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Preview: Cleveland Orchestra — a conversation with violin soloist Ray Chen

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by Mike Telin

CHEN-RayOn Sunday, August 11 beginning at 7:00 pm the sounds of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons will fill the Blossom Music Center grounds when violinist Ray Chen makes his debut with The Cleveland Orchestra. The concert under the direction of Jahja Ling also features Rossini’s Overture to The Thieving Magpie and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3.

Born in Taiwan and raised in Australia, Ray Chen studied at the Curtis Institute of Music. Following wins at the Yehudi Menuhin (2008) and Queen Elisabeth (2009) competitions, Chen’s international career has been on a fast track forward. You can read about his accomplishments and numerous other interests on his website.

But let’s get directly to our conversation. We reached Ray Chen by telephone in Germany where he had just finished a recording session for his third, all-Mozart album with Christoph Eschenbach and the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra. 

Mike Telin: Congratulations on your Cleveland Orchestra debut

Ray Chen: Thanks! I’m really excited. I went to the Encore School for Strings in 2006 and 2007 and I attended some concerts at Blossom. I remember hearing Christian Tetzlaff play the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and the second half was Scheherazade. That is a strong memory — sitting on the lawn — because as students we weren’t going to pay for pavilion seats. So I am really excited because there is more of a personal connection when you go back to the places you have been as a student. And to be able to be on the other side is fantastic. [Read more…]

Review: Hudson Chamber Players at Western Reserve Academy (August 4)

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by Robert Rollin

HCP-080413The intimate and atmospheric Western Reserve Academy Chapel (1836) provided a beautiful setting for the Hudson Chamber Players’ excellent Sunday August 4th afternoon concert. The group showed itself to be remarkably well prepared and accomplished. The afternoon’s highpoint was a beautifully nuanced performance of Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E flat major, Op. 44. The piece is one of the Schumann’s greatest chamber works, and indeed ranks very highly among all nineteenth-century chamber music. Pianist Elizabeth DeMio played the challenging solo part with power and sensitivity, and the string quartet balanced very effectively.

The quintet opened full force to an amazingly harmonically rich and brilliant tutti. The small hall resonated with the group’s fine sound. At the onset of the second theme, the cello and viola took the lead in a plaintively beautiful question and answer dialogue. The performance was worthy of this masterpiece. When the piano did not preside, it always had lovely passage work accompanying the strings. The wonderful late Romantic chromatic harmony, often borrowed from parallel keys, kept the music pulsating forcefully. [Read more…]

Review: Nightingale Opera Theatre: Werther at Solon Center for the Arts (August 2)

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by Robert Rollin

werther_banner_360Last Friday evening’s Nightingale Opera Theatre production of Jules Massenet’s opera, Werther, was a delight. Above all it was meticulously prepared. Music Director John Simmons’ piano rendition was so exceptionally flawless that the orchestra was not missed. His expression was constant, and his balance of contrapuntal sections with and without the singers was meticulous.

Equally important was that tempos, climaxes and other details were so well ingrained that the pace was swift and effective. All cast members and even the children’s chorus kept things moving and did not not let the plot’s overwhelming sadness overcome the dramatic flow. The Solon Center for the Arts has an intimate, but well-equipped, stage that helped make scene changes seamless. The fine acoustics made the English translation easily intelligible.

Massenet imbued the opera with a wonderful musical tapestry that Simmons and the cast took great pains to delineate. [Read more…]

Review: Karabits makes Cleveland Orchestra debut with Shaham in Tchaikovsky violin concerto (August 3)

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by Timothy Robson

Shaham,-Gil---by-Christian-SteinerThe rising young Ukrainian-born conductor Kirill Karabits made his Cleveland Orchestra debut on Saturday evening, August 3, at Blossom Music Center, in an all-Russian program. Gil Shaham was the soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35. It was a beautiful summer’s eve, and there was a large audience enjoying the fresh air on the lawn, as well as in the Blossom pavilion.

Mr. Karabits opened the concert with an energetic reading of Glinka’s Overture to Ruslan and Ludmila. The momentum never lagged, even in the more lyrical moments of the five-minute curtain raiser, whose eponymous opera is almost never performed in the West. Mr. Karabits was a model of efficiency in his conducting, with minimalist baton movements, nods and flicks of his fingers to communicate his directions.

In an interview last week with ClevelandClassical’s Mike Telin, Gil Shaham expressed his enthusiasm for performing the Tchaikovsky concerto, one of the enduring favorites of the romantic violin repertoire. His enthusiasm was apparent in his performance at Blossom. His playing and stage presence showed his total involvement with the music. [Read more…]

Report: Cleveland International Piano Competition Conversation — Jury Roundtable (August 5)

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by Guytano Parks

Jury-Roundtable“Technical prowess is assumed and expected, but it is not enough by itself,” said HaeSun Paik of Korea, 2013 Cleveland International Piano Competition jury member, regarding competition success at Monday morning’s Jury Roundtable, the third “Festival Event” at The Cleveland Museum of Art. This sentiment was echoed unanimously by all the other jurors: Nelita True, USA; Frank Weinstock, USA; Daejin Kim, Korea; Elinar Steen-Nokleberg, Jury Chairman, Norway; Robert Plano, Italy; Andrzej Jasinski, Poland and Alexander Korsantia, Georgia.

