Rachel Franklin

Smithsonian Associates: Georges Bizet and Carmen - A Life in Music, a Legacy in Opera
2025-08-05 18:45 - 20:15 (America/New_York)
https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/georges-bizet-and-carmen

When Georges Bizet died suddenly and tragically at the early age of 36 in 1875, his new opera, Carmen, had just been dubbed a humiliating failure, panned by critics at its Paris premiere barely three months beforehand. Bizet would never know that only a few months later its performances in Vienna, St. Petersburg, London, and New York were triumphant, and this vibrant and revolutionary work has never been absent from the world’s opera stages since then.
In this 150th anniversary year of both Bizet’s death and Carmen’s birth, popular speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin explores how, despite enjoying only modest success during his lifetime, Bizet’s innovative, emotionally compelling style has influenced countless composers and profoundly shaped opera history to this day. Additional works showcased include his opera The Pearl Fishers, the Symphony in C, and his L’Arlésienne Suites.
British-born Franklin has been a featured speaker for organizations including the Library of Congress and NPR, exploring intersections among classical and jazz music, film scores, and the fine arts.

Smithsonian Associates: The Exquisite Enigma of Maurice Ravel, Lecture 2 - "I never look back. I do not want to repeat myself."
2025-07-23 12:00 - 13:30
https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/maurice-ravel

“Music should be the beautiful, fragile wing of the soul. It should enchant, caress, and disturb.” —Maurice Ravel
The music of Ravel brings a unique form of magnetism, delicacy, passion, and a frisson of disquiet to our concert experience. Beneath his shimmering sound canvases lie an extraordinary craft and fanatical precision that underpins every silken phrase and melody. Concert pianist and speaker Rachel Franklin celebrates Ravel’s 150th birthday by exploring a wide range of his works from such greatly loved masterpieces as Daphnis et Chloé and La Valse to solo display works like Tzigane that dazzle with their beauty and technical brilliance.
British-born Franklin has been a featured speaker for organizations including the Library of Congress and NPR, exploring intersections among classical and jazz music, film scores, and the fine arts.
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Following devastating experiences at the front during the Great War, Ravel used irony, jazz, cabaret and other modern popular styles to extend his language and express his evolving aesthetic. Whatever style he chose to explore, his music remained utterly individual, both intensely sophisticated and profoundly moving. Listen to selections from his opera L’enfant et les sortilèges, piano concertos for one and both hands, and works that directly reflect the tragic war years, Le Tombeau de Couperin and La Valse.

Smithsonian Associates: The Exquisite Enigma of Maurice Ravel, Lecture 1 - "I am neither a romantic nor a classic. I am myself."
2025-07-16 12:00 - 13:30
https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/maurice-ravel

“Music should be the beautiful, fragile wing of the soul. It should enchant, caress, and disturb.” —Maurice Ravel
The music of Ravel brings a unique form of magnetism, delicacy, passion, and a frisson of disquiet to our concert experience. Beneath his shimmering sound canvases lie an extraordinary craft and fanatical precision that underpins every silken phrase and melody. Concert pianist and speaker Rachel Franklin celebrates Ravel’s 150th birthday by exploring a wide range of his works from such greatly loved masterpieces as Daphnis et Chloé and La Valse to solo display works like Tzigane that dazzle with their beauty and technical brilliance.
British-born Franklin has been a featured speaker for organizations including the Library of Congress and NPR, exploring intersections among classical and jazz music, film scores, and the fine arts.
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In the years before World War I Ravel carved out a highly distinctive path for himself as a young innovator, creating ravishing sonic worlds that both seduced and confused his listeners. Selections include his ballet Daphnis et Chloé, piano works Jeux d’Eau and Gaspard de la Nuit, and his String Quartet in F.

