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ChamberFest Cleveland closes 2015 season with “Stars and Stripes” (July 1)

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by Timothy Robson

BlackstoneOrganThe 2015 season of ChamberFest Cleveland closed with a mostly American program in a spectacular venue: the angular, modernist home of Dr. Eugene and Janet Blackstone in Bratenahl along the shore of Lake Erie. The house, with its west-facing glass curtain wall, overlooks manicured lawns, and, after weeks of unending rain in Cleveland, there were sailboats on the lake as the sun set. The house also integrates a four-manual, custom-built pipe organ sprouting seemingly from every surface. The spaces not occupied by organ pipes (and a concert grand piano) were taken by audience members, in the main living area, an upper gallery and on the stairs. [Read more…]

ChamberFest: “Something Borrowed, Something Blue” at Mixon Hall (June 27)

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by Mike Telin

Cho-RabinovichChamberFest Cleveland added a new spin to the phrase “Something Borrowed, Something Blue” on Saturday, June 27 in Mixon Hall. Although no wedding took place, the program featured music that perfectly marries the classical ethos with jazz and folk idioms. As violinist Jinjoo Cho and pianist Roman Rabinovich prepared to open the concert with Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, suddenly from offstage, the sounds of the opening clarinet line from Rhapsody in Blue filled the hall. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: Weiss & Polonsky in “Crossing Hands” at Dunham Tavern (June 28)

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by Daniel Hathaway

WeissPolonsky1Music for four hands on one piano has usually been a parlor game rather than the subject of public performance. Composers dabbled in that genre to satisfy an enthusiastic market of amateurs who wanted to amuse themselves and friends at home — and arrangers made versions of chamber and orchestral music so that musicians could study repertoire before the advent of sound recording. But Orion Weiss and Anna Polonsky’s refreshingly informal performance of music by Dvořák, Debussy, Schumann, Ravel, and Fauré at Dunham Tavern on Sunday afternoon, June 28 made a terrific case for four-hand music as a recital vehicle in its own right. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: Anna Polonsky & Orion Weiss play separately and together

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by Daniel Hathaway

Weiss-and-PolonskyPianists Anna Polonsky and Orion Weiss share a marriage as well as busy performing careers. Mirroring the way their lives play out, Polonsky and Weiss will play duo-piano, join in a concert of music for one-piano-four-hands, and perform with other musicians during ChamberFest Cleveland’s fourth season. We spoke to them separately by telephone (they were in different cities at the time) to ask about their appearances.

Cleveland-born Orion Weiss is involved in multiple ChamberFest assignments. “It’s like a twelve-course meal with many different dishes,” he said. “I’ll be playing Thomas Adès’s Darknesse Visible; a concert with Alexi Kenney at the Cleveland Public Library; the Mozart E-flat piano quartet; George Crumb’s Music for a Summer Evening with Roman Rabinovich; the little g-minor Rachmaninoff trio; Gershwin’s An American in Paris with Anna; then the four-hand concert.” [Read more…]

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