The Marlboro mystique: Pros and cons

The phrase "Music from Marlboro" connotes not only a place for a summer festival and a concert series in various cities, but a tradition of music making that goes back over several decades, and its 60th anniversary season is a suitable occasion for reflecting on what this tradition represents in the musical world.

The evening concert of August 12 offered an opportunity to hear Music from Marlboro in its original setting, first visited by this reviewer more than 50 years ago, when I heard then-student Yo Yo Ma perform a Bach Cello Suite. It was clear even then that something vital and generative was occurring at this new and somewhat remote gathering place on a small college campus hidden deep in the Vermont woods.

The Philadelphia connection is important for this by now venerable musical institution. Curtis students and faculty have played significant roles at Marlboro since its inception. Its principal co-founder and first music director was Rudolf Serkin, who was also head of the Curtis Institute's piano department and then the school's director. Even today, the offices of Marlboro Music are on Walnut Street, two short blocks from Curtis.

In effect Curtis functions as the womb for great musicians and Marlboro is the birth canal and maternity ward. The festival helps the most promising musicians to take the important steps of mentoring and performance that help them form a disciplined ensemble approach to their future work.

Sound of Casals

You sometimes hear talk of a Marlboro "sound" or "style." A particular flow and expressivity is associated with many Marlboro graduates, echoing the playing of mentors like the Guarneri Quartet and Pablo Casals.

But in the concert I attended, the sound and style of each of the three ensembles differed quite a bit from one another. The Haydn Flute Trio was crisp and authoritative. The Mendelssohn String Quintet was close-cropped, tense and at times almost psychedelic in its impact. The Brahms Piano Quartet was performed with the broad strokes and slightly darkened timbre that is quintessentially Brahms. Appropriately, in each case the sound and style were geared to the music, not to the institution.

A huge amount of dialogue and ensemble playing takes place at Marlboro, and this interaction allows the musicians to form unified concepts of a composition— probably the first time they've been able to do so in such a hothouse atmosphere under the gaze of some of their idols. Thus the performances were characterized by the kind of unified breathing and sense of development that's typical of chamber groups that have worked together for many years.

Peter Serkin's struggle

The problem in such an environment is how to find one's own individuality, given the pressures of mentorship and group influences that characterize a place like Marlboro. Peter Serkin had a difficult time breaking his father's grip, and he wasn't alone in that respect. The multi-talented violinist Diane Monroe, an alumna of both Curtis and Marlboro, has spoken of her struggle to find her own unique "voice" after years of striving to be faithful to her teachers and the printed page of music (although, to be sure, she has always said her Marlboro experience was highly positive).

Similarly, in this concert, despite the remarkable playing and ensemble effects, I detected a certain degree of tension and rigidity under pressure.

It's possible to try too hard to be great, and to lose the sense of play that enlivens the work. A sign near the Marlboro gate announces: "Caution: Musicians at Play." It didn't fit with the reality of the performance. Curiously, the student concerts at Curtis seem to give the musicians much more freedom to play, each in his or her own way. The pressure-cooker effect at Marlboro produces supreme players who may yet need to find other sources to stimulate their own unique ways of making music.

Sonny Rollins's sabbatical

Of course this dilemma isn't unique to Marlboro. Enormous drive and discipline is required to make any fine musician. Teachers and mentors have their agendas, which they sometimes try to force on their students.

Peer pressure is also enormous. So, too, is the classical tradition that goes back hundreds of years and seems to command, "Follow Me." For gifted children, the pressure begins as soon as they are identified as talented. This is not a career that allows ample opportunity to find one's own path.

The jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins needed to take two years away from the music scene, practicing alone on the Williamsburg Bridge in New York, until he found his own idiom. Contemplative solitude is necessary for creativity and hard to find in the music business. Even at Marlboro.♦


To read a response, click here.