Frankly Music Features Top Guest Artists

Image courtesy of Frankly Music.

Frank Almond, director/ founder of the Frankly Music series now in its 21st year, welcomes three guests — cellist Edward Arron, pianist Victor Santiago Asuncion, and violist Anthony Devroye — to explore the Music of Haydn, Prokofiev, and Chausson in an intimate chamber music concert next Tuesday evening, November 19.

Arron participated in the very first Frankly Music concert and has returned frequently. A very active performer and organizer, Arron serves as the artistic director of the Musical Masterworks series (Old Lyme, Connecticut) and the Clark Art Institute series (Williamstown, Massachusetts) and served 10 years as curator of chamber concerts at the Metropolitan Museum. He is a member of the renowned Ehnes Quartet.

Asuncion has more recently been a frequent guest. A chamber music enthusiast, Asuncion was on the music faculty of the Aspen Music Festival and the Garth Newel Summer Music Festival. He is Artistic Director and Founder of the Evanston Chamber Music Society, and Chamber Music @Lauderdale by the Sea. He was the pianist for the Garth Newel Piano Quartet and is currently a member of the Delaware-based Serafin Ensemble.

Devroye returns after participation in last year’s 20th-anniversary series. The violist of the distinguished Avalon String Quartet, he also served as the Artistic Director of Chicago’s Rush Hour Concerts for five years. He is Professor of Viola at the Northern Illinois University School of Music.

All four performers bring experience managing ensemble players or concert events. This makes a difference when they work together to fashion a Frankly Music concert. They understand the repertory well and, as curators, understand the collaboration process, which is the essence of great ensemble chamber music.

This concert features a piano quartet by Ernest Chausson (1855-1899), his Piano Quartet in A Major, Op. 30. A student of Jules Massenet and later César Franck, Chausson made a key contribution to the color-centric French Impressionist style of classical music. His friend Vincent d’Indy introduced him to the music of Richard Wagner, usually an anathema to those on the French musical scene, but it may have influenced the often complex chromaticism in Chausson’s compositions.

Chausson has written some extraordinary pieces including Poeme, a symphonic work both majestic and contemplative. But he died unexpectedly young; killed in a bike accident. Almond feels that he might have been one of the great French composers.

The piano quartet bursts with color, less an exercise in classical structure than a sequence of poetic expressions. Opening with warm, bright emotions, subsequent movements are lyrical and contemplative. Rich harmonies and textures in the second movement build in layers as each instrument joins in. The finale is often frenetic, with a driving tempo often slowing to revisit earlier themes in the quartet.

Asuncion and Arron will play a cello sonata by Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953), Sonata in C Major for piano and cello Op. 119 (1949). This duet offers an extraordinary listening experience. Written for virtuoso performer cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, the cello opens the work in a slow, low (grave) statement. Conversations between cello and piano are featured throughout. The work concludes with deeply lyrical Russian tunes critic Blair Johnston suggests were “steeped in the music of Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky” along with “the kind of impish rhythms and virtuosic fire that will always say Prokofiev to us.”

Prokofiev, like Shostakovich, composed modern classical music in the tense environment of Stalinist Russia. A state committee of music critics empowered by Joseph Stalin censored music they did not like. Public and critics approved of this work as quite approachable and virtuosic.

Almond, Arron, and Asuncion will perform a late Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) piano trio, Trio in C, Hob. XV:27 (1795). Haydn first wrote keyboard pieces that featured the harpsichord. But his late works were designed to take advantage of the new fortepiano. He wrote this trio during a highly successful second visit to London late in his career.

Musicologist Kai Christiansen captures the essence of the work: “The opening allegro is a crisp sonata with a supple exposition marked by its opening fanfare, delicious pauses, lyrical grace, and sparkling piano runs for music that captivates through charm. The middle movement begins as a sweet andante in A major that suddenly pounces with heavy accents into the severity of A minor. The finale is a hybrid of sonata and rondo form with the harmonic motion and development from the former and the recurring refrain from the latter. A swift and jolly presto develops into sections of fierce drive.”

To Almond, the trio exemplifies Haydn’s casual humor. This cheerful work includes twists that only the musicians may catch. Almond says the surprises are more apparent to an audience accustomed to conventional development.

Tuesday’s Nov. 19 concert will begin at 7:00 p.m. at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center, 325 W. Walnut St. near downtown Milwaukee. Tickets may be purchased online or at the door.

Although the concert venue, a very flexible space for the large Milwaukee Youth Symphony program, has the appearance of a small gymnasium, the room has been tuned to deliver great acoustics. The audience is close to the players, resulting in an intimate experience.

Almond returns to the Schwan Concert Hall at Wisconsin Lutheran College Monday, Jan. 27, 2025 for An Evening with Stas Venglevski and Frank Almond, a unique series within the series as Stas Venglevski, Almond, and cellist Roza Borisova explore the endless variety of international tango music, typically with some refreshing ad-lib banter between the two. The series has been an audience favorite for many years.