Frankly Music Showcases Virtuoso Players

Image courtesy of Frankly Music.

In the Frankly Music concert on Monday, March 16, violinist and artistic director Frank Almond follows a familiar pattern, inviting friends to join him for an intimate concert of classic chamber works. This concert features the music of Leonard Bernstein, Ernest Bloch and Olivier Messiaen, and promises to be a showcase for virtuosic talent.

The guests:

Todd Levy, principal clarinetist of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra since 2000, also spends summers as principal for the Santa Fe Opera. A longtime friend, Almond observes, “He’s got one of the most beautiful sounds I think I’ve ever heard. I would put him in one of the top three or four clarinetists in the world. He’s contributed so much to the vibrancy of not just the orchestra but the chamber music scene here.”

Pianist Orion Weiss enjoys an active career as a soloist and chamber musician, having appeared several times with both Frankly Music and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. A longtime friend, Almond recalls, “We’ve been really fortunate in this series to grab people on their way up. He was obviously a huge talent ten years ago, kind of just getting started.” A critic for The Washington Post has written that Weiss “has both powerful technique and exceptional insight, and brings an almost sculptural presence and weight to the music.”

Cellist Julian Schwarz, another emerging talent, teaches at Shenandoah University and NYU’s Steinhardt School of Music while maintaining an active commitment to chamber music through affiliations with several ensembles. Bernard Jacobson, writing for MusicWeb International, describes Schwarz’s sound as “superlatively rich, warm and solid, yet at the same time capable of the utmost delicacy.”

The evening includes three memorable works:

Levy and Weiss perform Bernstein’s Clarinet Sonata. A pianist himself, Bernstein here offers a well-balanced role for piano. His first published work, the sonata was influenced by his composition studies with Paul Hindemith in 1941 at Tanglewood.

Clarinetist Gary Gray summarizes the brief work: “The first is a concise, linear grazioso which is comprised of natural growth combined with tender lyrical reflection, with a hint of ‘Hindemithian’ harmony, full of jazzy, rocking rhythms. The Andantino, with its walking bass and syncopation, is an exciting mix of jazz, dance and the plainsman style of Copland and Harris,” packed with syncopation, walking bass lines and jazzy clarinet figures.

This work contains both the seed of Bernstein’s serious classical composing and of his popular style on Broadway. The rhythms of West Side Story seem to be hinted at within this piece.

Schwarz and Weiss perform Bloch’s From Jewish Life, a work incorporating the modal inflections of Eastern European Jewish liturgy. The work moves from Prayer to Supplication to Jewish Song, with the cello serving as a human voice — a cantor’s voice in prayer. Neil W. Levin suggests that the motive in Prayer “might have served as the skeletal model for Max Janowski‘s now well-known setting of the High Holiday prayer Avinu Malkeinu in the abridged text adopted by American Reform liturgy for the High Holidays.” Schwarz describes the tune in Jewish Song as evoking “a quintessentially Eastern European melancholy.”

Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, an intense masterwork involving all four players that closes the concert, can be approached from several perspectives. Historically, written under severe conditions in a World War II prison camp, the work is often associated with the Holocaust, as when it was featured in a recent “Violins of Hope” concert. Spiritually, a devout Catholic, Messiaen infused the work with religious symbolism, with each movement relating to the apocalyptic Book of Revelation. Musically, the quartet’s fury unfolds in whirling rhythms, while alongside them, a vision of eternity sings beautifully in ethereal passages.

Messiaen’s musical vision also encompasses strikingly accurate birdsong and chords that evoke brilliant colors. Limited to the unusual combination of piano, clarinet, violin, and cello, Messiaen often paired instruments in intense duets, frequently requiring the clarinet and strings to play in the extreme high register, which, even among virtuosos, can be maddeningly precarious. Dynamics run from barely discernible to blazingly loud.

Messiaen breaks free from conventional musical time by using rhythms that fold back on themselves and patterns borrowed from Hindu music, creating a hypnotic sense of timelessness.

In all these ways, Messiaen’s reflection on the end of time succeeds like no other composition in suspending time itself.

These elements create an unforgettable experience for both the audience and the performers. I recommend sitting near the stage to share in the performers’ emotional intensity while they bring this extraordinary piece to life.

The evening moves from light to meditative to intense, demanding virtuosity throughout. For any devoted chamber music listener, the Messiaen alone makes this a concert not to be missed.

The May 5 concert at Schwan Concert Hall at the Wisconsin Lutheran College (8815 W. Wisconsin Ave.) begins at 7:00 p.m. Tickets may be purchased online or at the door.

Frankly Music will close the season on May 4 with two great late-romantic French masterpieces: the piano quintets of Gabriel Fauré and César Franck.