Smithsonian Associates: Art Meets Music - A Duet of Visual Artists and Composers, Lecture 4 - The Artist as Musician, the Composer as Model
2025-07-01 12:00 - 13:30
https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/art-meets-music

Music and the visual arts have always walked hand in hand. For millennia, artists have obsessed about how to represent music’s invisible beauty, just as composers have sought to render art’s vibrant colors in pure sound.
Popular speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin leads a fascinating exploration into the intimate relationship between the visible and invisible arts and how music can literally bind the arts together.
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Many great artists were also musicians. Ingres, Delacroix, Klee, and Matisse, all were passionate instrumentalists. How did their deep friendships with composers and constant musical immersion shape their art? Franklin delves into the meaning behind some famous portraits of Chopin and Paganini and considers how Matisse and Klee expressed the essential presence of music in their own lives.
British-born Franklin has been a featured speaker for organizations including the Library of Congress and NPR, exploring intersections among classical and jazz music, film scores, and the fine arts.

Smithsonian Associates: Art Meets Music - A Duet of Visual Artists and Composers, Lecture 3 - The Sharps: Family Harmony
2025-06-24 12:00 - 13:30
https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/art-meets-music

Music and the visual arts have always walked hand in hand. For millennia, artists have obsessed about how to represent music’s invisible beauty, just as composers have sought to render art’s vibrant colors in pure sound.
Popular speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin leads a fascinating exploration into the intimate relationship between the visible and invisible arts and how music can literally bind the arts together.
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Meet the Sharps. Behind Johan Joseph Zoffany’s joyful late-18th-century portrait of a musical party on the Thames that depicts the family of Granville Sharp playing together lies a powerful celebration of social harmony and a true commitment to justice. Franklin explores this fascinating intersection of art, music, and history to find that the entertaining Sharps have a harmonious message for today: love music, give back, and always wear big hats.

Smithsonian Associates: Art Meets Music - A Duet of Visual Artists and Composers, Lecture 2 - Symbols and Allegories: Art’s Hidden Musical Codes
2025-06-17 12:00 - 13:30
https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/art-meets-music

Music and the visual arts have always walked hand in hand. For millennia, artists have obsessed about how to represent music’s invisible beauty, just as composers have sought to render art’s vibrant colors in pure sound.
Popular speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin leads a fascinating exploration into the intimate relationship between the visible and invisible arts and how music can literally bind the arts together.
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Humans have been playing music for more than 40,000 years and images of us with our instruments abound from Neolithic times onwards. From intimate family portraits to massive historical, religious, and allegorical artworks, music and musicians are embedded throughout the history of art. Many of these works contain secret codes that contemporary viewers would have understood. Franklin interprets glorious paintings by artists such as Lippi, Vermeer, and Hogarth and offers music that would have been performed at the time.

Rachel Franklin for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra: Inside the Classics
2025-06-15 14:00 - 14:30, 2025-06-07 19:00 - 19:30, 2025-05-29 19:00 - 19:30, 2025-05-17 19:00 - 19:30, 2025-05-01 19:00 - 19:30, 2025-04-27 14:00 - 14:30, 2025-04-17 19:00 - 19:30, 2025-03-22 19:00 - 19:30 and 4 more dates | Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Ln, North Bethesda, MD, 20852, United States
https://www.bsomusic.org/inside-the-classics/

Dr. Rachel Franklin is delighted to be the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Strathmore Music Scholar-in-Residence. She gives all the BSO’s pre-concert presentations at their Bethesda, MD venue, Strathmore Hall as part of their “Inside the Classics” series.

Smithsonian Associates: Art Meets Music - A Duet of Visual Artists and Composers, Lecture 1 - Chagall at the Opera: A Listener’s Guide
2025-06-10 12:00 - 13:30
https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/art-meets-music

Music and the visual arts have always walked hand in hand. For millennia, artists have obsessed about how to represent music’s invisible beauty, just as composers have sought to render art’s vibrant colors in pure sound.
Popular speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin leads a fascinating exploration into the intimate relationship between the visible and invisible arts and how music can literally bind the arts together.
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Marc Chagall said “I wanted to represent, as in a mirror, a bunch of dreams, the creations of the actors and musicians; to keep in mind the colorful clothes of the audience stirring on the lower level. To sing like a bird, free of any theory and method. To render homage to the great composers of operas and ballets.” From the Paris Opéra Garnier to New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Chagall created utterly unique murals, sets, and costumes for opera houses and theaters worldwide that changed theatrical design forever. Franklin surveys the many composers he glorified and discusses how they inspired him.

