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Originally Posted by dizforprez Wilmer,
I have been recently reading “Casals and the art of Interpretation” by David Blum. Several times during the course of the book he mentions Casals’ association with the Marlboro festival orchestra. Since you were a member of that orchestra I was wondering if you two had crossed paths and if so could you tell us any anecdotes about him. |
Marlboro was the experience of a lifetime.
1965 was my first official year there. We recorded the Bach Suites that year. The Casals version of the suites is much slower than those we hear these days. He enjoyed every note of the works we were performing. Don Pablo had a vision that would be argued about today, but at the moment we recorded them his logic shines through clearly.
Casals was in his nineties, yet his beat was strong and clear.
I had a chance to hang with DP, Don Pablo, at many lunches.
Lunch time at Marlboro could sometimes be like a scene out of Animal House. Food fights almost every meal, Rudolf Serkin was one of the worst offenders
More than once Casals got clobbered by a thrown boiled potato.
Some of music's most well known performers were there. Kodaly and his very young wife sat at our table one afternoon. He was horrified when the food and napkins started to fly.
John Mack, Harold Wright, John Barrows and Paul Ingraham were there.
There seemed to be more real Strads there than at the Bach factory.
We went on a State Department tour at the end of that summer.
In Nice I met, thanks to John Mack, Marcel Tabuteau. He paid me his highest compliment. He said,"Young man, you make the trumpet almost a musical instrument." He did not like trumpet players......that's a story for another time.
I am only beginning to talk about Marlboro........(to be continued)
Wilmer