ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad

Re•Views

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Words Misunderstood” (June 30)

by

by Mike Telin

On Friday, June 30, ChamberFest Cleveland presented a delightful evening of chamber music to a capacity audience at Dunham Tavern. The program, “Words Misunderstood,” included an oddity by György Ligeti, ear-catching 21st-century works by Caroline Shaw and Gabriella Smith, and some engaging German Romanticism by Max Bruch.

Performed without the “obligatory” intermission, the concert began with György Ligeti’s Poème symphonique (for 100 metronomes). An oddity or an absurdity, depending on your point of view, here the work was presented as Ligeti intended — as a serious piece of music. Ten musicians made their way to their groups of ten mechanical metronomes, each set to a different tempo, all of them sitting on the wooden shelf that ran along three walls of the venue.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Carnival of the Animals” (June 24)

by

by Peter Feher

Camille Saint-Saëns forbade public performances of The Carnival of the Animals during his lifetime, but he might have made an exception for ChamberFest Cleveland this summer.

On June 24 at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Kulas Hall, ChamberFest conjured some of the informal spirit of Saint-Saëns’ lighthearted work as it would have been heard in 1886 among the composer’s circle of intimates. It was in keeping with ChamberFest’s theme this season — “Lightness of Being” — even when the evening seemed elaborate and embellished and the music-making sounded seriously first-rate. [Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera:
Arizona Lady (July 6)

by

by Kevin McLaughlin

The variety of titles that make up Ohio Light Opera’s annual summer series is its secret sauce. Go to a few shows and you’re bound to find something you’ll like, or maybe in this case a dark horse to love. Emmerich Kálmán’s Arizona Lady is an unknown in these parts — an OLO premiere this summer, which I heard on July 6 at Freedlander Theatre. It stumbles a little at times, but in the end she’s a winner.

Kálmán, who was born in Hungary, always sounds middle European to me, no matter the setting of a particular show or scene. Though the music and setting in Arizona Lady occasionally seem at odds, it’s fun to hear Hungarian-tinged folksong one minute, Viennese tradition the next, and Western cowboy songs the next.

[Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera:
H.M.S. Pinafore, or 
The Lass That Loved a Sailor (June 29)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

It’s been a good thing for the creative team of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Seymour Sullivan that Victorian England was rife with unqualified public officials, rigid class distinctions, and social inequality. What would the plot of H.M.S. Pinafore, one of their most popular Savoy Operas, have been like without the opportunity to lampoon such functionaries as W. H. Smith, a politician with no nautical experience, by portraying him as Sir Joseph Porter, the First Lord of the Admiralty? His advice:

[Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra & Blossom Festival Chorus (July 1)

by

by Kevin McLaughlin

Undeterred by clouds in the sky, The Cleveland Orchestra let joy prevail on opening night of the 2023 Blossom Music Festival on Saturday, July 1. Somehow the weather held, families gathered, blankets came out, and Beethoven’s jubilant message issued forth.

Susanna Mälkki was a persuasive presence on the podium, leading the orchestra, the Blossom Festival Chorus, and soloists in music by William Grant Still, Samuel Barber, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

Still’s “Mother and Child,” a slow movement from his 1943 Suite for Violin and Piano here arranged by the composer for string orchestra, is a soft and sincere work alluding to folk song. Under Mälkki’s direction, the strings gave a beautifully timbred, reverential reading.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Vortex” (June 25)

by

by Mike Telin

If you are familiar with William Cowper’s 1785 poem The Task, then you know the famous line “Variety is the very spice of life, that gives it all its flavor.” On Sunday, June 25 at Harkness Chapel, ChamberFest Cleveland presented a program that was steeped in musical variety and spices for the ear.

Written in 1977, Alfred Schnittke’s Moz-Art (after the fragment K. 416d) is based on the first violin part from Mozart’s unpublished pantomime, with dollops of the opening theme of his 40th Symphony stirred into the mix. The quirky five-minute work for two violins asks the players to throw caution to the winds as they seemingly compete to see who can turn a classical line into something absurd faster than the other.

The performance by Itamar Zorman and Diana Cohen was bust-your-gut funny. Bowed notes turned into plucked ones, then scratchings, in tune became out of tune, and slow tempos became fast enough to break the sound barrier. Hilarity ensued when the players swapped out their instruments, Zorman grabbing a very tiny violin while Cohen opted for a viola. After reclaiming their rightful fiddles, the players mischievously walked away whistling.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland:
“Es muss sein” — it must be (June 29)

by

by Kevin McLaughlin

Fate — as represented by “Es muss sein” (it must be), Beethoven’s enigmatic motto tucked in the last movement of the String Quartet No. 16 in F — was the guiding light for ChamberFest’s program on Thursday evening, June 29 at CIM’s Mixon Hall. A passage from Milan Kundera’s book The Unbearable Lightness of Being was read aloud by co-artistic director Roman Rabinovich, who went on to explain the text’s Beethoven reference and how it aligns with the Festival’s overall Lightness theme. In addition to the Beethoven, works included Lera Auerbach’s compact Piano Trio No. 1 and the monumental Piano Quintet by Sergey Taneyev.

What seems by now to be ChamberFest’s “inevitability” of excellence also played a role. Like some sort of magic trick, each disparately assembled group — mostly made up of musicians who don’t frequently play together — conjured miracles of coalescence in every work.

[Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera: 
No, No, Nanette! (June 24)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

When the Freedlander Theatre grand drape rose for the first No, No, Nanette! curtain call on Saturday afternoon in Wooster, it revealed only the tap dancing feet of the excellent Ohio Light Opera cast. That cleverly validated both stage director Steven A. Daigle’s characterization of the 1925 hit musical as “a dancing show” and choreographer Spencer Reese’s genius in getting an entire stage full of actors to tap and create a wonderful din with their feet during several production numbers.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Fidelity and Betrayal” (June 17)

by

by Mike Telin

From the beginning, ChamberFest Cleveland’s artistic directors have turned to creative themes for their programming inspiration. This season the Festival’s guiding light has taken a literary slant with Lightness of Being — after Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But don’t feel like you need to have read the novel to enjoy the concerts — Donald Rosenberg’s brilliantly written program notes will tell you what you need to know.

On Saturday, June 17 in CIM’s Mixon Hall, the program “Fidelity and Betrayal” included works from the standard repertoire, a never-performed work by a well-known composer, a piece inspired by Cuban and South American dances, and music that had never been heard before — anytime, anywhere.

 

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Karenin’s Smile” (June 16)

by

by Kevin McLaughlin

After the seriousness and communal pall brought on by the COVID pandemic, this year’s ChamberFest is asserting “Lightness of Being” as a theme, inspired by Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. In the second concert of the Festival, titled “Karenin’s Smile,” works by Mozart, Janáček, and Saint-Saëns were appropriately buoyant and cheerful, thrilling those gathered at Cleveland’s St. Wendelin Church on June 16.

Mozart wrote two of his six so-called “viola quintets” in 1787 in close succession — one in C major, one in G minor. The C major, with its more amiable and optimistic disposition, was a fitting choice on Friday evening.

Cellist Jonathan Swensen opened with a puckish rising arpeggiated triad, which first violinist David Bowlin answered with equally cheeky delight. The wide-ranging motive hinted at the movement’s dimensions (a good fifteen minutes long), and the violin answer set the bantering pattern. Bowlin made a fine leader, acquitting himself in both Allegro movements with mirthful virtuosity.

[Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us