>> From the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. >> Anne E. McLean: Good evening. I'm Anne McLean from the library's music division. Tonight we are very pleased to presenting -- to be presenting the first of two concerts features the musicians from Marlboro. And as you'll hear in a conversation, the Marlboro Festival and its extraordinary musicians are very much a part of our concert history here at the Library of Congress. With these two concerts, we're celebrating the 65th anniversary of the festival, founded in 1951 by legendary artist presented here in the Coolidge many, many times in the past century. Adolf Busch and his brother Hermann Busch, Rudolf Serkin, Marcel Moyse and his wife, Blanche Honegger Moyse and their son, Louis. And I'd like to introduce three wonderful artists who are continuing to Marlboro tradition, cellist Marcy Rosen, who's appeared her a number of times and violinist, David McCarroll and Emilie-Anne Gendron. Also with us is a good friend and colleague, Michael Wilpers, who is a performing arts programmer for the Bill and Mary Meyer Concert Series at the Smithsonian's Freer and Sackler Galleries. We are really delighted that Michael had been very interested with us in the idea of a joint presentation for the Marlboro concerts this season, which has a particular resonance for our 90th anniversary. We had the idea to join forces this very informal talk, inspired by all the warm relationships that grew out of the founding artist friendships and connections. And we'd like to talk about how so many Marlboro influences have helped to shape the practice and the performance of chamber music over the past six and a half decades. In fact, that story of Marlboro is really the story of chamber music in America. Something the library and the Freer both have a long perspective on. And both our organizations have been a part of that story since its beginning. The first concert sponsored here in Washington by our founder, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, were presented at the Freer in February 1924. Before we look at some of this history, including the American debut by Serkin and Busch here in 1933, we wanted to talk with the artists and set the scene a little bit about the current Marlboro life and talk about your experience. Michael, you had a question on this for them. >> Michael Wilpers: Well, one of the things, I had a chance to visit Marlboro finally a couple summers ago and I discovered that for me, it felt so much more like a retreat than a festival in the conventional sense because it's so far away out in the mountains and the woods. And it -- what came to life for me were quotes I had already read on the anniversaries of Marlboro by so many of the artists -- was the unique opportunity for some of the young artists, not knowing how unique it was, to spend very extended lengths of time on individual pieces in rehearsal. There's often reiterated quote in some of the literature by a young artist who went to Marlboro and thought, "I've made the right career decision. This is wonderful, we get to work on pieces for weeks and weeks and then perform them in public, only when they're perfect." And only after leaving Marlboro and then finally launching onto a music career, getting invited to a symphony orchestra to play a concerto, found out that he gets one rehearsal and then we go onstage. And this was somewhat of a crushing disappointment and a slap of reality, but it's -- everyone at Marlboro speaks about the -- the richness in interpretation and insight into a piece, shared insight perfection of a piece through all the time that's spent together on them. So I was hoping that each of you might reflect on some of the ways of which that much time on a piece with such great musicians has created memorable insights and routinely gives you a much, much deeper knowledge and awareness of a piece. >> Marcy Rosen: Well, I guess I'll start. First of all, nothing's ever perfect. But we do have an incredible luxury of time to spend there and through -- when you -- and I have a saying that I like to say, which is that when you learn something at Marlboro, you know it for your lifetime. And that's true of any piece that I worked on there as a -- as a student starting back many years ago. And the things and the pieces that I've explored in the time that I've come back and been one of the old people, it's been really incredible. David and I have spent a lot of time together there. We have the luxury of working on two of Beethoven's late quartets, the Opus 130 with the fugue and then the next summer we did Opus 131. And we spent seven weeks on each of those pieces and we had an incredible time exploring