The most exciting chamber music recitals in the U.S. originate in a wooden box in a small, white clapboard cottage in Vermont. Into the box go requests for performances of everything from Mozart to Schoenberg; out of the box come twice-weekly concerts played in a converted cow barn by some of the world's most famed and gifted instrumentalists. Last week the barn echoed to Beethoven's Sextet in E-Flat, Martinu's Three Madrigals for Violin and Viola and Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 5. Occasion: a concert at Vermont's Marlboro Festival, now celebrating its tenth season.
The festival was born in the minds of Pianist...