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ChamberFest takes its audience on a journey in “Songs, Signs, and Souvenirs” (June 28)

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by Stephanie Manning

During this year’s ChamberFest, the “Lost and Found” theme showed up in all kinds of ways. Sometimes that meant performing recently-unearthed works from historic composers like Mozart and Chopin. Sometimes it referred to an emotional resonance, as when Judith Markovich’s music told the story of the grief and loss of a son.

But the listener has a role to play in this as well. As ChamberFest’s past Board chair Rebecca Carmi reminded the audience on June 28, getting “lost” in the music is also an experience to strive for. Thankfully, the engrossing final concert of ChamberFest’s 2025 season — held in Severance Music Center’s Reinberger Chamber Hall — provided plenty of opportunities.

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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Sing Hallelujah!” (June 26)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Sometimes the only thing that connects works in a concert is that they all appear on the same program page. That certainly characterized the mix of two Brahms songs, the premiere of a violin and piano work, a “repetitive music” classic for duo pianists, and a well-known piano trio that were featured in ChamberFest Cleveland’s sold out program “Sing Hallelujah!” on June 26 in Mixon Hall.

Johannes Brahms was partial to works that explore the lower, more mellow range of voices and instruments, as represented here by a pair of songs. Throughout both Gestillet Sehnsucht and Geistliches Wiegenlied, mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, violist Kim Kashkashian, and pianist Amy Yang produced rich, expressive musical lines that projected beautifully into the hall. The “Sacred Crib Song” was especially endearing for quoting the well-known 14th-century Christmas song “Joseph lieber, Joseph mein,” a little joke referring to the work’s dedicatee, Joseph Joachim.

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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Starry Night” (June 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On June 21, ChamberFest Cleveland presented “Starry Night” at Federated Church in Chagrin Falls. The program’s nocturnal theme included works by ChamberFest composer-in- residence Errollyn Wallen, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Arnold Schoenberg.

The performance of Wallen’s Dervish for cello and piano was spellbinding. Like a trained actor, cellist Oliver Herbert took on a distinct persona: intensely expressive, earthy, and rapturous. Pianist Roman Rabinovich was not merely a counterpart, but a force that Herbert seemed at times either to resist or to be swept up by. Together, the duo sustained an inward intensity that made Wallen’s music feel at once intimate, expansive, and hypnotic.

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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Variations on Love and Loss” (June 20) 

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by Kevin McLaughlin

At the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall on Friday, June 20, ChamberFest Cleveland presented “Variations on Love and Loss.” Complemented by a friendly acoustical space and a convivial throng, the program spanned a wide emotional range, from deep grief to luminous joy.

Witold Lutosławski and fellow composer Andrzej Panufnik originally performed Lutosławski’s Paganini Variations in cafés around Warsaw during the German occupation of Poland in World War II, where public concerts were banned.

The duo wrote it partly to showcase their talents, and pianists James (Zijian) Wei and Roman Rabinovich brought fearless bravura to the work. The performers tore through each variation, trading volleys of octaves and whiplash runs. It was part sorcery, part acrobatic display — and entirely exhilarating. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “A Musical Feast” at Heights Theater & in Nate’s World (June 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

ChamberFest Cleveland’s season theme of “Lost and Found” extended to the choice of venue for its program “A Musical Feast” on June 14.

Heights Theater opened in 1919 as a motion picture theater with 1,200 seats. Renamed Coventry Theater, then Centrum, it eventually closed in 2003. The space was repurposed as a church, following a period as a comedy club, and is now being used as a performance venue.

The sound carries well, but the large space has an odd acoustic which suits some styles of music better than others. [Read more…]

ChamberFest: a conversation with violist Kim Kashkashian

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by Mike Telin

There are certain musicians who you can’t believe have never been to ChamberFest Cleveland. Case in point: Kim Kashkashian.

“Diana Cohen has been asking me for years,” the celebrated violist said during a Zoom conversation. “We know each other from Marlboro, and when I was in the Baltimore area I knew her father Frank very well. So we’ve all been friends for decades.”