that and learning that, and being inspired not just by our own work with it, but by input that we got from other people that were at the festival, like Michael Tree and Arnold Steinhardt. And so we had great lessons with those people and I think that the idea of sharing ideas is what Marlboro is really about, also learning how to vocalize your own ideas. And I think that's really the main gift that we're given at -- at the festival. And so, it's -- it is called a festival, it is a retreat, we all live together, we all eat together, we all get crazy together and we all get really grumpy together, a few. So everybody -- you have to learn to live with the moods and you -- and live in close quarters and now we have the outlets of computers and cell phones, which when I was there as a kid, we didn't have that. There was one payphone in each dorm and I -- we used to write letters. Remember how we used to write letters? Yeah, such a luxury, that's also something that we don't do anymore, but it's a -- it's a great place to -- to be nurtured in a musical way. >> David McCarroll: As Marcy said everything so beautifully, it's hard to add. But one thing I would add is just the -- the place itself, the nature I think is very important to it, that it's not -- you don't realize the hectic pace of life that you know is going on, you know, for seven weeks at the same time, but you're just so far away from that. And that, you know, I often think about this, that life is sort of getting a, you know, faster and faster pace, almost uncontrollably so. And it's just -- obviously when it was founded 65 years ago, probably, you know, Serkin could never even imagined how -- how valuable it is today to have seven weeks just away from everything, just to focus on music. You don't even have to worry about food or anything, you -- you know, get up in the morning, you walk to rehearsal, you have -- have meals with your colleagues and friends and then you go back to rehearsing and this just happens over and over for seven weeks. And so, inevitably something special comes out of that -- that process. >> Emilie-Anne Gendron: Yeah, I mean, all these things I fully agree with and yeah, the only thing I guess I could add is -- well, I guess a couple things. First of all, Michael, you mentioned the -- the hypothetical case of the young person who has the slap in the face of reality. And, you know, after having spent such luxury of time of working on pieces and, it's funny, I think about that because my experience coming to Marlboro was actually kind of the opposite of that because I was sort of -- well, my time at Marlboro was spent like in my -- my late 20's basically. So I'd already sort of been out of school and, you know, working and doing concerts and, you know, I -- by the time I was at Marlboro, like in my daily life during the year, I knew pretty well how to put something together pretty quickly and to, you know, create the illusion that I knew it as well as I possibly did. But -- but it was actually kind of an enlightening and completely shattering experience for me to have these years -- these summers at Marlboro where I didn't have to feel that, like I was constantly under the gun of having to, you know, put something together really quickly and just sort of like make the product. It -- it wasn't about that, it was really just about the exchange of these ideas and how to vocalize them, as Marcy said. And, you know -- yeah, the luxury of time, it really taught me something about what it means to approach music just -- not as a vocation, but as a thinking musician who, you know, lives these pieces time and time again. And that's actually one of the big privileges of having pieces selected for these musicians from Marlboro tours that, you know, we had the luxury of spending such time on them, so much time, you know, in a past summer and then we have time away from it for, you know, well, in this case, like two years. And then we came back to it and the insights and the things, at least for myself, that I -- that I -- that came forth when I sort of studied it a second time, you know, that was also like very eye-opening to just have -- yeah, the luxury of time, but then also time away from it. And then, I'm speaking specifically about the Penderecki piece, which will be featured tonight. >> Marcy Rosen: The tours are always set up around a work that gets what supposedly is an extraordinary performance at the festival, so we don't like to think that we do things that -- on that level all the time. But, so we -- we did a nice performance of the Penderecki at Marlboro and Mr. Penderecki was there and we worked with him. And it's a -- actually a really, incredibly wonderful