Frankly Music Features Pianist Joyce Yang

Frankly Music closes the season with a concert on Monday evening highlighting virtuoso pianist Joyce Yang. Yang has been well known to Milwaukee audiences after completing a five-year Rachmaninoff concerto cycle with Edo de Waart and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

A celebrated guest artist with some of the world’s top symphony orchestras, Yang also has a distinguished chamber music career, appearing with the Takkács Quartet, the Emerson Quartet, and at numerous summer festivals. Her discography includes well-received recordings from concertos to quartets, from Mozart to Michael Torke.

Two young string players and a vocalist will join Frank Almond and Yang.

Violinist/violist Brian Hong is completing a Julliard Artist Diploma and serves as co-Artistic Director of NEXUS Chamber Music Chicago.

Cellist Sihao He has won first prize in cello competitions in China, Japan, and Europe, as well as honors for his string quartet, Simply Quartet. He is completing a D.M.A. degree at Northwestern University.

Mezzo Lauren Decker, with Milwaukee roots, has performed with Opera Philadelphia and many operas at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Almond has fashioned a varied program to highlight these guest artists. Yang contributes on piano to every piece.

Ludwig van Beethoven‘s Sonata in G Major, Op. 30, No. 3 (1802) for violin and piano challenges both players. Written shortly after a bout of despair over his increasing deafness, Beethoven’s recommitment to his art is unmistakable. Critic Richard Bratby comments on the contrast:

What could be more effortlessly joyful than the exuberant, whirling flourish that opens the first Allegro assai, or more sunny than the bustling sonata-form movement that follows? Or more tenderly nostalgic than the long, searching melody that opens the second movement, the violin spinning its emotions out over the stately tread of the piano’s Tempo di menuetto (itself a throwback to a gentler age)?

Johannes Brahms wrote a pair of songs, Two Songs, Op. 91 (1884) for dear friends Joseph Joachim and his wife. Less art songs than vocal chamber music, the viola, alto voice, and piano blend together for two of the composer’s greatest songs, a lullaby and an evocative nature poem.

Gabriel Faure‘s Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 15 (1876-1879) has been obscured by the contributions of Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy to a post-Romantic revolution emphasizing color, texture, and imagery. But Faure’s work anticipates much of that change. Excerpts from critic Kai Christensen‘s essay on the quartet capture the character of the work: Mvt 1: “Delicate, elusive, ever-flowing and shimmering” Mvt 2: “Wisps and threads of musical lines that fly off in the treble range and a merry dotted rhythm that skips and prances through the precision clockwork” Mvt 3: “The piano continues to dream, lost, floating skyward like a brightly colored kite against the gray clouds.” Mvt 4: “A wide arc of kaleidoscopic changes end in a surge of bright triumph, a sparkling finish awash in color and grand cadences.”

Yang also performs a challenging solo work, Robert Schumann‘s Carnaval, Op. 9 (1834-35). Schumann set out to write a set of variations that fit a scenario of his own imagination. The work as a whole is a musical representation of an elaborate and imaginative masked ball during carnival season. Characters from Italian commedia dell’arte, sketches inspired by Schumann’s friends, encoded quotes, and word games are woven into a diverse and virtuoso collection of variations. The differences among the 21 variations are more striking than the similarities. A pianist needs to navigate the difficulties in the score as well as create an integrated experience for the listener.

Almond takes pleasure in the fact that Schumann’s piano work was dedicated to Karol Lipinski, whose violin Almond now plays. That seems to be a testimony to the circle of friends gathering together in the Schumann’s solon, enjoying each other’s company and performance.

Frankly Music promises to deliver again an evening of diverse and interesting chamber music offered in the spirit of the Robert and Clara Schumann salons.

The concert begins at 7:00 p.m., Monday evening, May 16 at Schwann Concert Hall, at Wisconsin Lutheran College, 8815 W. Wisconsin Ave. Tickets (at $35) may be purchased online. A sold-out event seems likely.