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Review: Cleveland Chamber Music Society — eighth blackbird at Waetjen Auditorium (April 29)

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by Daniel Hathaway

eighth-blackbirdWhen you mostly present ensembles as portable as string quartets, what do you do when an ensemble requires a whole lot of percussion? In the case of the Cleveland Chamber Music Society and eighth blackbird, you move the concert to where the percussion lives — to Cleveland State University’s Waetjen Auditorium, where the celebrated new music sextet performed their acoustic program, “Still in Motion,” on Tuesday evening, April 29.

As season finales go, this was a doozy. eighth blackbird is famous for performing the unplayable and making thorny pieces engaging for audiences. As they rightly claim on their website, the ensemble “combines the finesse of a string quartet, the energy of a rock band and the audacity of a storefront theater company.” [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Chamber Music Society — eighth blackbird on April 29 (last of three)

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by Daniel Hathaway & Mike Telin

PARRY-RichardToday, we complete our preview of eighth blackbird’s repertory for the ensemble’s program next Tuesday, April 29 at 7:30 in Waetjen Auditorium at Cleveland State University. Spokesman and flutist Tim Munro shares his personal reflections about pieces eighth blackbird will perform composed by Richard Parry, Brett Dean, and Steven Mackey.

Richard Parry: Duo for Heart and Breath

Canadian performer, composer and producer Richard Parry (left) is a core member of the indie band Arcade Fire. Duo is one of a series of works that connect the rhythms of the human body to musical performance.

Tim Munro: “Parry did not write this for us, although it is a very recent piece. We discovered it in a YouTube clip. One of the difficulties of being on the road so much is that we have to hear all of this fantastic new music second or third hand.

“It is an unspeakably beautiful piece. It is literally a duo for heart and breath. [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Chamber Music Society — eighth blackbird on April 29 (second of three)

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by Daniel Hathaway & Mike Telin

MUNRO-Tim“Expect the unexpected,” eighth blackbird’s spokesman/flutist Tim Munro told our readers in the first of these previews, but he didn’t mean that patrons should go in uninformed. Today, Tim delves into the background of two of the pieces on the ensemble’s program next Tuesday, April 29 at 7:30 in Waetjen Auditorium at Cleveland State University.

The concert will begin with Bryce Dessner’s Murder Ballades, inspired by violent stories preserved in American folk music. The piece was written for and premiered by eighth blackbird in 2013 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, where Dessner is a composer-in-residence at the Muziekgebouw.

Tim Munro: “We met Bryce six or seven years ago when he came to some of our concerts and we were quite taken with his music. He’s kind of a wildly famous rock star (he’s a member of the band The Nationals) as well as a classically trained musician (he has a master’s degree from Yale, where he studied classical guitar, flute and composition). He has an incredibly unique compositional voice that we were excited to take advantage of. And he was quite taken with this dark, dingy, strange world of the murder ballads. [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Chamber Music Society — eighth blackbird on April 29 (first in a series)

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by Mike Telin

8bb-wallWhat does eighth blackbird flutist Tim Munro want audiences to know about their Cleveland Chamber Music Society program titled Still in Motion? “There are a lot of things that I love about this program, the surprising twists and turns that it takes. But I would say to expect the unexpected.”

On Tuesday, April 29 beginning at 7:30 in Waetjen Auditorium at Cleveland State University, eighth blackbird makes a return visit to the Chamber Music Society’s series with a concert that features Dessner’s Murder Ballade Suite, Johnson/Ligeti’s Counting Duets/Etudes, Parry’s Duet for Heart and Breath, Dean’s Sextet & Mackey’s Suite: Slide. A pre-concert lecture by Daniel Hathaway begins at 6:30.

Speaking by telephone from Philadelphia where the group serves as Ensemble in Residence at the Curtis Institute of Music, Munro said there is a duality implied in the concert’s title, Still in Motion. “Sometimes things can appear to be very still while requiring a lot of energy or requiring a lot of motion. It’s about the conjunction between those two things and the fight between those two things – the stillness and the motion. And no sooner are you lulled into a false sense of stillness and calmness, than the music takes you into another direction and moves you into motion. So the world of the concert is constantly shifting.The ground is constantly shifting under your feet.“ [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Chamber Music Society: Pavel Haas Quartet at Plymouth (April 8)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Pavel-Haas-QuartetFor their second appearance on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series at Plymouth Church on April 8, the Pavel Haas Quartet scheduled two riveting twentieth-century works, Leos Janáček’s Quartet No. 1 and Benjamin Britten’s Quartet No. 2, followed by Beethoven’s “middle period” Quartet in e, op. 59, no. 2.

Founded in 2002 in Prague, the Haas Quartet retains two of its founding members, first violinist Veronika Jarůšková and violist Pavel Nikl. In an amusing swap soon afterward, the Haas Quartet traded cellists with the Škampa Quartet, thus musically reuniting Jarůšková with her husband, Peter Jarůšek. Second violinist Marek Zwiebel joined the ensemble in 2012, becoming the fourth person to occupy that position.

