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

 Brahms may not have been the most enterprising of composers. The first of his four symphonies was 20 years in the making, a gestation period culminating in an initial performance in 1876 when the composer was 44 years

 The Florentine Opera’s season finale, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, was an unqualified delight. Not only was it a tribute to this gentlest of the great composers, but a reminder that the tendency to “reinvent” operatic

 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

 Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia for eight voices and orchestra

 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

 Imperial Russia is often painted in the grim hues of Siberian exile and political repression, yet a glittering culture coalesced there during the 19th and early 20th centuries—one that continues to influence the arts and imagination

The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s next concert begins with one of the most performed orchestral works of Brooklyn native Jennifer Higdon (born 1962), “blue cathedral.” Higdon’s compositional star is certainly on the rise

 Frankly Music features Frank Almond and pianist William Wolfram in a program previewing their CD, A Violin’s Life, scheduled for release on Avie Records later this spring. All of the works on the CD have direct historical