By Daniel Hautzinger
Learning and putting together Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time is a scramble against time. The piece features complicated rhythms (sometimes notated without time signatures), infinitely long phrases, and complicated layering of parts. György Ligeti’s Horn Trio and Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony are similarly difficult works. But students at Kent/Blossom Music Festival (KBMF) are assigned to learn them in two weeks for performance.
“Two weeks is just enough time,” said Keith Robinson, artistic coordinator of Kent/Blossom, professor of cello at Kent State and KBMF, and cellist in the Miami String Quartet, who gave a recital as part of the festival. “You want something that will challenge them for two whole weeks.” [Read more…]
30-year-old German-Italian violinist Augustin Hadelich is developing a reputation for stepping in to save concerts at the last minute. In 2008, on less than a week’s notice, he replaced Julian Rachlin in Prokofiev’s second concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl (an occasion when conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya was also an emergency substitute for the ailing Edo de Waart).
“Bach was full of joy, and I think that really stems from his faith. He was a strong Lutheran and you see this in all of his music. He was a very complete, whole being. And yeah, I think he loved to throw back a few beers,” said cellist Steuart Pincombe over the phone.
Ida Kavafian is clearly a devoted teacher. She serves on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music, Bard College Conservatory, and Juilliard, and was the Kent/Blossom Music Festival’s Kulas Guest Artist this year, giving master classes and coachings to student musicians. As part of that residency, she gave a recital in Ludwig Recital Hall at Kent State University on July 3.
Three has been the magic number throughout ChamberFest 2014, and nowhere more than in its closing concert in CIM’s Mixon Hall on Sunday afternoon. The music was rich and, as usual with ChamberFest, the musicianship masterful. This very enjoyable program, titled “3X,” included three works, each featuring instruments in multiples of three.
“The Bach Legacy” is the overriding theme in this summer’s Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, and artistic director Kenneth Slowik decided to devote the second faculty concert on Friday, June 21 to a partial replication of an historic benefit concert given in Hamburg in April of 1786 by Johann Sebastian Bach’s most celebrated son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. (Program pictured here.)
Warning to all witches: you’re courting danger if you try to turn children into gingerbread in Northeast Ohio. You’ve been punished for that many times recently — at the Cleveland Institute of Music (March 2012), at Youngstown State University (April 2013), at the Oberlin Conservatory (November 2013) and at Baldwin Wallace University (February 2014). The children rebelled once again last weekend at the Barlow Center in Hudson, as Nightingale Opera Theatre staged three performances of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. And once again, the witch didn’t survive the trip through her own oven. I saw the show, which was sung in English, on Sunday, June 29.
“I look forward to coming to Cleveland,” exclaimed French violinist 
“I’m looking forward to being there, it’s going to be a lot of fun,” violinist and 2014 Kent/Blossom Kulas Foundation Guest Artist Ida Kavafian said enthusiastically by telephone. “Keith Robinson is somebody I’ve worked with for years and he’s talked about hosting me at Kent/Blossom for some time. We finally were able to work out the dates and come up with a project that will be a lot of fun and beneficial to the students.”