piece, which I know you'll enjoy. It's very atmospheric, very -- well, Emilie describes it very well. She'll -- she'll talk about that later, but it's a really beautiful and very accessible piece with gorgeous textures and colors, so it's moving. And I think the program that we built around it also enhances that, so the program's -- the program fits together in a really lovely way. But actually none of the pieces ends with a big loud chord, everything -- everything ends softly, so that's -- that's something actually -- I actually really like. It requires a different attention and a different reaction from -- from all of you. >> Michael Wilpers: If I could follow up with one more question about the experience at Marlboro. One thing you learn when you're visiting there, spending time there is egalitarian philosophy. There -- there are words I used when I was there that I learned quickly not to use and I wish I could remember what they were. It might have been, you know, master musician and student or faculty and student, certain words like that, but those are really -- you leave them at the door, maybe senior artists' use -- >> Marcy Rosen: We're called senior members, but -- >> Michael Wilpers: -- senior members, yes. But I was going to -- what I was going to get to is when you're rehearsing, you know, [inaudible], many of us have probably seen master classes where there's no question, in fact, that's the whole point that the master is putting the student in their place at many -- in a lot of -- often enough. But I wonder if in these long -- long weeks of rehearsal, how you negotiate between the musicians who have been around and played the piece for decades, and young musicians coming in who are extremely talented, but don't have that depth of experience and yet, the ideal is you share reflections and input equally. So I just wonder if you could tell a few anecdotes or make some generalities about how that plays out over the weeks. >> Marcy Rosen: Well, I think it's -- I mean, I'll speak -- I can only speak for myself, but I think it's different with each senior. I -- you know, everybody runs their groups a little differently and I can tell you in -- in the years that I was there with what people that I consider my mentors, I pretty much did everything they told me to do. And -- and I really learned from that and I wanted to do that, I wanted to hear Felix Galimir tell me what to do. And I wanted to take in his -- and I wanted to soak it up and -- and in fact, the soaking up of the knowledge and the education that I had from Felix Galimir and Philipp Naegele and Pina Carmirelli and [inaudible] and Rudolf Serkin and Sasha Schneider and Mischa Schneider and all these, you know, the list is humongous. And I was privileged to get to work with them, that's the whole reason I went back was because I felt I wanted to pass their -- I didn't want their knowledge to die and I wanted to pass it -- pass it on. And so I'm like the next step to keeping some of those traditions alive. And I want those traditions to be carried on and so I tried to -- I don't teach in these things, but you know, I think just that -- just sometimes I'll say something that will inspire people or the idea will come out in a good way and that's all its doing. I think we're just all working together, but believe me, it's a privilege for me to work with Emilie, and David, and Danny, and Anthony, who I also knew when he was much younger and it keeps you on your toes. I mean, I have to play my best to play with these guys and it's -- it's really a privilege. >> Anne E. McLean: I think another thing that you guys always touch on is the Marlboro tradition of being faithful to the work itself. And I was reading to -- reading about Serkin learning this from Schoenberg. He was involved with Schoenberg's Society for Private Music in Vienna, but they had a very close affinity for study of the text. And maybe this is a -- we could segue and look at a couple of items here, see if our PowerPoint works. Serkin was -- was 17 when he met Adolf Busch and later married his daughter, Irene -- that's correct. >> Marcy Rosen: Irene. >> Anne E. McLean: Irene -- and they came to the United States very early in -- our association was in 1933, but let's see if we can pull up just a quick bunch of images. We'll flip through them and then we have a picture of the first program. Oh, we already have this one on there. Okay, great. Well, these are the founders. This photo shows one unidentified man, but there's Moyse, a woodwind guru, flutist and these are -- as you say, these were artists who knew many of the composers. Moyse, for example, knew [inaudible] and a lot of famous artists. Felix Galimir played