MARLBORO — The town of Marlboro has a population of 978, and the town center consists of an 18th century inn, a post office, and a meeting house.
But, for seven weeks each summer since 1951, some of the world's most respected concert artists and most talented young professional musicians have gathered on the campus of Marlboro College to explore music with unlimited rehearsal time in a way that isn't possible elsewhere.
The Marlboro Music School & Festival attracts devoted music lovers to five weekends of concerts and expresses its gratitude to the community which has becomes its home by donating all the receipts from an annual “Town Concert” to deserving local organizations.
The 2017 benefit concert on Friday, July 28, at 8 p.m., in the Marlboro College Dining Hall offers a wonderfully varied program with the Mozart's Sonata in B flat, K. 252, for Bassoon and Cello; Elliott Carter's Con Leggerezza Pensosa and Charles Neidich's Tempest (in a Teapot); Dohnányi's Serenade in C for string trio, and the Beethoven Archduke Trio.
Among the artists who have explored these works in depth for four or five weeks with their younger colleagues are pianist Jonathan Biss, clarinetist Charles Neidich, and cellists Marcy Rosen (Mendelssohn Quartet) and Peter Wiley (Guarneri Quartet).
The concert on Saturday, July 29, at 8 p.m. at Persons Auditorium at Marlboro College offers William Bolcom's Let Evening Come for soprano, viola, and piano; Dvorák's Piano Quartet in D, Op. 23, with Biss, Tchaikovsky Competition winner violinist Itamar Zorman, violist Maya Papach, and cellist Alice Yoo; and Mendelssohn's String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 80.
The weekend concludes on Sunday, July 30, at 2:30 p.m. with Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder as the centerpiece to a program that opens with the Haydn String Quartet in D , Op. 76, No. 5, and closes with the Brahms String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 51, No. 2.
Mezzo-soprano Lauren Eberwein is the vocalist in the Wagner, Peter Wiley the anchor in the Haydn, and longtime violist of the Juilliard Quartet Samuel Rhodes the senior in the Brahms together with Efe Baltacigil, principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony and recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant.