Boris Allakhverdyan Archives - Cleveland Classical

Oberlin Winter Chamber Music Festival: the Prima Trio in Kulas Hall (January 10)

January 13, 2015 by Daniel Hathaway

by Daniel Hautzinger

Certain chamber music ensembles make intuitive sense. A string quartet has four voices with matching timbres, perfect for writing balanced counterpoint, while a wind quintet provides a variety of colors and allows for cohesive ensemble playing, since all the players must breathe. But the Prima Trio’s combination of clarinet, violin (or viola), and piano is less obvious. Each instrument hails from a different family, each with a distinct tone color and disparate methods of articulation and phrasing. [Read more…]

Prima Trio to perform in Oberlin on January 10: a conversation with clarinetist Boris Allakhverdyan

January 6, 2015 by Daniel Hathaway

by Mike Telin

Founded at the Oberlin Conservatory in 2004, Prima Trio (Boris Allakhverdyan, clarinet, Gulia Gurevich, violin and viola, and Anastasia Dedik, piano), were awarded the Grand Prize at the 2007 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. On Saturday, January 10 at 8:00 pm in Oberlin’s Kulas Recital Hall, Prima Trio will present a concert featuring music by Schumann, Piazzolla, Khachaturian, Milhaud and Srul Irving Glick as part of Oberlin’s Winter Term Chamber Music Festival.

Although its members have gone on to establish impressive individual careers, the Trio continues to tour internationally. In recent seasons they have appeared on the “Junge Elite” Series at the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Germany), at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, on the Oakton Chamber Music Series, and on the Dumbarton Oaks series in Washington D.C. They also made their Los Angeles début with three concerts on the Da Camera Society series.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra’s Beethoven Concerto Cycle performance featured pairing of rising star and mentor (Nov. 15)

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

By Daniel Hathaway

CLEVELAND, Ohio — For the third program in The Cleveland Orchestra’s Beethoven Piano Concerto Cycle, the pairing of 20-year-old Korean pianist Yunchan Lim with his mentor Minsoo Sohn was an astute programming decision.

Well-established names on the concert circuit — Orion Weiss, Sir Stephen Hough, and Garrick Ohlsson — had already filled the empty solo spots for the composer’s Triple Concerto and solo concertos 2, 3, and 4. But the choice of the youngest pianist ever to win the Van Cliburn Competition to close out the Cleveland series packed Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center on Friday evening, November 15, with a near-capacity audience teeming with enthusiastic young people.

[Read on…]

Meridian Arts Ensemble cast a wide net at the Bop Stop (Nov. 8)

by Stephanie Manning

The Meridian Arts Ensemble specialize in the avant garde, but they’re dextrous enough to flip between all kinds of genres. So, what was Joseph Haydn’s Feldpartie — written in 1780 — doing on the program next to George Lewis’ uber-contemporary Tightrope? Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Presented by No Exit, the brass quintet’s November 8 concert at the Bop Stop had something to satisfy fans of modern and traditional music alike. The cheery Feldpartie, appearing just after intermission, balanced out some of the evening’s more thorny works.

Originally written for an outdoor band, this arrangement by trumpet player and group founder Jon Nelson allowed the five players to anchor themselves in a satisfying blend. Nelson, fellow trumpet player Matthew Onstad, horn player Daniel Grabois, trombonist Faustino Díaz Mendez, and tuba player Tom Curry treated the charming mini symphony with love and care. [Read on…]

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