with Ravel and, you know, this -- this lore, as you say, was passed on a great deal. His wife, there's Hermann Busch, the cellist and conductor, who was also part of Busch's string quartet, which played here very early on. Let's see, just some quick images of Serkin, the animating spirit, that they say, of Marlboro. This is a CD which you can buy, it's on the open market and it has some wonderful recordings from our archives that they -- some -- and some from other sources, but some from our archives too, which is great. Moyse in rehearsal. David Sawyer, yeah. The Casals, maybe you want to say anything about the Casals tradition at Marlboro? >> Marcy Rosen: Well, unfortunately he died just before I went, so I never had any exposure to him. But certainly the Schneider's kept his -- his way of -- way of doing things alive for a long, long time. And there is a long history of Casals doing master classes and teaching and conducting and so, that -- that -- some things have evolved and gone on. And so, unfortunately Casals was a little bit back in the 70's now and, you know, it's -- it's sad, but true, you can still find wonderful videos and stuff of him. They have -- there's a whole collection of his master classes -- >> Anne E. McLean: And recordings. >> Marcy Rosen: -- at Marlboro. >> Anne E. McLean: Yeah, I think -- were they part of the collection on Bridge where I think a couple [inaudible] -- >> Marcy Rosen: I think so, yeah. >> Anne E. McLean: -- the 50th anniversary release on Bridge. And I remember reading a comment about Casals saying that he worked with orchestras to teach them to play repertoire as chamber music pieces -- interesting. Mitsuko Uchida and Richard Goode, the two co-directors for awhile now. Mitsuko is the main director, sole director. This is just a fun, beautiful little illustration. It's a great article, The Music Mountain , an Alex Ross article if you'd like to read more about Marlboro. These are -- yeah, from the -- >> Marcy Rosen: Thank goodness I'm not wearing the same thing tonight. [ Laughter ] >> Anne E. McLean: And formal nice things. Sam Rhodes from the Juilliard Quartet. That's another thing we could talk about a lot is how the influence of Marlboro percolates out through so many ensembles, even for example, your quarter. You want to say something about the Momenta Quartet and you studied the Koussevitzky work that you mentioned earlier? >> Emilie-Anne Gendron: Oh yeah, well, we were emailing before, today, and -- yeah, I just -- well, I was just thinking in my head, what is, you know, what are the connections that I -- that I know of between like -- yeah, just Marlboro and the Koussevitzky legacy. And, I mean, first of all like if you look down -- if you just like skim the list of, you know, all of the Koussevitzky commissions that have been awarded, it's like every major name of the 20th and 21st Century compositionally. And some of the greatest works of our time have come out of the Koussevitzky commission and -- yeah, my quartet -- Momenta Quartet, we have had the great honor of having two Koussevitzky commissioned pieces written for us. One by Kyung Chung, who is a Malaysia-based composer and one by Augustine Fernandez, who is a Bolivian composer based in the U.K. now. And yeah, I was thinking just, you know, about what are some of the other pieces, you know, that I know of chamber wise that are Koussevitzky related and I immediately thought of [inaudible] which is one of the cornerstones of the 20th Century quartet literature. It's an amazing work and I realized that -- my quartet plays it a lot now and I realized that I got my start -- the reason I really love this piece is because I spent like six weeks working on it at Marlboro like four or five years ago. And it's -- yeah, well, that's an amazing piece. But there is so much amazing music that has come out -- that has percolated out of, you know, the Koussevitzky legacy and a lot of these composers have been studied -- these composers and these works have been studied for many, many weeks of -- on end at Marlboro. So, it's a nice connection. >> Anne E. McLean: You know, one of the things that we talked about a little bit was how people don't think of modern music so much at Marlboro as I think of the great masters, but I think that's really wrong. I think you guys have studied a lot and the tradition of studying these scores, I mean, is a major part of your tradition. >> Marcy Rosen: We have a composer in residence every year. I mean, I'm -- I'm often involved in -- in those pieces, I don't know why, but I am. They make me [laughter]. But [inaudible] has been there a couple of times, Mr. Penderecki was there, [inaudible] has been there. Next