MUSIC AND DANCE : Dream That Began in Hungary Comes True for Yorba-Linda Woman in Baroque Players

For Marika Frankl, a Hungarian-born musician and physicist who fled her native land during the revolution of 1956, forming the Harmonia Baroque Players in Yorba Linda was the last step in making a dream come true.

“I always wanted to play Baroque chamber music in a group,” Frankl, 56, said recently. “I graduated as a singer from the conservatory in Budapest, and even in those times, before the early music wave reached Hungary, I used to sing Baroque arias. But it wasn’t popular. Teachers would ask me how could I expect to make a career as a singer if I wasn’t singing opera?”

Before the issue could be put to the test, however, the 1956 revolution erupted and Marika and George Frankl fled the county.

“Literally, we left Hungary on foot and with the clothes on our backs,” she said during an interview at her home in Yorba Linda. “We came to Los Angeles in 1957. But we did not know the language. It was not an easy time.”

Music took a back seat to earning a living, and since both Frankls had studied physics as well as music in their native county, fortunately, they were able to launch new careers doing cancer research at the USC School of Medicine.

After two daughters were born, however, Frankl turned to raising a family while her husband became a chemist in Fullerton.

When one daughter started playing the recorder, Marika Frankl picked up the instrument, too.

“It looked like a fun instrument and it was suitable for early music,” she said. “I learned it to be able to play duets with her. I never thought I would do anything with it. But I fell in love with it. . . . In fact, music came back with a wham.

“But when you are a musician and are trying to learn a new instrument, at first it is terrible. You can hear what it should sound like, and it doesn’t sound near that.”

The recorder, Frankl said, is easy to play as a beginning woodwind. “But at an artistic level, it is more difficult. There are no keys, and so the cross-fingering (to produce certain notes) can be very hairy. . . . Later, it became rewarding.”

Frankl first formed an amateur recorder quartet that played transcriptions of Baroque chamber music. “But it was not the same thing as (playing on) original instruments,” she said. So she assembled a group of amateur musicians, which proved “all right for a while.

“But it was not satisfying,” she said. “I outgrew them in ability and knowledge. Also, amateurs didn’t want to learn a piece, work on it. They would read through a piece and move on to another. If I wanted to go back to anything, they would say, ‘We did that. . . .’ ”

Frankl’s current group consists of professionals who teach or perform in other ensembles. Members include Conrad C. Wan, oboe; Eleanor Baldwin, harpsichord; Mari Haig, violin, and Karen Emery, cello. Each teaches or is a member of a professional ensemble.

They perform publicly only five or six times a year in churches and community centers. But they also play at private functions and in county schools under the sponsorship of the Orange County Philharmonic Society. Frankl and Baldwin will play 32 concerts for fourth-graders this month alone.

“Ours is really a mixed group,” she said. “Recorder and harpsichord are our only original instruments. But our oboe, violin and cello try to play in Baroque style. . . . In fact, my poor oboist is sweating blood to tone down, to balance with recorder. Ditto the cello. She really has to tone down, even use a mute. Mostly, balance within the group is the difficult thing.”

Frankl is convinced that there is an Orange County audience for early music.

“Before Christmas, we played Baroque music interspersed with carols at the Orange Mall,” she said. “Some people would stand around for an hour and listen, not so much for the carols but for the Baroque repertory. They asked questions between numbers. ‘What was that?’ ‘What is that instrument called?’ That was lovely. I thought that it was just going to be a job, but it was very gratifying.”

Like others, that job--she sounds self-conscious calling them “gigs”--came about through a long, slow process.

“I was a professional in terms of music, but I wasn’t professional in the sense of managing a group. But I did a lot of networking,” she said, pointing to a book of her correspondence measuring 5 inches thick.

“I would call (various churches) and introduce myself, inquiring about possible interest. Something would happen. Slowly, the thing snowballed. . . . By now, it has started to pay off. I’m getting phone calls.”

But it is still a struggle. In fact, the Harmonia Baroque Players do not even have a yearly budget.

“My books are available to anybody, including the IRS,” Frankl said. “But we don’t have a budget. We didn’t even form as a nonprofit organization.

“We have no outside support. We contract individually for concerts as they come along. But we don’t make a living from the concerts. We earn our money from teaching and so-called little gigs at receptions. It is tough,” she admitted.

Perhaps that is why Frankl’s goals for the group remain modest.

“I don’t have Napoleonic ideas,” she said. “I don’t see myself being the Orange County savior of early music. I’m happy to provide music for the local scene and the surroundings. I feel we have a place and a function and a cause to fulfill--spreading music to ears who haven’t heard.

“Lots of people can’t afford (Orange County Performing Arts) Center ticket prices, for instance. But a lot of people can pay $3 to $7 (that we charge). And consequently we reach audiences that more famous artists can’t. We reach seniors, for instance. That is so satisfying.”

HARMONIA BAROQUE PLAYERS

Saturday, 4 p.m.

United Methodist Church, 12741 Main St., Garden Grove

$5 general; $3 for senior citizens and students

Information: (714) 534-1071