by Daniel Hathaway
ChamberFest Cleveland’s concert in Mixon Hall on Thursday. June 25 offered the audience many points of departure in a program of wildly different chamber ensembles. The program was introduced (if not fully explained) in an enjoyable pre-concert lecture by University of Akron geology professor Ira Sasowsky.
Michelle Barzel Ross’s string quartet Birds on the Moon nudged closest to the evening’s theme of “Flights of Fancy.” Written in memory of the late Juilliard String Quartet violinist Roger Tapping and performed by violinists Michelle Barzel Ross and Steven Copes, violist Teng Li, and cellist Jay Campbell, it’s a captivating piece that draws you in from the beginning with its kaleidoscope of colors, allusions, and quotations from other works and doesn’t let up until the end.
Some of the material arose from Ross’s “wild, imaginative” improvisations, some from remembered snatches of poetry by Wallace Stevens. Fanciful notions like the avians that gave the work its title dwell deep in the subconscious (are there birds on the moon?)
Not often are you introduced to a new work that you hope will find its way into the standard repertoire, but with its slow, shifting lines, beautiful colors, and magnificent soundscapes, Birds on the Moon is one of them.
Judging from his extraordinary body of work, Joseph Haydn didn’t suffer from any deficit of imagination, but his Piano Trio in E-flat, Hob. XV:36, brilliantly put across by pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen, violinist Geneva Lewis, and cellist Jay Campbell, represents a true flight of fancy.
Where did the idea come from for that opening movement with its unending string of nervous triplets? Or the cute theme and striking dynamic contrasts of the second movement “Polones”? Or the amusing “B” section of the finale.
Likewise, what was going through Reynaldo Hahn’s mind when he wrote his Piano Quintet in F-sharp minor — a curious work beguilingly played by pianist Daria Rabotkina, violinists Steven Copes and Julia Schilz, violist Emad Zolfaghari, and cellist Oliver Herbert ended the program with on Thursday evening.
On one level, the Quintet is a catalog of French musical gestures laid end to end, not so much developed as taken up, repeated and discarded. A grand opening with a busy piano part offered substantial solos to all the instruments and kept returning to the main theme after exploring inventive sideroads that featured striking unison string passages.
The Andante began with a cello solo gorgeously played with a full, rich sound by Oliver Herbert, eventually joined by similar passages from Zolfaghari and Schilz and sensitively accompanied by Rabotkina. For a good chunk of time the movement became a piano quartet until the first violin briefly rejoined the others.
Rather than writing a vigorous finale, Hahn ended his Quintet with a pleasant Allegro grazioso movement full of lilting passages that continually grew in volume. Another flight of fancy which was a charming way to end the evening.
Published on ClevelandClassical.com July 2, 2026
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