The
Marlboro Music Festival:
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| Musicians at Play. Marlboro College. Marlboro Vermont. photographer Pete Checchia |
Rudolf
Serkin to Mitsuko Uchida
SUSAN
CLOKE
Columnist
Three
famous European music families – the Serkin, Busch and Moyse families - escaped
the horrors of Nazi Germany. They
reunited in Marlboro Vermont in the early 1950’s around the concept of learning
music in a family and communal environment.
With
the rise of Hitler in Germany in 1933, the Serkins and the Busches went to
Switzerland. In 1939 with Hitler’s
Nazis on the march, they fled to the United States. The Busch family moved soon after their arrival in the
United States to Vermont, which they had been told was like Switzerland, the
Serkins came later and the Moyse family arrived in 1950.
The
Brattleboro Daily Reformer, January 18, 1950, headline reads, “Hendricks Brings
Moyse Trio to Marlboro For Music Program and Summer Festival.”
Walter
Hendricks is a key part of this story.
In 1946, right after the end of WWII, Hendricks,
founder of Marlboro College, bought the Dal Rymple Dairy Farm in Marlboro
Vermont. His vision was to start a small Liberal Arts College and to help
returning veterans. Funding came from the GI Bill and a loan from Brattleboro
Savings and Loan. He also wanted
music to be an important part of the College.
The
Marlboro Music Festival was founded in 1951 by the Serkin family, the Busch
family and the Moyse family.
Rudolf Serkin “felt what was really needed was a place to bring
exceptional young musicians and leading professional musicians together and by
immersing them in studies and practice for two months you could teach them to
have something important to say about music.”
The
Festival has continued that tradition. For two months each summer both young,
aspiring musicians and professional musicians come to Marlboro, Vermont to
practice music together in an informal and community setting.
Danny
Kim, violist, the second generation of his family to be a Marlboro Festival
participant, said, “Growing up my
involvement with music was through my parents. Now I have a lot of musician friends and I’m very grateful
to be able to love music.”
“If you’re surrounded by music when you’re
growing up then music is just part of who you are. Both my parents are violinists. I started learning the violin when I was 5. I
always studied music. My mother is
a violinist and a Suzuki teacher,” said Kim. “Both of my parents are musicians. My father, Young-Nam Kim is a
violinist, a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Music and founded, in 2002, the Northern Lights Chamber Music Festival.”
Kim graduated from Central High
School, the main public high school in St. Paul, Minnesota. “I studied music
and took all the regular high school classes, played soccer and was ‘just a
teenager,” said Kim.
After Central High School Kim
went on to study at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and then to New
York’s Juilliard School of Music.
At Wisconsin he concentrated on the viola. Kim said, “I felt really good by my sophomore year and I
started playing with other musicians. The more I would study and practice the
more I grew to love the music. By the time I got to Juilliard I knew the viola
was my instrument and I was very lucky to study with Samuel Rhodes.
“Danny Kim is a wonderful
example of the Marlboro ethic of taking traditions and developing them through
generations of musicians,” said Frank Salomon, the Co-Administrator of the
Marlboro Music Festival. “Here at the Festival we work to introduce young
musicians to play what lies beneath the notes. We offer an experience that allows young musicians to play
not only brilliantly but also with musical insight and sensitivity.”
“My parents also fled Nazi
Germany,” said Salomon. They came
to the United States in 1935. My
father was a professor and my mother was one of the first women medical doctors
in Germany.
“They were able to come because
Alvin Johnson, an economist and a co-founder and first
director of the New School in New York, had offered my father a job teaching at
the New School.
“When they arrived in the United States the American doctor
at the Embassy said my father was physically unable to earn his living and the
fear was that they would be sent back to Germany.
“Johnson came to my parents rescue, as he had for so many
people fleeing the Nazis,” said Salomon.
“I didn’t hire this man to teach gymnastics I hired him to
teach Sociology,” said Johnson to the emigration authorities. And it was on his
word that my parents were allowed to remain in the United States.
“When I was a child, running around Manhattan, my mother had
subscription tickets for the New Friends of Music Chamber Orchestra and our
family went to their concerts and to children’s concerts and Bach concerts and
more,” said Salomon of his early introduction to classical music.
“The issue,” said Salomon “with classical music and with the
arts is that they are not included as a natural part of many children’s
education. If they were then they
would be a natural part of life for all.”
Salomon is committed to
classical music. He has
represented Richard Goode, Jaime Laredo, Leon Fleisher, Masaaki Suzuki, Lisa de
la Salle and Simon Rattle and more.
He is equally committed to new and young musicians as is demonstrated by
his 50 plus year tenure with the Festival.
“In
chamber music you learn your part and the score and learn to listen and
compromise and be supportive of your colleagues and make multiple voices into
one,” said Salomon. “The important
thing is that these are life lessons as well as music lessons.
“Our
current Director, Mitsuko Uchida, continues the legacy of the founders and also
continues the tradition of adding of imprint of each succeeding generation,”
said Salomon.
Festival
participants are at Marlboro for two months. In late July and early August of each year they offer public
concerts. The programs are chosen
by the musicians and are announced a week or so before
the performances.
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| The Young James Levine and Van Cliburn Marlboro Music Festival Participants Historic Photo. Photographer Clemens Kalischer |
Saturday July 25 and Sunday July 26,
2015 Program Notes:
Saturday
Saariaho
- Nymphea
Tessa Lark,
Lucy Chapman, John Stulz, and Jonah Ellsworth.
Mozart
- Oboe Quartet in F Major, K. 370
Mary Lynch,
Yoojin Jang, Daniel Kim, and Judith Serkin.
Mendelssohn
- String Quintet in B-flat Major, Op.87
Yoojin Jang,
Hiroko Yajima, Wenting Kang, John Stulz, and Will Chow.
Sunday
Beethoven
- Piano Trio in C Minor, Op.1, No.3
Mitsuko
Uchida, Tessa Lark, and Peter Wiley.
Saariaho
- Mirage
Sarah Shafer,
Marcy Rosen, and Lydia Brown.
Mozart
- String Quintet in G Minor, K.516
Siwoo Kim,
Luosha Fang, Daniel Kim, Matthew Lipman, and Peter Wiley.
Danny Kim said it all when
he said, “The level of playing is so high and you have so much practice time
with other musicians. It’s a once
in a lifetime opportunity to work on a piece of music you love with great
musicians.”
Contact: Susan Cloke