Rachel Franklin performs Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Frederick Symphony Orchestra
2025-04-26 19:30 - 22:00 | Kussmaul Theatre, Frederick Community College, 7932 Opossumtown Pike, Frederick, 21701, United States
https://fredericksymphony.org/event/alpine-vistas

All Brahms concert featuring local pianist Rachel Franklin performing Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Brahms’ Tragic Overture, and Brahms’ Symphony No. 1.

Smithsonian Associates: Great Composer-Pianists - Brahms
2025-03-31 12:00 - 14:00
https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/great-composer-pianists

Popular speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin guides a unique look at the monumental keyboard talents of four great composer-pianists and how their performing virtuosity influenced the piano works we enjoy today.
With a legacy of printed compositions but no recordings, how can we get closer to the white-hot moments of creation and performance when these artists poured out their genius for fortunate and astonished listeners? How did the composers’ musical imaginations and their signature performance styles influence the development of how pianos would be constructed and sound? And did their contemporary audiences even comprehend what they were hearing?
Franklin offers a fascinating exploration into the creative minds—and hands—of a quartet of piano pioneers celebrated for their prowess as composers and performers. She concludes each lecture with a live performance of a work by the spotlighted composer.
British-born Franklin has been a featured speaker for organizations including the Library of Congress and NPR, exploring intersections among classical and jazz music, film scores, and the fine arts.
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Brahms trained intensely as a pianist and all his compositions for the instrument demand a prodigious and highly controlled technique. He was also a renowned pedagogue, and he and his muse Clara Schumann taught many students whose playing was subsequently captured by early recording, providing a tantalizing glimpse into the performing styles of the 19th century.

Smithsonian Associates: Great Composer-Pianists - Chopin
2025-03-24 12:00 - 14:00
https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/great-composer-pianists

Popular speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin guides a unique look at the monumental keyboard talents of four great composer-pianists and how their performing virtuosity influenced the piano works we enjoy today.
With a legacy of printed compositions but no recordings, how can we get closer to the white-hot moments of creation and performance when these artists poured out their genius for fortunate and astonished listeners? How did the composers’ musical imaginations and their signature performance styles influence the development of how pianos would be constructed and sound? And did their contemporary audiences even comprehend what they were hearing?
Franklin offers a fascinating exploration into the creative minds—and hands—of a quartet of piano pioneers celebrated for their prowess as composers and performers. She concludes each lecture with a live performance of a work by the spotlighted composer.
British-born Franklin has been a featured speaker for organizations including the Library of Congress and NPR, exploring intersections among classical and jazz music, film scores, and the fine arts.
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Because of both his fragile health and the exquisite patina of his style, our understanding of Chopin’s playing is sometimes clouded by romantic myth. While he only enjoyed performing for private audiences, many reports show him to have been a mesmerizing player with a piano technique and harmony so revolutionary that it left his brilliant friend Franz Liszt scrambling to keep up.

Smithsonian Associates: Great Composer-Pianists - Beethoven
2025-03-17 12:00 - 14:00
https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/great-composer-pianists

Popular speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin guides a unique look at the monumental keyboard talents of four great composer-pianists and how their performing virtuosity influenced the piano works we enjoy today.
With a legacy of printed compositions but no recordings, how can we get closer to the white-hot moments of creation and performance when these artists poured out their genius for fortunate and astonished listeners? How did the composers’ musical imaginations and their signature performance styles influence the development of how pianos would be constructed and sound? And did their contemporary audiences even comprehend what they were hearing?
Franklin offers a fascinating exploration into the creative minds—and hands—of a quartet of piano pioneers celebrated for their prowess as composers and performers. She concludes each lecture with a live performance of a work by the spotlighted composer.
British-born Franklin has been a featured speaker for organizations including the Library of Congress and NPR, exploring intersections among classical and jazz music, film scores, and the fine arts.
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Mozart may have enchanted his listeners, but Beethoven overwhelmed and frequently disturbed them. While constantly harassing piano makers for stronger instruments and dealing with encroaching deafness, Beethoven created entirely new piano techniques almost by accident as he fought to express his titanic ideas on the instrument.