year, Sofia Gubaidulina is coming, which is kind of incredible. >> Anne E. McLean: Nice. >> Marcy Rosen: She never goes anywhere, yeah, really like, she literally never goes anywhere. So it's really like a -- I think -- I think they're like going to like put her in a little box and preserve her and bring her over because she's 90 something, or yeah. We hope that she is in good health for the summer. So there's a huge, huge -- and it's -- and it's becoming more and more. We do -- we do more things. Thomas Ades was there and -- >> David McCarroll: I just wanted to add, also one of my best experiences at Marlboro was actually working with Sam Rhodes on Carter, clarinet quintet. Which -- well, I feel of course, any of the music we work on in Marlboro warrants that sort of time, but you know, with that piece, you literally cannot put it together in much less time than that. So it was -- yeah, and also to learn it with Sam who -- who worked with him for decades in the Juilliard Quartet. That's the sort of experience that, I don't know where you would have anywhere else, actually. >> Anne E. McLean: Let's see what else we -- we'll move on from there, just a second. That's a classic photograph that you see a lot, Van Cliburn and James Levine at age 12. [ Laughter ] Alexander Schneider. >> And Casals. >> Anne E. McLean: And Casals, look at in the back. And back to quartets for a minute, here at the library, of course, we have -- we are a quartet mecca really and so many of the quartets that had been associated with the Marlboro legacy have passed through here. For example, Alexander Schneider's own quartet, he had a quartet for a number of years and Hermann Busch was part of that actually. And of course, the Juilliard and the Emerson and many other quartets have had one or more members learn their life's history and work and calling from these great artists. So let's see, a couple more. Blanche Honegger Moyse -- did you ever go to those -- >> Marcy Rosen: Oh, sure. >> Anne E. McLean: Yeah, I was going to say what their tradition was. >> Marcy Rosen: She did a Bach Cantata concert every summer, which was -- it's actually the -- the Marlboro players didn't -- didn't do them. She brought in her own orchestra mostly because we didn't have time to devote to what she wanted the time -- but the singers would all sing and really inspirational to hear, the Bach Cantatas in that setting and anywhere. But she -- she did it very beautifully. >> Anne E. McLean: Rehearsal images. >> Marcy Rosen: That's the -- that was Felix. >> Anne E. McLean: And this is very nice, this is a project you did at the Greene Space WQXR in New York, a beautiful venue. One of the touring ensembles from Marlboro. Michael, when did you start presenting the Marlboro group? >> Michael Wilpers: We started in the fall of 1993, the Meyer family had long history with Marlboro musicians and the festival. And the director of the museum at the time, Milo Beach, was good friends with both Katherine Graham and Elizabeth Meyer. And as long as we're looking at those older pictures, I was going to mention that Elizabeth Meyer, the wife of Eugene Meyer, former owner of the Washington Post, former first head of the World Bank and Chair of the Federal Reserve and a financier earlier. She and -- and Eugene Meyer collected Chinese art with Freer back in the very early 20th Century. And after Freer died and years later during the war, Agnes Meyer -- according to Frank Solomon, let's -- who I was told just all about this a couple summers ago -- when Serkin and the Busch's had left Germany, in the middle of the war and gone to Switzerland. I think, were eager to get out of Europe and Agnes Meyer went personally to the state department to lobby for getting their Visa's put through. And that's how they finally got to the U.S. permanently during the war. And then their -- one of their sons, Bill Meyer, became -- and his wife became supporters of Marlboro and went regularly. So when the Meyer Auditorium reopened in 1993, after renovation with funds from Katharine Graham and the Meyer family, it was renamed, the Eugene and Agnes Meyer Auditorium. And the grandchildren of Eugene and Agnes helped start the Meyer concert series on the provision that it regularly include the musicians from Marlboro every year. And we -- Milo Beach [inaudible] had no trouble agreeing to that and so we've had Marlboro there every year for the last 20 some years. >> Anne E. McLean: And it is a wonderful segue from us and this is part of the history that Michael and I talked about when we first had this idea to share the project for your anniversary year. And our anniversary too, was that we began presenting Marlboro in 1980 with great