MARLBORO-In 2009, Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker that Marlboro Music is "the classical world's most coveted retreat," nestled in the rural, pastoral nook known as Potash Hill.
In a 1975 New York Times feature, Rudolf Serkin, a renowned pianist and the cofounder and director of Marlboro Music until 1991, called the festival "a community of artists."
"I don't want to sound chauvinistic - only in America could Marlboro have happened," he said. "Nowhere else will you find this complete lack of selfishness, this coming together of musicians from all countries and all backgrounds, this dedication to the composer and his music rather than to the performer's glory."
With a past rich in learning, musical luminaries, and the creative spirit that Potash Hill nurtures, Marlboro Music launches its 73rd season this Saturday in the cluster of buildings that was Marlboro College from 1946 until its closure in 2020.
Marlboro Music was founded in 1951 by Serkin, Adolf and Hermann Busch, and Marcel, Blanche, and Louis Moyse, and in the years since it has been a musical incubator and an oasis for many renowned artists of the late 20th century.
The instrumentalists Pablo Casals, Eugene Istomin, Isidore Cohen, David Soyer, and Harold Wright; the soprano Benita Valente; and the composers Samuel Barber, Elliott Carter, and Aaron Copland are just a few of the more than 3,000 musicians who have considered their experiences on Potash Hill to be among the most important influences of their lives.
Since the Guarneri Quartet formed at Marlboro in 1964, former participants have created or joined many such premier ensembles, and, according to the 2024 season press release, they have "become renowned solo artists; been appointed to principal positions at leading orchestras; become highly-sought after teachers; and created other programs inspired by Marlboro's example. Some have made vital contributions, through music, in promoting racial, economic, and social justice."
From its beginnings, the release reads, Marlboro Music's mission has been to "mentor these emerging artists, to provide nearly unlimited rehearsal time and artistic freedom, and to create a nurturing, egalitarian community in which people of diverse ages, ethnicities, nationalities, and backgrounds come together as one extended family, guided by a central ethos of shared purpose and discovery."
More than a retreat
Imagine being one of the world's top young chamber music instrumentalists or vocalists. You've been given seven weeks in which your meals are provided, your lodging is tended to, your groups are formed and scheduled without conflicts, and, ideally, your money woes are few.
Your sole task is to dig into the music and, if it works, to share it with eager, dedicated audiences.
A rising player would be hard pressed to find another such musical experience anywhere.
"The life of a young musician who has aspirations for a very significant position in the field is a difficult life," notes composer Philip Maneval, manager of Marlboro, who is now in his fourth decade at the festival in various capacities.
That life involves travel, long hours, and sacrifice.
"In addition to their own internal practicing, they have to find work, they have to impress presenters, they [have to] audition, and they have to make a living," Maneval says.
"Marlboro allows them to be removed from all that, to not worry about money, not worry about travel, not worry about publicity, and really just immerse themselves in the music and in their own artistic development," he says.
Marlboro Music, the release reads, "is where the concept of having master artists play together with exceptional young professionals was born, initiating a dynamic, collaborative approach to learning" in which participants "spend up to seven weeks exchanging ideas and rehearsing in depth some 250 chamber music works each summer."
Known worldwide as an institution devoted to artistic excellence and the development of new leaders who illuminate all areas of music, the Marlboro School of Music and Festival is "really neither a festival nor a school," Maneval says. "It's really a leadership training center."
All who play at Marlboro, whether seasoned musicians or early-career artists, are referred to as "participants." All their work on a chosen performance piece involves sharing perspectives and practices deeply rooted in each person's origins, training, and experience.
Participants often arrive with partners and families; together with staff, they share meals as well as learning, socializing, recreation, and even chores.
Each summer's assemblage becomes a family of sorts - living, working, and playing in and among historic buildings, newer facilities, and lovely grounds.
While gaining immeasurably, participants sacrifice financially to be at Marlboro, especially senior musicians who receive only a small honorarium for the significant portion of time they give, "and they give up other more lucrative opportunities to be here at Marlboro," says Maneval.
Pianist Mitsuko Uchida, for instance, will be at Marlboro for the full seven weeks this summer as co-artistic director, a role that she's held for more than two decades and that she has shared in recent years with pianist Jonathan Biss, who first participated in 1997.
"We're a deeply egalitarian place," says board chair Christopker Serkin, a grandson of Rudolf Serkin.
As for Uchida, he says, "the amount of time that she is in essence contributing to Marlboro is hard to quantify."
