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ChamberFest Cleveland: Music, literature, nature, and beer!

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by Mike Telin

From the beginning, ChamberFest Cleveland’s programming has centered around creative themes. For season eleven, which runs from June 14 through July 1, the Festival takes on a literary slant with Lightness of Being.

During a recent conversation with Roman Rabinovich and Diana Cohen — two of the Festival’s three artistic directors — Rabinovich said that he has been a fan of Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being for many years. “It’s rich in ideas that are very deep but also entertaining and timeless. And Kundera is also an amazing writer about music — you can tell he has a deep knowledge of classical music.”

Cohen added that like music, that novel explores every aspect of the human condition with its archetypes of personalities, relationships, politics, war, and culture. “It explores so many different multitudes that we decided to see what we could do with it.”

On Thursday, June 8 at 7:00 pm at Loganberry Books, there will be a panel discussion that will view the novel through its historical context, cultural perspective, and place in modern fiction. Panelists include Dr. James Krukones (Professor of History at John Carroll University), Charles Oberndorf (Local Author and Instructor at University School), and John Sabol (Host of “New Czech Voice of Cleveland” on WHKW 1220 AM and Co-Author of Cleveland Czechs). Students from CIM’s Advanced String Quartet program will give a pop-up performance in the store leading up to the panel. The event is free.

[Read more…]

Click, Click, Click: ChamberFest Cleveland

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by Mike Telin

(This article was originally posted on April 12, 2023)

ChamberFest Cleveland is looking for metronomes! If you have a wind-up metronome, ChamberFest would love to borrow it for this performance of Ligeti’s Poème symphonique on Friday, June 30. Please contact the office at 216-471-8887 or info@chamberfestcleveland.com to arrange a pick-up. All metronomes will be returned to their owners after the festival ends.

There are a few works in the classical repertoire that leave you wondering what is going on. One example that comes to mind is John Cage’s 4’33” where the performers are instructed not to play for the duration of the work’s three movements.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest 2023:
Lightness of Being

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by Mike Telin

From the beginning, ChamberFest Cleveland’s programming has centered around creative themes such as The Big Bang (2012), Crossing Borders (2015), and most recently X (2022). For season eleven, which runs from June 14 through July 1, the Festival takes on a literary slant with Lightness of Being.

During a Zoom conversation with Roman Rabinovich and Diana Cohen — two of the Festival’s three artistic directors — Rabinovich said that he has been a fan of Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being for many years. “Last summer I reread it, I think for the third time, and it really pulled me in. It’s rich in ideas that are very deep but also entertaining and timeless. And Kundera is also an amazing writer about music — you can tell he has a deep knowledge of classical music.”

Cohen added that like music, that novel explores every aspect of the human condition with its archetypes of personalities, relationships, politics, war, and culture. “It explores so many different multitudes that we decided to see what we could do with it.”

[Read more…]

Click, Click, Click: ChamberFest Cleveland

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by Mike Telin

There are a few works in the classical repertoire that leave you wondering what is going on. One example that comes to mind is John Cage’s 4’33” where the performers are instructed not to play for the duration of the work’s three movements.

Another is György Ligeti’s Poème symphonique for 100 mechanical metronomes. Written in 1962, during the composer’s brief association with the Fluxus movement, the piece calls for ten performers, each responsible for ten metronomes all of which are wound to their fullest extent and set to different speeds. Then, at the discretion of the conductor, the metronomes are set into action and the performers leave the stage and wait until the last metronome goes silent.

This summer ChamberFest Cleveland, which runs from June 14 through July 1, will present Ligeti’s quirky piece — which begs the question: how does one beg, borrow, or steal 100 windup metronomes?

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland:
“Echoes from the Valley”

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by Mike Telin

Whenever three adventurous musicians share a stage, the programming possibilities are endless. On Friday, November 4 at 7:30 pm at the Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church, ChamberFest Cleveland will present soprano Amanda Powell, clarinetist Franklin Cohen, and pianist Peter Takács in “Echoes from the Valley,” a program of global folk songs. Tickets are available online.

“We’ve programmed concerts like this before during ChamberFest,” Cohen said during a recent telephone conversation. “I’ve admired Amanda’s talent for years. I’ve heard her with Apollo’s Fire and at different clubs and her talent is not confined to one little box. Everyone loves her work, and she’s been a very important part of the ChamberFest family for a number of years.” 

