Violinist
Frank Almond made a big splash at the 1981 International Paganini Competition in Genoa by taking third place; at 17, he was the youngest violinist ever to do so at the time. A student of Dorothy Delay at the Juilliard School,
Almond entered into the
Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow and was prominently featured in the PBS documentary The VIII International Tchaikovsky Competition (1986). Along with him in that film was pianist
William Wolfram, also competing at the time, and more than two decades on they continue to work as a violin/piano duo.
Almond's day job is as concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, but he has several other outlets through which to express his talents, including the New York-based chamber group An Die Musik, which he has led from 1997 forward, and another chamber group centered in Milwaukee, Frankly Music. He has recorded for Avie, Summit, Wergo, New Albion (with pianist
Margaret Leng Tan), and for his own label Boolean.
Almond's recordings of
Brahms' violin sonatas with
Wolfram have elicited high praise from reviewers, one of whom said "this is easily the greatest
Brahms I have ever heard.
Almond and
Wolfram tower above giants."