MARLBORO — Artistic Director Mitsuko Uchida is among the 80 international artists spending the next few weeks at Marlboro College's hilltop campus for the 66th season of Marlboro Music, the storied retreat where master artists and exceptional young professionals explore music together with the rare opportunity to enjoy unlimited rehearsal time, according to a news release.
Performances are Saturday evenings at the new time of 8 p.m. and Sunday afternoons at 2:30 p.m., from July 16 through Aug. 14. There will also be two special concerts: Friday, Aug. 5, and Friday, Aug. 12, at 8 p.m.
Uchida, who lives on campus in a dormitory apartment, will be among the senior artists at the opening dinner on Sunday evening, greeting young musicians returning for their second or third year, as well as the 20-plus artists attending Marlboro for the first time.
Participants will spend seven weeks exploring about 250 works the musicians have proposed to study.
Eighteen of the participating artists will also have the opportunity to receive insights from Resident Composer Sofia Gubaidulina on five or six of her works.
Two close associates, for whom the noted composer has created compositions - cellist Vladimir Tonkha and Elsbeth Moser, who is an acclaimed player of the bayan, a Russian accordion, - will participate during Gubaidulina's residency. The first week includes 65 works involving a wide variety of instrumental and vocal combinations and runs the gamut from Thomas Adès' Piano Quintet to Wagner's Funf Gedichte fur eine Frauenstimme, WWV 91 for mezzo-soprano and string quartet.
At a retreat where the mission is to delve into music in great depth, rather than to focus on performance, less that 25 percent of the works rehearsed are presented in the weekend concerts. Programs are decided only a week in advance and are drawn from works the musicians feel have gone especially well and should be shared with others.