"It's a community that depends on the generosity of our musicians and, frankly, our staff, who devote an extraordinary amount of time to this enterprise," says Maneval.
A deep roster of talent
This summer's roster, according to the release, includes "more experienced, acclaimed recitalists; members of leading chamber groups; principals in top orchestras worldwide; and highly sought-after teachers."
Senior artists include pianists Ieva Jokubaviciute, Cynthia Raim, and Ignat Solzhenitsyn; current and past members of the Guarneri, Juilliard, Vermeer, Borromeo, Mendelssohn, and Catalyst quartets; and orchestra principals such as violist Beth Guterman Chu (St. Louis Symphony), flutist Joshua Smith (Cleveland Orchestra), and oboists Mary Lynch VanderKolk (Seattle Symphony) and Frank Rosenwein (Cleveland Orchestra).
The vocal program will be led by returning artists Lydia Brown, Anja Burmeister, and Benita Valente, and soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon returns as a senior vocal artist.
Also in the lineup are "three new senior artists, two of whom participated as young artists in the 1990s and are members of the Brentano Quartet: violinist Mark Steinberg and violist Misha Amory. The third, violinist Alex Redington of the Doric Quartet, is participating for the first time."
"We have 14 first-year participants this year," Communications Director Brian Potter explains, "representing more than one-third of the total number of emerging artists in residence."
Nearly 200 applicants vied for those spots; around 100 were invited to audition.
"We gather 50 of the world's most exceptionally talented young musicians," Maneval explains.
This year, they come from 16 countries: Korea, Japan, the United States, and throughout the European Union. They are joined here by 30 eminent master musicians from around the world.
Marlboro is not a school in a formal sense, Maneval explains: "We just form a large number of groups - about 60 each week - each consisting of two to four young musicians and one or two senior artists."
This structure allows young musicians to learn organically from the senior artists by rehearsing and playing with them intensively for three weeks before any performances are offered.
"On huge boards in a campus office, schedulers put all the pieces together, mixing junior and senior participants, determining who'll work on what, where, when," Maneval says. "The process unfolds dynamically as musicians decide week to week if they've achieved something special and are ready to perform or if they want to work on it more - as long as they want. They are granted the time and discretion."
Not your typical summer festival
Marlboro is not a traditional music festival in that the season emanates from this intensive, continuing study process and involves chamber music from all eras, which the participants themselves have proposed to study.
The program for any given performance is decided upon just about 10 days in advance; for the first weekend it will be selected from some 65 widely varied works in progress.
"The audience is buying tickets without knowing who [or what] they're going to hear," Maneval explains, noting that the standard "is so high that audiences have had come to expect the best."
Marlboro Music's audience represents "a beautiful mix," Potter says.
"We have locals that come to every concert they can and we have folks who come from all over, [...] some even for a week or multiple weeks at a time. We see audience members come back year in and year out; people are really devoted."
"I think there's actually a sense of excitement in discovering new repertoire, meeting future musical leaders early in their careers, and witnessing the exchange among a master senior artist who could be 50, 60, 70 years old and these incredibly gifted 20-to-30-year olds," he says.
Composers in residence
Marlboro will welcome composers in residence Thomas Adès and Sally Beamish for 2024.
Adès, previously in residence at Marlboro in 2000, will attend the final week. In addition to mentoring and performing several of his works, he will also conduct the season closer on Aug. 11, Beethoven's Choral Fantasy with Uchida as soloist.
Beamish, a first timer at Marlboro whose music embraces influences from jazz to Scottish traditional music, "will be here for a few weeks at the end of July," says Maneval. "I believe we'll be doing a piece of hers that actually involves video."
He shares that composers often say performances of their works at Marlboro "are some of the best they've ever had."
"The conditions are ideal, and the artists have virtually unlimited time to work on a piece; with the level of musicianship, it all adds up to a very convincing and secure performance for them which is tough to find for contemporary music," Maneval says.
Coming out of the pandemic which hit arts organizations hard, Potter adds.
"This summer is the one that feels like everything is back," he says. "Concerts are really well sold, preparations are going well, and we have enough experience now that if anything pops up we're prepared."
As is universally the case, the audience for classical music is an aging set.
"We're always looking to build," Potter says, "to reach younger people, reach people that don't already know about Marlboro, to get the word out through social media and outreach in the community. We try to make it as accessible and affordable as possible," offering a percentage of free and reduced tickets locally.
"Access is such a huge factor," he adds.
As is inclusivity.
