Violinist Frank Almond
Almond talks and plays Mendelssohn, in a video with Tom Strini. Almond is the soloist in the MSO season opener.
Frank Almond and Tom Strini talk Mendelssohn. Screen shot from Kyle Richards’ video.
The Milwaukee Symphony will open its 2012-13 season with an all-Mendelssohn program at 11:15 a.m. Friday, 8 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 14-16, at Marcus Center Uihlein Hall. Guest conductor Gilbert Varga will lead the MSO The Hebrides Overture, Symphony No. 4 (“Italian”), the Nocturne from Four Pieces from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and the Violin Concerto in E-minor. Visit the MSO website for subscriptions and single tickets, or call the orchestra’s ticket line, 414 291-7605. On concert days, call the Marcus Center box office, 414 273-7206.
The MSO’s official debut is Friday, but Tuesday, Sept. 11, they’ll be performing a free, commemorative 9/11 concert at the Marcus Center’s Peck Pavilion. Assistant conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong will lead the orchestra in a performance of Barber’s Adagio for Strings and a number of patriotic songs.
Don’t miss anything! Keep track of the MSO and all of Milwaukee’s performing arts. Bookmark Matthew Reddin’s comprehensive TCD Guide to the 2012-13 Season. Sponsored by the Florentine Opera.
What a great interview plus superb music showing huge talent and an affable character in Frank Almond! Please do more of these and hope you’ll be able to continue to use the Florentine Opera’s studios at Riverwest.
This is great
well, now we’re all in suspense. will it be hot and feverish? Mendelssohn’s mood is a carefully balanced one and can easily go to far in any direction. His music has more substance musically to the ear than it seems to have on the page, as it can be ‘ungrateful’ to the player at times, and in those places the mood can get dropped into the romantic bucket. Mendelssohn was nouveau Baroque–donning a suave vestiture in place of the ornate, linear dispite Baroque ideals, requiring a perpetual constancy over large spans with a unique way of generating, by means of surprise transitions strategicaly placed, the illusion of the irrepressable without sacrificing the elegant. The hardest thing to achieve is lightness without losing width of tone, being mindful of a sense of one’s own individualism in performance of it dispite all straightjacketedness in the stle, and in that sense it is neccessary to place oneself deep into the era as there is nothing in it that would be safe to modernize or rearrange without heavy rewrite.
Two of the greatest assets in Milwaukee music got together for a delightful video interview. Marvelous! Thanks guys.