Photo via Frankly Music
Frankly Music
Frankly Music
The Frankly Music 2023–24 season continues with a selection of musical compositions that will help you bring in the New Year with a smile and leave you with a couple of tunes that you can take home.
If you’re not familiar with the series, Frank Almond, who held the Charles and Marie Caestecker Concertmaster Chair with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra for 25 years, begins with general comments about the compositions on the program. There’s a brief break and then the music begins. There’s an intermission, don’t leave (I almost did the first time I attended), and after the music a dessert reception where you can meet and chat with the musicians and your fellow music lovers.
Not all classical music is somber and cerebral. This program aims to be fun, from a piece “inspired” by Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels to the concluding Quartet by Fauré.
Almond will be joined by Roberta Cooper (cello) and Marta Aznavoorian (piano), as well as Eugene Drucker (violin/viola). Cooper and Aznavoorian have performed with Almond for many years.
Drucker was a founding member of the renowned Emerson Quartet who have just concluded their 50th and final season. It will be a special privilege to hear him join Almond and others. Drucker is one of the many world-class musicians Almond has brought to Milwaukee to participate in his Franky Music series. A founding member of the Emerson Quartet, Drucker is also artistic director of the Berkshire Bach Society as well as the director of chamber music at SUNY–Stony Brook. An accomplished composer, he’s written a piece for baritone and string quartet based on four sonnets by Shakespeare. His piece At the Edge of a Cliff is for soprano and quartet and is based on five poems by Denise Levertov. In addition, he’s a published author. His first novel, The Savior, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2007 and has already been translated into German.
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Duos for Violins
The musical program opens with George Frederick Telemann’s Suite for Two Violins entitled “Gulliver’s Travels.” It was composed in 1728 two years after Jonathan Swift published his book. In this case, it’s OK to listen to the music before you read or reread the book. Telemann published these movements one at a time in a fashion similar to literary periodicals.
Next up is selections from Béla Bartók’s 44 Duos for Two Violins. How many and how did you select them. “After much back-and-forth conversation with Eugene as to which go best together, we found six whose character and mood almost form a suite. Bartók would have approved,” Almond says.
The first half of the program concludes with Franz Joseph Haydn’s Trio for Strings, Op. 53 No. 1. There are just two movements, not typical for a classical trio. Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 1, is delightful and exciting. It’s said that his compositions linked the end of Romantism with modernism. “This is an early piec, but Fauré was already bridging Romantism and modernism much like Debussy did in his composition Afternoon of a Faun,” Almond says.
With all this fun music, don’t forget there’s a reception after the concert and remember to thank Almond for 20 wonderful years of Frankly Music. I look forward to at least 20 more.
Frankly Music will perform at 7 p.m. Monday, Jan. 29, at Wisconsin Lutheran College Schwan Hall. Ticket information and more can be found at franklymusic.org.