pleasure for something we call the Saturday Series and then when -- with I think, the first performers were Hiroko Yajima and Andras Schiff, among others. >> Marcy Rosen: Gary Hoffman. >> Anne E. McLean: Gary Hoffman, exactly. Boy, you have a memory, a great memory. And then we had to shut down our operation as many of you in the audience remember because we had the whole building renovated, so there was an eight year, nine -- eight and half, nine year period when we could do no concerts and thankfully, you were able to -- to take it on. Let's see, let's amp this part, oh, that's a nice one. Let's see if we can get out of this. [Inaudible] -- yeah [inaudible] and Isidore Cohen, one of my favorite people. I got a kick out of reading in your bread book that it said, Mr. Cohen would look at the musicians very carefully and he's say, "Well, what do you think? Should there be a [inaudible] here?" Okay, so end that and we'll escape and then minimize. Now one more thing I was looking forward to showing you and that is down at the bottom, this is the image of the first Marlboro program. This is the -- it's so sweet that it says the first appearance in America, but it's just very, very heartening to see this. And one thing that's interesting back to our ideas about modern music, Mr. Busch insisted that there be some hot off the press music. So for example, he included [inaudible] and then also in another program he had a brand new, [inaudible] piece which was literally -- literally hot off the press, it was 1933 and the concert date was 1933. And in the letters back and forth to our -- our managers, he stressed that he wanted to have a modern music element, which is really interesting to see. What other things about the current experience that -- would you guys like to talk about? And then we can move also into the music for tonight too. What -- are there new projects for Marlboro, like this whole thing at QXR was kind of fascinating to see that happen. >> Marcy Rosen: I was there. Were you there -- well, actually what that concert is when this year is the 50th anniversary of the touring program -- 65th anniversary of the festival and the 50th anniversary of the touring program. And so, it was celebrating the touring program that we did a nice concert there. It was broadcast and so just to getting generating some -- some hoopla among the celebration, so that's basically what it's -- what it was for and we -- Anthony played and I played with Jonathan Biss. We did -- and Robin Scott, we did a Mendelssohn trio. And so, it was a -- it was a wonderful event as almost every event that we do for Marlboro is wonderful. This is wonderful. We played at -- we played at Carnegie Hall on Monday night, that was wonderful. We played in a funny little library on Sunday in Greenwich, Connecticut, but that was wonderful too. >> Anne E. McLean: And we have all your archives here, at least many decades worth. We don't have the recent ones, so we need to get those. Any -- is there any chance of you guys moving to MP3's to distribute now or what's your current thinking about your recording projects online -- distribute of any kind? No. >> Emilie-Anne Gendron: I'm sure that will -- that's its whole dedicated department at Marlboro. >> Anne E. McLean: It really is, yeah. >> Emilie-Anne Gendron: Like they have a team of, you know, audio engineers and archivists and they probably have a lot of that in the works. They're probably thinking ahead, but -- but we don't know personally. >> Anne E. McLean: Yeah, yeah. Wasn't Paula [inaudible] part of that in -- for a long time and then Mischa Schneider? >> Marcy Rosen: Mischa Schneider was the sort of head of the Marlboro Recording Society. And so, recordings that were made -- and there hasn't been as many in-studio recordings done in the last years. I hope we'll get back to that, I don't know what's going on with that, but we used to make recordings of some of the pieces that we would perform in the summer. And Mischa was the -- was the producer, so he did that and -- [inaudible] I think funded it. >> Michael Wilpers: I think the -- >> Marcy Rosen: -- I think funded it. >> Michael Wilpers: -- the audience here might be interested in knowing that the -- Marlboro did launch a pretty ambitious online recording resource and you can hear a lot of historic recordings from Marlboro and it's completely indexed by performer and composer. And you can -- it's -- and it's always being added to every year. In fact -- >> Anne E. McLean: On their website, or? >> Michael Wilpers: Yeah. >> Marcy Rosen: I didn't know you could listen to recordings on that. >> Anne E. McLean: I didn't know that. >> Michael Wilpers: I don't know what -- which recordings