Frank Almond, one of Milwaukee’s most admired musicians, performed in an unusual role at the Frankly Music season finale last week. Rather than playing violin, he was conductor for a chamber orchestra concert

 The young Italian-German violinist Augustin Hadelich is the rare artist who can make Mozart sizzle. Many musicians find the refined style of Mozart by containing expression. Hadelich seemed released by it. At Milwaukee

 Avant garde ain’t what it used to be. Forty-five years ago it was still possible to shock and outrage a concert audience. Could that ever happen today? Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Luciano Berio’s wildy

 Rachmaninoff’s music always feels emotionally restless. Whether melancholy or agitated, it inevitably longs for some undefined otherness. Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra played an all Rachmaninoff concert last Friday

 On Saturday Present Music explored yet another unprecedented venue in the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center in Bayside. A previous performance took place at a private East Side home, and the same program is planned for

 Very few people are equally adept at conducting and playing an instrument at the highest level of professional performance. Guest conductor/pianist Ignat Solzhenitsyn proved his profound dual abilities last Saturday night with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

The “Edo factor” was in full gear at the All-Beethoven Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concert last Saturday evening. With music director Edo de Waart as conductor, the MSO is a disciplined, efficient entity. There were no guest artists in this meat-and-potatoes orchestral program

I am not alone in admitting that I can’t completely embrace the symphonies of Anton Bruckner. The surface sound of his music, its harmonies and gorgeous sonorities, is readily appreciated. It’s a grasp of structure and emotional narrative within his abstracted romanticism that has eluded me