Frankly Music Offers Baroque Hits

Commemorating the rapidly-approaching transition from summer to autumn, Frankly Music will feature Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons at its opening concert Tuesday, Sept. 17. The beloved Concerto for Violin in A Minor by J.S. Bach and harpsichord solos by Jean Philippe Rameau round out the program.

Artistic director Frank Almond, who will play the solo passages in the Vivaldi and the Bach, has assembled string players from the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and elsewhere as the Frankly Music Chamber Orchestra. Chicago keyboard artist Patricia Lee will perform on harpsichord.

The Four Seasons ranks as one of the most recognizable Western classical pieces ever written. Admirers have arranged it for, among other instruments, flute, guitar, traditional Chinese instruments, harp ensemble, koto, marimba, and accordion. One recent iteration modified the work with algorithms to portray climate change from 1725, shortly after it was composed, to the present.

The piece comprises four violin concerti, each with three movements, and is considered an early example of program music that paints a picture of events or objects. Each concerto depicts scenes from four sonnets written (possibly by Vivaldi) to describe the four seasons. Listeners hear the charming songs of birds and murmuring streams of spring, as well as thunderstorms “casting their dark mantle over heaven”; a summer hail storm, and gnats and flies that “buzz furiously”; an autumn festival and hunt; and the “icy snow and horrid wind” of winter.

The Four Seasons is remarkable both as a showcase for Vivaldi’s own talents as a virtuoso violinist and his innovation as a composer, Almond said. “The piece has a lot of improvisatory opportunities, with push and pull between the soloist and the orchestra. Depicting things that people could relate to was a departure from what had been written before.”

At roughly the same time Vivaldi (1678-1741) was writing his masterpiece in Italy, Bach (1685-1750) was composing his Concerto for Violin in A Minor in Germany. The soloist and orchestra are in intimate dialogue throughout the three-movement work, with each section structured around a theme called a ritornello (in Italian, “the little thing that returns”). After the orchestra presents the ritornello, it hands things off to the soloist, who develops the musical idea before the orchestra brings back the ritornello, perhaps in another key. This continuing back-and-forth provides, in the words of Calvin Dotsey of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, “familiarity through repetition and variety through contrast.”

Rameau (1683-1764) was a French composer and music theorist. His Nouvelles suite de pièces de clavecin helped to cement his status as one of the finest 18^th century French composers for harpsichord. Lee has selected four movements of the suite that contrast in tempo and character, showcasing the various sounds and registers available on the single-keyboard instrument she will play Tuesday evening.

Frankly Music’s season-opening concert begins at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 17, at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center, at 325 W. Walnut St. Urban Milwaukee readers can use the code URBANMKE21 to receive a 50 percent discount on tickets purchased online.