Powell will be featured in Schubert’s Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (“The Shepherd on the Rock”) and Ravel’s Cinq melodies populaires grecques. The trio will also present an exploration of international folk songs — from the Appalachian Mountains to the Greek seaside to a classical Arabic muwashshah — in arrangements by Dave Morgan, as well as Two Ladino Songs arranged by Paul Ferguson. “The arrangements are fantastic and we’re looking forward to playing them,” Cohen said. 

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland at The Madison (July 1)

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by Jacob Strauss

ChamberFest Cleveland put on a spectacular event on July 1 at The Madison. They proclaimed that it was unorthodox fitting a round into a square in the old luxury faucet plant located at 46th and Payne in Midtown.

Pianos with pins and tape on strings, a bass drum and tam tam, crotales, Almglocken, and vibes. Microphones were hooked up all around the instruments. The feed was sent to speakers around the room. Lighting designer Nicholas Houfek hung incandescent globes over the arrangement of instruments from thin black wires stretching across the beams. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: 
An Enchanting Celebration (July 2)

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by Peter Feher

If you missed the tail end of ChamberFest Cleveland’s season, don’t be too worried. The highlights from each summer of brilliant, collaborative performances have a way of sticking around — online on the Festival’s YouTube channel and, more recently, on the radio with WCLV. Certainly this year’s finale, on July 2 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, was full of such memorable musical moments.

The program, titled “An Enchanting Celebration,” made good on its promise of a special event. ChamberFest put two large ensembles on stage for a pair of works brimming with instrumental and stylistic variety.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland:
“Timeless Explorations” (June 25)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The first piece of business at ChamberFest Cleveland’s June 25 concert in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music was rearranging the order of the program. “Timeless Explorations” was to have begun with a new piece, but probably for practical reasons involving a prepared piano, Yevgeniy Sharlat’s Dumka-22 and Beethoven’s Piano Trio, Op. 70, No. 2 traded places.

Violinist Diana Cohen, cellist Jonathan Swensen, and pianist Andrius Žlabys launched the sixth concert of ChamberFest’s tenth anniversary season with an effervescent performance of Beethoven’s least-performed trio. Bedecked with sparkling runs and ensemble flourishes and set in the gemütlich key of E-flat, the piece made an attractive opener and served as a lovely vehicle for the musicians to express their unassuming virtuosity.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: Color X Expanse (June 24)

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by Daniel Hathaway

At the Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church on Friday, June 24, the repertoire was indeed both colorful and expansive as the excellent musicians of ChamberFest Cleveland explored works ranging from the sentimental (Fritz Kreisler’s Three Pieces for Piano Trio) to the evanescent (Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quintet No. 1), from the stark and compact (George Walker’s Piano Sonata No. 5) to the delightfully verbose (Zoltán Kodály’s Duo for Violin and Cello, Op. 7).

Violinist Alexi Kenney, cellist Jonathan Swensen, and pianist Andrius Žlabys raised the curtain with three light pieces arranged by a virtuoso violinist famous for his encores. Kreisler’s takes on The Old Refrain, Farewell to Cucullain (a.k.a. Londonderry Air or Oh Danny Boy), and Miniature Viennese March worked equally well as preludial bon-bons. [Read more…]

Pianist Juho Pohjonen returns to ChamberFest

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by Mike Telin

Finnish pianist Juho Pohjonen enjoys a varied career that regularly takes him to recital and symphony halls across Europe, Asia, and North America. A computer enthusiast, in 2019 he launched MyPianist, an AI-based iOS app he both designed and programmed that provides interactive piano accompaniment for musicians. This week he makes his second appearance at ChamberFest.

I spoke to Pohjonen over Zoom from Minneapolis where he was performing Mendelssohn’s Concerto for Violin and Piano with Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra. I began by asking him to share his insights on Debussy’s Cello Sonata, which he will perform with Jonathan Swensen on June 30.

Juho Pohjonen: The interaction between the cello and the piano is so intimate. The music is like an exchange of ideas and that is one of the most rewarding aspects of the piece.

Debussy was able to create new colors without resorting to any fancy techniques like playing inside the piano or things like that. [Read more…]

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