The Moravian Duets were the first works of Antonín Dvorák to bring him wide fame. Early in 1875, the composer chose four poems from a collection of Moravian national folk verse and set them to music in the form of duets for soprano and tenor. These were among Dvorák’s earliest attempts to infuse his music with the rising spirit of Czech nationalism, and were so successful that the following year, he composed another duet cycle of fourteen Moravian songs and, in 1877, a third set of four songs, both cycles being conceived for soprano and contralto.

Felix Mendelssohn composed more than seventy songs for solo voice, charming Lieder which often emphasized atmosphere rather than the explicit meaning of the poet’s lines. During the years 1836–1844, Mendelssohn composed his first of three groups of vocal duets with piano, Opus 63, which are recorded here for the first time. Three other duets were published posthumously as Opus 77, and his Drei Volkslieder completes the composer’s brief list of works in this genre.

Pablo Casals Six Songs for Soprano, recorded here for the first time, span a creative period of almost sixty-five years. n 1895, at the age of nineteen, Casals composed his “Cançó Catalana No. 1,” using as his text a poem by Jascinte Verdaguer, the foremost poet of Spain’s Catalan region and a close friend of the composer. “Cançó Catalana No. 2,” composed at about the same time as No. 1, has words by a contemporary of Verdaguer, the poet Apeles Mestres, also a friend of Casals. “De Cara al Mar” dates from 1935 and its text is by the twentieth-century Catalan poet Joan Llongueras. “Ballada de la Nova Solveig” is by another twentieth-century Catalan poet, Ventura Gasol. These poets also were friends of Casals.

Tomas Blanco and Rafael Montañez are Puerto Rican poets who came to know Casals after he took up residence in Puerto Rico in the late ’50’s. Casals’ set- ting of Blanco’s “Tres Estrofas de Amor” dates from 1958 and is dedicated to the composer’s wife Marta. “El Angel Travieso,” a setting of the poem by Rafael Montañez, was completed in 1959.

Founded in 1950 as a chamber-music workshop for professional musicians, the Marlboro Festival has attracted outstanding concert and chamber-music artists who have come to Vermont at their own expense to exchange musical ideas and to play chamber music. Away from the routine pressures of professional activity, they are free to explore the vast literature combining piano, strings, woodwinds, brass and voice, with concern only for the music itself. Weekend Festival concerts have been described by Time magazine as “the most exciting chamber music in the U.S.”