Smithsonian Associates: Great Composer-Pianists - Mozart
2025-03-10 12:00 - 14:00
https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/great-composer-pianists

Popular speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin guides a unique look at the monumental keyboard talents of four great composer-pianists and how their performing virtuosity influenced the piano works we enjoy today.
With a legacy of printed compositions but no recordings, how can we get closer to the white-hot moments of creation and performance when these artists poured out their genius for fortunate and astonished listeners? How did the composers’ musical imaginations and their signature performance styles influence the development of how pianos would be constructed and sound? And did their contemporary audiences even comprehend what they were hearing?
Franklin offers a fascinating exploration into the creative minds—and hands—of a quartet of piano pioneers celebrated for their prowess as composers and performers. She concludes each lecture with a live performance of a work by the spotlighted composer.
British-born Franklin has been a featured speaker for organizations including the Library of Congress and NPR, exploring intersections among classical and jazz music, film scores, and the fine arts.
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Mozart’s playing was regarded as simply wondrous. Franklin examines his beginnings as a harpsichord player and how he subsequently pivoted directly to the recently developed pianofortes, creating new concerto styles that both dazzled and confused his audiences.

Orchestrating Greatness: Movies, Their Music, and the Oscars
2025-02-24 18:30 - 20:30
https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/orchestrating-greatness

Experiencing a great film score can have a lifelong impact. Composers such as Bernard Herrmann, Max Steiner, Ennio Morricone and John Williams have engraved iconic scenes into our collective memory with their extraordinary music, even if the rest of the movie might have faded.
Over the years the Oscars have seen some of the greatest moments in film music history. Just ahead of the Big Show, join concert pianist and film-music fanatic Rachel Franklin as she leads an immersive journey through 90 years of award-winning movie scores, accompanied by her grand piano and a wide collection of fascinating film clips.
British-born Franklin has been a featured speaker for organizations including the Library of Congress and NPR, exploring intersections among classical and jazz music, film scores, and the fine arts.

Koh Series: Dr. Rachel Franklin presents "Gershwin's Centenary Decade"
2025-02-20 19:00 - 21:00 | Congregation B’Nai Israel, 7199 Tristan Dr, Easton, 21601, United States
https://www.bnaiisraeleaston.org/event/gershwin

Celebrating Gershwin’s Extraordinary Creative Output During the 1920’s
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Popular pianist and speaker Dr. Rachel Franklin returns to Temple B’nai Israel to celebrate George Gershwin’s greatest achievements during this centenary decade.
Gershwin’s groundbreaking fusion of classical music and jazz, Rhapsody in Blue, is one of America’s most beloved cultural icons, an exuberant symbol of the nation’s melting pot self-image, its vigor, optimism, and constant reinvention. However, the Rhapsody is just one of several masterworks that Gershwin’s boundless imagination produced during the 1920s.
She also dives into Gershwin’s extraordinary although painfully short life, how he conceived this music, his deeply influential Jewish immigrant roots and how they are part of our universal Gershwin experience.

Smithsonian Associates: The Glory of Russian Masterworks, Lecture 6 - More Masterpieces from the Russian Tradition
2025-02-13 12:00 - 14:00
https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/glory-of-russian-masterworks

Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev: Russia has provided us with some of the most exciting and original music in the repertoire today. Vibrant colors, explosive energy, and passionate emotional drive characterize the works of these composers. Yet this tradition seemed to spring from nowhere barely 150 years ago, expanding meteorically in breadth and national confidence over an amazingly short period. As she explores the riches of Russian concert works, popular speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin combines lecture and piano demonstrations to also trace the turbulent historical movements that acted both as backdrop and engine for this fascinating musical evolution.
British-born Franklin has been a featured speaker for organizations including the Library of Congress and heard on NPR, exploring intersections among classical and jazz music, film scores, and the fine arts.
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The final session of the series is devoted to listening to a variety of great works not yet explored. Selections include the opera Boris Godunov by Mussorgsky, ballets by Tchaikovsky, orchestral works by Rachmaninoff, chamber music by Shostakovich, and other composers.