CIPC Executive Director Pierre van der Westhuitzen moderated the discussion which touched on key issues such as what the jurors listen for during performances and how music competitions impact careers. The Roundtable also included refreshing humor as HaeSun Paik led off the provocative conversation with a candid recounting of some of her own experiences as both competitor and juror in several major piano competitions. “You need huge luck to win,” she said of one of the competitions in which she competed, adding, “with 200 competitors, the jury was surely bound to have difficulties remembering you, let alone staying awake!” [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland International Piano Competition — Round Two, Session Four (August 4)

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by Daniel Hathaway

CIPC-ButterflyGerard Aimontche launched the Sunday afternoon session with Beethoven’s A-flat sonata, op. 110, then went on to play Chopin’s “Octaves” Etude (op. 25/10) and three of Kapustin’s 24 Preludes in Jazz Style from 1988. Though he seemed to be skimming the surface more than penetrating in the Beethoven (it sounded unsettled), he obviously connected with the audience, who broke into applause for the first time in the middle of a set. Aimontche held the pedal down for the Chopin and flew through its contrasting middle section, making an admirably long, slow crescendo back to the precipitous opening theme. He played three Kapustin preludes nos. 23, 4 and 17) back to back with a fine sense of jazz style.

Ben Kim began his set with a graceful reading of J.S. Bach’s F-sharp prelude and fugue (WTC I), subtly pointing up its details with interesting, mixed articulations. Long, well-shaped crescendos and diminuendos showed a good sense of the fugue’s points of tension and release. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland International Piano Competition — Round Two, Session Three (August 4)

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by Daniel Hathaway & Mike Telin

CIPC-ButterflyTo open Sunday morning’s session, Oleksandr Poliykov chose a single work, Brahms’s f minor sonata, op. 5, beginning grandly, then fading to a beautiful pianissimo. The first movement explored the whole range of emotion from the explosive to the sensitive while the rest of the sonata featured moments of stunning, lyrical beauty even in brooding and introspective passages. Poliykov can play with enormous power that never gets blurry and his sense of the spacious and expansive gesture suited Brahms well.

Beatrice Berrut began her second round set with a completely delightful journey through Haydn’s F Major Sonata (Hob. XVI:23) that was clean, touchingly lyrical and shapely. Her tone, full of color and dynamic contrasts, was readily apparent in her all-around brilliant performance of Chopin’s b-flat minor Sonata, op. 35. The third movement Marche also showed her great sense of line. These were two very well-conceived and executed performances; Berrut followed up with a winning smile at the end. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland International Piano Competition — Round Two, Session Two (August 3)

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by Daniel Hathaway

CIPC-ButterflySaturday afternoon’s session (the longest of the round with six players) opened with a meditative reading of J.S. Bach’s Prelude in b-flat (WTC I) by Nino Kotrikadze, followed by a deliberate and well-articulated fugue. The rest of her program was devoted to a vivid excursion through the many vicissitudes of Schumann’s Kreisleriana. Both dramatic and poetic moments were given an attractive haze of pedal (the composer would have approved), and Kotrikadze made major events of its climaxes. Her tendency to play big added color and passion to Schumann’s already eventful narrative, though a few outbursts of sound seemed out of scale. She played some furious passagework late in the piece with impressive technique.

Qi Xu is only 18 and small in stature but he plays with mature authority and command. He has an excellent feel for musical architecture and brought clarity of touch and a sure sense of rhythm to his performance, but while his technique is up to the task, his tone at this point in his career seemed a bit underpowered for Brahms’s third sonata, the single work on his second round playlist. Lines sounded thin at the treble end of the keyboard, though his left hand was strong at the bass end. All his performance needed to be completely satisfying was more weight of sound. [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland International Piano Competition — Round Two, Session One (August 3)

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by Daniel Hathaway

CIPC-Butterfly

Time for second impressions! Ryoyu Huang stepped up first in the second round with Haydn, Britten and the last half of Chopin’s Op. 28 Preludes (he had played the first dozen in the opening round). Huang’s breezy excursion through Haydn’s E Major sonata (Hob. XVI:31) didn’t leave him much room to sniff out details. He played with an agreeably hefty tone, and many of his lines had a good sense of direction. Britten composed his gloomy Notturno for just such a competition as this one (Leeds), giving pianists a catalogue of nuanced effects to tackle, and Huang did a fine job with that. The Chopin set was at times expressive, and at others could have benefited from a bit more emotion (No. 15).

Two Scarlatti sonatas in f minor (K. 387 and K. 519) allowed Pavel Yeletskly to vary his articulation in striking ways and make them into true piano pieces rather than just transcriptions from the harpsichord. [Read more…]

Report: Cleveland International Piano Competition Conversation — Classical Improvisation and the Cadenza (August 2)

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by Guytano Parks

GriffithThe second Festival Event of The Cleveland International Piano Competition held in the Recital Hall at The Cleveland Museum of Art, “Classical Improvisation and the Cadenza,” featured one of Cleveland’s finest improvisational pianists, Marshall Griffith. Appointed to the preparatory faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1975 and the conservatory faculty in 1982, Mr. Griffith spoke about and demonstrated the art of improvisation in an extremely engaging manner.

This morning’s enlightening conversation began with the simple question, “what is appropriate?” There are many considerations to ponder if one were to improvise a cadenza or add extra notes to the score during a concerto performance in modern-day presentations of concert music. Undoubtedly, a daunting and perhaps terrifying prospect for most, but in Mozart’s time, it was customary and second nature for the performer to not only improvise a cadenza at that special moment in a concerto, but to also add notes throughout the piece, as the solo part was rarely ever completely written down. Soloists of that period had all sorts of tricks and devices up their sleeves — scales, arpeggios, trills, themes, motives, etc. — and the technique and wisdom to know how and when to utilize them. [Read more…]

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