they have, I believe they're form the festival, but [inaudible] daughter, who's on the local board of Marlboro, was very proud of this and informed me of it. And so I -- and she asked me to announce it before a concert of Marlboro's just a couple years ago. So it's a -- and it's always growing and they're very happy about it. >> Anne E. McLean: Before we move to the talking more about the music, anybody want to comment about napkin throwing? It's something you read about, but you are the experts. >> Emilie-Anne Gendron: I mean, I remember the first -- like after my first summer there, like it was like definitely a good month -- it was like late September and I found myself at a restaurant, like you know, with -- in public and I had taken my napkin and just instinctively was starting to create a napkin ball like under the table. And then I realized this is not the place, I'm not at Marlboro. That's the only comment I have. There's -- >> Anne E. McLean: It's a time honored tradition. All -- all ages, all backgrounds, all instruments apparently, you know, even Mr. Serkin. >> David McCarroll: Yeah, no it really -- really does happen. I couldn't quite believe it before I got there, but it -- it does. >> Anne E. McLean: There's a -- or somebody that had to be shielded with an umbrella. There's this -- >> Marcy Rosen: That's a very funny story. There was the -- when -- after Mr. Serkin died, the very beginning, there was a -- there was a trio of artistic directors. And one of those artistic directors, who I don't think I'll name, they wanted to do away with the napkin balls. It was not something that he appreciated and he felt that he shouldn't have to be bombarded by this. So a napkin free zone was set up [laughter] in the dining hall, it was a -- it was like there was a row of music stands on which there were signs that said, "Napkin free zone," which is just really like, asking people to -- to do it. And -- and we have this wonderful librarian, her -- who's name I can mention, her name was Shirley Weekly. She had been also a fixture, a Marlboro fixture for 40 years and she was also the librarian at Curtis. A lovely lady, she had some -- she didn't like -- she loved the -- well, let's say, she didn't like the napkin balls either, so she hadn't eaten in the dining room for, I don't know, 20 years or more. She always took her tray and ate in another room off the -- off the dining hall. So, this night that -- of this inaugural napkin free zone, Shirley Weekly came back into the dining hall, thinking she was safe and at one point, and I -- and I believe I know who engineered the whole thing. And I -- as it happens, the person who -- who was -- who was initiating this happens to be a close friend of mine. Then I -- it was -- I was not in favor of this things, but I -- was sitting and having dinner with -- with them on that side of the -- the other side of the barrier. The entire other side of the room in unison , got up and threw napkins. And Shirley Weekly never at in the dining hall again. And -- and that artistic director also didn't stay around for a very long time, that was unfortunate. Not -- I don't know if it was because of that. It was not a good beginning. >> Michael Wilpers: Well, I think hearing this and seeing how much fun the musicians have at Marlboro, helped me realize where the spirit comes from that I had seen on stage for so many years. Where the -- these musicians clearly and unmistakably enjoy what you're doing. I mean, even if some music is -- is very serious, it's done in a certain manner that is a real passion, that comes across. I think it's cultivated in part by the festival atmosphere. It is the farthest thing from workman like or drudgery. And I think it says -- it may sound frivolous, these kind of games and antics and things, but it definitely works. I mean, it makes the groups that come out of Marlboro stand out for the sheer enjoyment of -- of what it is you're doing. >> Anne E. McLean: Before we, sort of [inaudible] give you a chance to -- a chance to go back and warm up, do you want to talk a little bit about the music and maybe about the Penderecki. Emilie, you were saying that you had some thoughts on the texture and everything. >> Emilie-Anne Gendron: Oh, well, ultimately -- ultimately, you know, the music will more than speak for itself, but you know, the Penderecki is sort of an incredible work of just in the kind of atmosphere that it creates and the -- the gamut of moods that it explores. As many of you may know, Penderecki -- his -- Penderecki's music figured into some of the big film scores of the past few decades, such as The Shining or even The Exorcist and -- and numerous other films. He's written -- he