On Thursday, June 26 in Mixon Hall, Kaskashian will be featured in Brahms’ Two Songs for alto, viola, and piano. On Friday, June 27 in Harkness Chapel she’ll be part of the ensemble who will be playing Brett Dean’s viola quintet, Epitaphs. And on Saturday, June 28 in Reinberger Chamber Hall she’ll take part in Brahms’ Piano Quintet in f. Tickets for all performances are available online.

That third program will also include György Kurtág’s Signs, Games, and Messages for solo viola. Kashkashian said that she’s had a long association with the composer and his music.

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ChamberFest Cleveland opening night: “Lost and Found” in Mixon Hall (June 11)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The thirteenth season of ChamberFest Cleveland began on an auspicious note with “Lost and Found,” a sold-out opening concert on Wednesday, June 11 at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall.

The Festival put a special mark on the occasion by fielding two of its largest ensembles for the opening and closing works, and by presenting the Cleveland premiere of a riveting work by one of CFC’s four composer-performers in between.

Pianists Michael Stephen Brown and Roman Rabinovich shared thousands of notes as soloists in Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto in C for two claviers, a product of the composer’s concerts in Zimmermann’s Leipzig Coffee House, when he increasingly turned his attention away from church duties and produced concerts with University musicians. The C-major concerto is apparently unique for not having been arranged from an earlier work. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Reflections” at Church of the Saviour (June 13)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The second program of ChamberFest Cleveland’s 2025 season, titled “Reflections,” offered a varied but carefully sequenced triptych, was presented on June 13 at Church of the Saviour in Cleveland Heights. Works by Arvo Pärt, Anton Arensky, and Camille Saint-Saëns captivated with a blend of suspended time, remembrance, and fervent sweep.

Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel (“Mirror[s] in the Mirror”) was a remarkable opener, drawing violinist Gabrielle Després and pianist Michael Stephen Brown into a meditative dialogue and listeners into a quasi-hypnotic state. Després’s playing was austere and strangely luminous — testaments to her musical imagination and steady bow arm. She beautifully shaped each phrase — sharpening the listeners’ focus and slowing the collective pulse. Brown’s piano triads resonated with bell-like purity, so finely braided with Després’s lines that the effect was clairvoyant. As each violin note faded, the piano gently cued the next — gestures mirroring one another like eternal reflections in glass.

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ChamberFest 2025: a conversation with composer/pianist Roman Rabinovich

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by Mike Telin

Ever since childhood, Roman Rabinovich has been driven by a desire to create — whether that was sculpting from dirt and found objects or improvising character pieces on the piano.

Although you may know him as an extraordinary pianist and ChamberFest Cleveland co-artistic director, you may not know him as an accomplished composer. That’s about to change.

On Thursday, June 26 at 7:30 pm in Mixon Hall, Rabinovich will make his ChamberFest debut as a composer/pianist with the U.S. premiere of his Cappriccio Errante for Violin and Piano. The program also includes Brahms’s Two Songs for Voice, Viola and Piano, John Adams’ Hallelujah Junction, and Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 1. Tickets are available online.

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Judith Markovich’s Oh, my son… to receive world premiere at ChamberFest

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by Mike Telin

“When Frank Cohen called and said he had received an email from David Stern, I thought, oh my goodness,” composer Judith Markovich recalled during a Zoom conversation. “Frank told me that David had sent him a poem and it’s devastating. Frank said ‘Go to your email because you have to read it right now.’ And so I went to my computer and we read it — we were nearly in tears.”

On Friday, June 20 at 7:30 pm in Mixon Hall, ChamberFest Cleveland will present the world premiere of Judith Markovich’s Oh, my son… The program also includes Witold Lutosławski’s Variations on a Theme by Paganini, Bright Sheng’s Four Movements for Piano Trio, and Franz Schubert’s Cello Quintet in C major. Markovich will join pianist Eric Charnofsky for a pre-concert conversation beginning at 6:30 pm. Tickets are available online.

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