"That's always been baked into the fabric of this place: welcoming people who may have been disenfranchised in one way or another - that goes back to the founders being refugees in World War II," Potter says. "The community aspect of what we do is top priority."
In terms of fiscal sustainability, he adds, "we are fortunate to have people who know Marlboro well and keep supporting us."
"Just 10% of our budget comes from ticket sales; the rest we need to raise" through grants and individual donations, Potter says.
Respecting the tradition
Christopher Serkin grew up in Marlboro and attended local public schools. Living off-season in Nashville, Tenn., where he teaches at Vanderbilt Law School at Vanderbilt University, he says he was never a musician.
Given his grandfather prowess, and the fact that a few other family members had achieved top professional musician status, he says, "the pressure in my family was not to play an instrument; the pressure was if you played an instrument to take it very seriously."
As a Serkin, "It was easier to not play at all than to play as an amateur - with mediocrity," he says.
His father, John, was a professional French horn player who later became a piano technician and tuner, a role he filled at Marlboro for many years. He and his wife, Lucy Gratwick, opened what is now Vermont Artisan Designs in 1973 as the L.J. Serkin Co.
The power of Marlboro's origin story, which "gets a little bit shrouded in mystique," says Serkin, "really carries through today and is more relevant than ever."
"My grandfather was Jewish; he left Germany in the 1930s with his father-in-law - not Jewish - who was a great opponent and moral objector of Hitler and the Third Reich," he recounts.
The couple "immigrated to Switzerland first and then they came to this country from Switzerland in the mid- to late 1940s," just a few years before Marlboro Music's first season.
"The thing I find so powerful and interesting today is that, in Nazi Germany, my grandfather had experienced a fascist regime that had co-opted music and culture for its own purposes," Serkin says.
"Part of the German identity that Hitler promoted was bound up in German art and music and tradition," he says.
"I always felt that it was important to my grandfather to reclaim music, to create a place where the music was given the respect that it demanded on its own terms, [where] it wasn't being used for nationalist purposes, nor for self-aggrandizement," Serkin continues.
He notes that when Pablo Casals came to Marlboro, the Spanish cellist had boycotted playing in any country that recognized the regime of Francisco Franco, then-dictator of Spain.
"That included the United States, so he refused to play in the U.S. for a good long time," Serkin says. "He made an exception for Marlboro, though, because of its history, because Marlboro stood for anti-fascist principles."
Serkin says that "this idealistic approach to music for its own sake that continues to resonate and, frankly, is as important and vital as ever today."
Fresh renovations on Potash Hill
Potash Hill now boasts the handsome, well-appointed Reich building, which opened in 2021 with a library, gathering places, and new rehearsal spaces.
In addition, four freshly renovated, "beautiful, dignified spaces where folks can come work" are available this year, says Brian Mooney, managing director of Potash Hill.
Mooney's mission is to get the word out about Potash Hill, and to "connect with more people who can recognize the enormous potential here."
The campus, he explains, would be well-suited for low-residency academic programs or, with its 560 acres, for an environmental program, and "of course, for the arts."
He adds that with its proximity to Boston, Hartford, New York, and Montreal, the central yet rural site makes it an apt facility for innovative programs.
These include a meditation semester to be held for young college students this fall, which is accredited by Naropa University, and for various music workshops already held there since the establishment of Potash Hill as a nonprofit under Marlboro Music.
Serkin adds, "We're doing our best to be good stewards of this property; we take that responsibility quite seriously, [...] and we are trying very hard to find ways to make it economically viable" to ease the financial burden ownership carries.
"We're actively listening for people who value who we are as an organization and we're looking for people who bring their own ideas for how best to use the campus," he says.
Perhaps part of Marlboro Music's appeal is its humility.
The release states that Marlboro was never "a place for showoffs; it was a place to really take the music seriously, think deeply about it, and explore it as deeply and seriously as it deserved."
The Festival will soon mark its 75th anniversary.
"We're not a place that throws galas or has big events like that," says Serkin, "but we are absolutely planning to honor the 75th in ways that will feel appropriate and be consistent with the spirit of the place."
Marlboro is "always understated," he adds, "because our focus is always the mission."
Marlboro Music offers five weekends of public performances July 13 through Aug. 11 in Persons Auditorium on Potash Hill in Marlboro. Tickets are available at marlboromusic.org and through the Marlboro Box Office (802-254-2394). Audiences are also welcome at free open rehearsals, schedules of which are announced at the beginning of each week.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.