Smithsonian Associates: The Glory of Russian Masterworks, Lecture 5 - Dmitri Shostakovich and His Colleagues
2025-02-06 12:00 - 14:00
https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/glory-of-russian-masterworks

Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev: Russia has provided us with some of the most exciting and original music in the repertoire today. Vibrant colors, explosive energy, and passionate emotional drive characterize the works of these composers. Yet this tradition seemed to spring from nowhere barely 150 years ago, expanding meteorically in breadth and national confidence over an amazingly short period. As she explores the riches of Russian concert works, popular speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin combines lecture and piano demonstrations to also trace the turbulent historical movements that acted both as backdrop and engine for this fascinating musical evolution.
British-born Franklin has been a featured speaker for organizations including the Library of Congress and heard on NPR, exploring intersections among classical and jazz music, film scores, and the fine arts.
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Despite the fearsome pressure of the Stalinist state, Dmitri Shostakovich was prolific, producing a wide range of symphonic works, operas, concertos, solo works, choral and chamber music for the 20th-century canon. Along with works of fellow Soviet composers such as Kabalevsky and Khatchaturian, Franklin offers a selection of his masterpieces including symphonies, operas, and film music.

Smithsonian Associates: The Glory of Russian Masterworks, Lecture 4 - The Ballet Masters, Igor Stravinsky and Sergey Prokofiev
2025-01-30 12:00 - 14:00
https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/glory-of-russian-masterworks

Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev: Russia has provided us with some of the most exciting and original music in the repertoire today. Vibrant colors, explosive energy, and passionate emotional drive characterize the works of these composers. Yet this tradition seemed to spring from nowhere barely 150 years ago, expanding meteorically in breadth and national confidence over an amazingly short period. As she explores the riches of Russian concert works, popular speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin combines lecture and piano demonstrations to also trace the turbulent historical movements that acted both as backdrop and engine for this fascinating musical evolution.
British-born Franklin has been a featured speaker for organizations including the Library of Congress and heard on NPR, exploring intersections among classical and jazz music, film scores, and the fine arts.
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Commissioned by the great impresario Serge Diaghilev, Stravinsky’s ballets crossed the fault line between Romanticism and Modernism and changed forever the way audiences understood dance. Hear samples of Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. Prokofiev composed his Romeo and Juliet under the malign supervision of Soviet apparatchiks but still produced a work of sublime romance and beauty. Franklin also explores his piano and symphonic masterpieces.

Smithsonian Associates: The Glory of Russian Masterworks, Lecture 3 - From Mussorgsky to Rachmaninoff and Scriabin
2025-01-23 12:00 - 14:00
https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/glory-of-russian-masterworks

Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev: Russia has provided us with some of the most exciting and original music in the repertoire today. Vibrant colors, explosive energy, and passionate emotional drive characterize the works of these composers. Yet this tradition seemed to spring from nowhere barely 150 years ago, expanding meteorically in breadth and national confidence over an amazingly short period. As she explores the riches of Russian concert works, popular speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin combines lecture and piano demonstrations to also trace the turbulent historical movements that acted both as backdrop and engine for this fascinating musical evolution.
British-born Franklin has been a featured speaker for organizations including the Library of Congress and heard on NPR, exploring intersections among classical and jazz music, film scores, and the fine arts.
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Modeste Mussorgsky was rough-hewn, barely trained, and obsessed with the rhythms of the Russian language, while Sergey Rachmaninoff was supremely polished and an international concert pianist of titanic genius. Yet both formed their styles directly from ancient Russian traditions. Franklin showcases Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Rachmaninoff’s piano concertos. Meanwhile, the highly eccentric Scriabin was creating his own language colored by synaesthesia and powered by his bizarre mystic beliefs, as exemplified by his tone poem Prometheus: Poem of Fire.