Changes in personnel are worth mentioning if only to marvel at the unanimity of approach such a quartet as the Pavel Haas can maintain as players come and go. Among the ensemble’s distinguishing characteristics is a visceral intensity that can be hair-raising in aggressive music but sustains itself even in quieter passages, along with finely managed dynamics and smooth, even crescendos and diminuendos. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society announces its 2014-2015 season

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Isserlis-LevinAt the performance by the Pavel Haas Quartet on April 8, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society announced the seven concerts to be presented during its 65th season. All performances will begin on Tuesdays at 7:30 pm at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights.

September 23: Pianist Wu Han, violinist Philip Setzer & cellist David Finckel.

October 21: The Belcea Quartet

December 2: The Juilliard String Quartet

January 13: Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (Benjamin Beilman & Ani Kavafian, violins, Paul Neubauer & Yura Lee, violins & David Finckel, cello)

February 24: The Jerusalem Quartet

March 10: Cellist Steven Isserlis & fortepianist Robert Levin (above)

April 21: Tenor Ian Bostridge & pianist Wenwen Duh

Preview: Cleveland Chamber Music Society — a conversation with violist Pavel Nikl of the Pavel Haas Quartet

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by Mike Telin

Pavel-Haas-QuartetSince winning the Paolo Borciani competition in Italy in Spring 2005, the Pavel Haas Quartet has established itself as one of the great chamber ensembles of today. On Tuesday, April 8 beginning at 7:30 pm in Plymouth Church, the quartet returns to Cleveland for a performance for the Cleveland Chamber Music Society. The program includes Leos Janáček’s Quartet No. 1 “Kreutzer Sonata”, Benjamin Britten’s Quartet No. 2 in C, op. 36 & Beethoven’s Quartet in e, op. 59, no. 2. At 6:30 pm a pre-concert lecture will be given by Costa Petridis. You can read Daniel Hathaway’s discussion with Petridis here.

In addition to their Cleveland performance, the Pavel Haas Quartet’s current US tour includes stops in San Francisco, Tucson, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Toronto, Durham, Atlanta and Cincinnati. “Everything is going very nicely, but it is quite busy,” violist Pavel Nikl said by telephone from his hotel in South Bend. [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Chamber Music Society: Pre-concert lecture to throw light on Pavel Haas Quartet’s Janáček & Britten

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by Daniel Hathaway

PETRIDIS-ConstantinePre-concert lectures are fixtures of many concert series, offering talks by well-known musicians or musical scholars to put audiences closer in touch with the music they’re about to hear.

The Cleveland Chamber Music Society takes a slightly broader approach to its roster of speakers, which this season includes, to be sure, two certified musicologists (CWRU’s David Rothenberg and Bard’s Peter Laki) but also a well-known program annotator (Richard Rodda), a Rabbi (Roger Klein of The Temple-Tifereth Israel), an audiophile and WCLV program host (Eric Kisch), the editor of an online journal (me) and, next Tuesday, the Curator of African Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Constantine Petridis).

“This is my very first talk on music ever,” Costa Petridis told us by phone from St. Louis, where he was attending a conference, “so I’m a little bit nervous, but very excited about it too.” [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Chamber Music Society — Takács Quartet plays complete Bartók in two evenings

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by Daniel Hathaway

Takacs-Quartet-2A colleague at Monday evening’s first installment of the Tackács Quartet’s complete Bartók Quartet cycle looked up at the packed balconies of Plymouth Church and mused about why such a crowd would turn up for an all-Bartók concert but probably not for one dedicated to the music of Webern or Schoenberg.

Good question. Part of the answer undoubtably had to do with the performers. In choosing to invite the Takács Quartet to play all six quartets over two evenings (March 17 & 18), the Cleveland Chamber Music Society delivered a tightly-wrapped package for its patrons: a half-dozen of the finest string quartets written in the twentieth century played by an originally all-Hungarian ensemble who have these pieces in their bloodlines and have made a specialty of playing them complete in a short stretch of time. (Some years ago, the Takács did that in a single day at Reinberger Chamber Music Hall, a marathon some are still talking about.)

[Read more…]

Preview: Cellist Daniel McDonough and violist/coach Michael Strauss share insights about Bartók’s string quartets

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by Mike Telin

McDonoughFor the fourth part of our preview of the Takács Quartet’s complete cycle of Bartók string quartets on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series at Plymouth Church on March 17 and 18, we spoke with Jupiter Quartet cellist Daniel McDonough and Oberlin’s Associate Professor of Viola and Chamber Music Michael Strauss about performing and coaching the Bartók quartets, and come back full circle to musicologist Peter Laki for final reflections about the Takács Quartet. We spoke with all three by telephone.

Performing the Bartók Quartets. Cellist Daniel McDonough said, “The wonderful thing about the Bartók quartets is that they are so carefully constructed. Like Beethoven, there is so much attention to detail so the challenge is finding clarity in the texture and making sure the evolution of the musical motives are really clear to the audience without ever becoming too cerebral-sounding. We are always looking for an emotional way to bring clarity to the music. Again, like Beethoven, I think the combination of head and heart is wh [Read more…]

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