hinted at weeks spent not only rehearsing together, but also eating and hiking.”
Posted July 26, 2018
