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Re•Views

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Inventions of Memory” (June 27)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

ChamberFest Cleveland’s June 27 program, “Inventions of Memory,” offered three distinct meditations on musical remembrance. Presented in the tranquil setting of Harkness Chapel at Case Western Reserve University, eight of the festival’s standout artists illuminated works by Claude Debussy, Brett Dean, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

The program opened with Debussy’s Trois Chansons de Bilitis, a cycle of idealized and slightly prurient visions of antiquity. Mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron and pianist Roman Rabinovich offered a reading attuned to the music’s erotic undertow and bathed in Lydian and whole-tone harmonies.

In La Flûte de Pan, Rabinovich’s shimmering textures evoked the strumming of a lyre as Barron spun out the tale of a young girl’s intimate flute lesson. Her voice, pliant and sumptuous, moved easily between innocence and seduction.
[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Starry Night” (June 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On June 21, ChamberFest Cleveland presented “Starry Night” at Federated Church in Chagrin Falls. The program’s nocturnal theme included works by ChamberFest composer-in- residence Errollyn Wallen, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Arnold Schoenberg.

The performance of Wallen’s Dervish for cello and piano was spellbinding. Like a trained actor, cellist Oliver Herbert took on a distinct persona: intensely expressive, earthy, and rapturous. Pianist Roman Rabinovich was not merely a counterpart, but a force that Herbert seemed at times either to resist or to be swept up by. Together, the duo sustained an inward intensity that made Wallen’s music feel at once intimate, expansive, and hypnotic.

[Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera: George & Ira Gershwin’s Tip-Toes (June 26)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On a sunny Thursday afternoon in Wooster on June 26, Ohio Light Opera’s revival of the Gershwin brothers’ Tip-Toes (1925) made its premiere during a carefree two hours at the College of Wooster’s Freedlander Theatre.

Director Jacob Allen embraced the show’s silliness — mistaken identities, romantic mix-ups, and a heroine with amnesia — while keeping the action kinetic and the comedy light on its feetThe production succeeds due to excellent staging and choreography, but also thanks to sharp acting, nimble dancing, heartfelt singing, and general razzle-dazzle. Proof that even the more neglected musicals of the Jazz Age can still charm a modern audience. [Read more…]

ENCORE celebrates its first decade with “The Golden Waltz” (June 17)

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by Stephanie Manning

Ten years have gone by in a blink for the ENCORE Chamber Music Institute. So it’s only fitting that its official anniversary concert began with a healthy dose of nostalgia.

Artistic director Jinjoo Cho introduced the June 17 performance at the Maltz Performing Arts Center with a slideshow documenting  the evolution of the Music & Ideas Festival and Summer Academy. “Cleveland is home to me,” she said, clicking through photos of old programs, early notebook brainstorming sessions, and past students — many of whom are now professional musicians in their own right.

That trip down memory lane was a prelude to the musical portion of the concert, titled “The Golden Waltz.” [Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera: Lerner & Loewe’s Brigadoon (June 19)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Alan J. Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s 1947 Brigadoon owes much of its popularity to the familiarity of its music — and people who have never seen the show can find themselves carrying tunes like “The Heather on the Hill,” “Come to Me, Bend to me, ”and “Almost Like Being in Love” around in their ears, not knowing where they came from.

Equally as compelling are its Scottish Highland dances, which are numerous,  authentic, and as one commentator noted in a review of Brigadoon’s debut, so well-integrated into the plot that ‘it is impossible to say where the music and dancing leave off and the story begins.’

Engagingly directed by Jacob Allen, with lively choreography by Spencer Reese, and Wilson Southerland leading the excellent OLO Orchestra, Ohio Light Opera’s alluring production of Brigadoon opened on June 19 in Freedlander Theater at the College of Wooster. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Variations on Love and Loss” (June 20) 

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by Kevin McLaughlin

At the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall on Friday, June 20, ChamberFest Cleveland presented “Variations on Love and Loss.” Complemented by a friendly acoustical space and a convivial throng, the program spanned a wide emotional range, from deep grief to luminous joy.

Witold Lutosławski and fellow composer Andrzej Panufnik originally performed Lutosławski’s Paganini Variations in cafés around Warsaw during the German occupation of Poland in World War II, where public concerts were banned.

The duo wrote it partly to showcase their talents, and pianists James (Zijian) Wei and Roman Rabinovich brought fearless bravura to the work. The performers tore through each variation, trading volleys of octaves and whiplash runs. It was part sorcery, part acrobatic display — and entirely exhilarating. [Read more…]

ENCORE in CLE connects string quartets with young kids in Garfield Heights (June 12)

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by Stephanie Manning

School’s out for the summer, but that doesn’t mean all learning has to be put on pause. Enter programs like “Summer Fun For Everyone” at the Garfield Heights Branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library.

On most weekday mornings during the summer, kids from grades one through six are welcome to drop in to the campus on Turney Road for exploratory educational activities. On Thursday, June 12, what was in store included a concert of string quartets, performed by the young artists of the ENCORE Chamber Music Institute.

While the musicians were warming up, a few kids and caregivers waited in the adjoining room. There, the tables were already lined with crafting supplies — cardboard boxes, rubber bands, and the like — to build makeshift instruments. [Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera embraces the nuances of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel (June 14)

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by Stephanie Manning

If you’ve never seen Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, don’t let the title fool you. Although the carousel in question is literal, it’s also a metaphor — for cycles of unhealthy relationships, social ostracization, and abuse.

Eighty years on from its Broadway debut, Carousel finds itself in a tricky position in the musical theater canon. Featuring some of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most beautiful songs, the work is so beloved that TIME Magazine named it the best musical of the 20th century. But it’s also faced criticism for its portrayal of domestic violence.

Deftly directed by Steven Daigle and unafraid to face some thorny topics head on, Ohio Light Opera’s Carousel made for a compelling start to the company’s 46th season at The College of Wooster’s Freedlander Theatre on June 14. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “A Musical Feast” at Heights Theater & in Nate’s World (June 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

ChamberFest Cleveland’s season theme of “Lost and Found” extended to the choice of venue for its program “A Musical Feast” on June 14.

Heights Theater opened in 1919 as a motion picture theater with 1,200 seats. Renamed Coventry Theater, then Centrum, it eventually closed in 2003. The space was repurposed as a church, following a period as a comedy club, and is now being used as a performance venue.

The sound carries well, but the large space has an odd acoustic which suits some styles of music better than others. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland opening night: “Lost and Found” in Mixon Hall (June 11)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The thirteenth season of ChamberFest Cleveland began on an auspicious note with “Lost and Found,” a sold-out opening concert on Wednesday, June 11 at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall.

The Festival put a special mark on the occasion by fielding two of its largest ensembles for the opening and closing works, and by presenting the Cleveland premiere of a riveting work by one of CFC’s four composer-performers in between.

Pianists Michael Stephen Brown and Roman Rabinovich shared thousands of notes as soloists in Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto in C for two claviers, a product of the composer’s concerts in Zimmermann’s Leipzig Coffee House, when he increasingly turned his attention away from church duties and produced concerts with University musicians. The C-major concerto is apparently unique for not having been arranged from an earlier work. [Read more…]

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