sort of made that leap into pop culture. I learned he even has an asteroid named after him, which must be like a great honor. But like the thing about -- yeah, I think maybe because he's so effective writing for film is that he's so adept at creating just an all encompassing mood, you know, whatever that mood might be. And the piece itself is -- it's quite short, its four movements, three of them are attacka [phonetic], they go consecutively. You can't really hear when they stop and start. And each movement is sort of a tip of the hat, in a way to different composers of the past. You can -- you'll see in your programs, the movement titles are very evocative. There's a ironic waltz, serenade that reminds you of something you might hear in a [inaudible] Schoenberg. The last movement, for instance, is -- entitled Abscheid, which means farewell in German. That's a very strong Beethoven [inaudible] reference built in. And so, yeah, and as Marcy said, it really captures some of that same sort of a autumnal feeling that you get in the [inaudible]. It -- they're very similar and they're kindred spirits in many ways, so hopefully this will enhance your listening of -- of all the pieces in the program. >> Anne E. McLean: Wonderful, and also, so you mentioned [inaudible], these musicians, the touring ensemble from Marlboro will be coming back in May, again with Michael as co-sponsor and they'll be doing that work here for then -- for that concert. Any questions for the musicians and Michael -- Roger? >> Yes, the publicity mentioned that Penderecki was influence -- was -- that there's a relationship to the Schubert c major quintet, and that's one of my favorite things, so I'm wondering if you'd like to talk about that. >> Anne E. McLean: Yeah, I looked that up. I think it was more again, with this sort of idea of [inaudible] to Vienna in some way. I don't think that it's -- it's not actually, explicitly referencing it in any way, except for maybe that like some of the moods that it creates that are so untouchable sometimes. I sense some of the same depth in both the pieces, but I think it's more abstract, you know, on an abstract level that it pays almost to that piece. >> Anne E. McLean: Anybody else? About, let's see -- oh, and while we're just thinking one -- maybe one more question. Any comments on the Brahms that you're -- for tonight? This is a kind of a great, great classic work. Have you done this before in -- >> David McCarroll: Well, I have, but it's -- I mean, I think we all feel the same, it's just a great honor to get to play such a piece six times in a row and to work on it. There really is no other piece like it or quite with that depth of feeling or special place in his life and also what it expresses, so we're enjoying it. >> I'm curious about [inaudible] -- oh, sorry. I'm curious about cross-fertilization between seniors who may be wind players, vocalists, string players -- to what extent do they extend their -- their nuances to other groups of players? That is, with a woodwind player, a flutist, a singer, [inaudible] string group on some occasion. Yeah. >> Marcy Rosen: No [laughter]. >> Anne E. McLean: Interesting question, yeah. >> Marcy Rosen: No, but we would coach them. No, that's -- I'm totally getting silly because we have a concert in -- no, what -- certainly [inaudible] was a great influence on a lot of people at Marlboro. And Charlie Neidich is a -- is a current influence on lots of people in both because of his character and because he's a really interesting and very intelligent musician that has -- he has a whole well of knowledge that you just are shocked by all the time. And, you know, certainly Benita Valente is there as a -- as a singer for -- as a coach for the singers, but if you're working with a singer in a chamber music work, she is at your rehearsal. So she does have some cross fertilization in terms of working on Schoenberg second quartet, for instance, that has soprano in it. Or last summer, we did a [inaudible] piece with -- for soprano. It's like basically a concerto for soprano and cello, and done -- does have an orchestra part, but she wrote a piano version of it, so we did it as a trio. But so, Benita was there listening to all of those rehearsals as well and it was certainly very helpful to have her there. So, there is definitely, you know, we don't -- we don't, you know, segregate -- even -- we even talk to singers all during -- all during the summer. We've really considered them as normal people [laughter] that -- >> Anne E. McLean: Well, that might be a good note to end on. Okay, well, thank you very, very much in music and [inaudible]. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at Loc.gov.