Word: gamba
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...precision. There is no cult of personality at Marlboro despite the musical giants on the premises. Pianist Rudolf Serkin, who has also been playing at Tanglewood this season, is artistic director of the chamber music workshop. Pablo Casals is conducting master classes on the Bach Unaccompanied Cello Suites and Gamba Sonatas and public performances of Mendelssohn's Fourth Symphony (the "Italian" Symphony) and Beethoven's Eighth Symphony...
Bach's Sonata No. 3 in E major for violin and klavier opened the program. In the classic manner, the gamba, with its forest of tuning pegs, doubled the continuo of the harpsichord. The trio maintained a nice balance; its members played to each other. But slippery intonation and lack of clarity marred the violin's performance, and the harpsichord indulged in unjustified rubatos and changes of tempi...
...parts of the Sonata No. 2 in D major for gamba and klavier, the double-manualed harpsichord sounded as if it were sporadically unwinding. It is no criticism of the gamba to observe that it lacks intensity in the ranges where the cello would have it, but the notes themselves seemed lackadaisically defined in the fast passages, and the general shape of the concluding fast movement was unclear...
...modern flute, also played several kinds of recorder. Mr. Fuller, a concert organist, here showed his skill on a rich-toned harpsichord built in 1955 by the local firm of Hubbard and Dowd. Miss Davidoff played both the 'cello and its quite different predecessor, the viola da gamba. Mr. Senturia, a first-rate oboist, also played on several sizes of recorder; and, in three pieces, he provided the chief novelty of the evening by performing on a krummhorn--a long obsolete, J-shaped woodwind with a light, buzzing tone...
Passion in the Church. The concerts took place in the 17th century Saint-Pierre Church. There, beneath an improbable altarpiece of gilded cherubs and bare-breasted angels, Cellist Casals shuffled in from the vestry on short, hesitant feet, bearing a brown-grained viola da gamba by the pegs. When he motioned the audience to its seats with his bow, his movements were crabbed with age. But when he began to play, the vast, hollow church filled with luminous, lucid sound, suffused with a passion that is the wonder of musicians the world over. Each night the audience paid Casals...