by Daniel Hathaway
Filling a void in the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival when a scheduled artist developed visa complications, University of Colorado Boulder professor Nicolò Spera stepped in with his 10-string guitar and a stimulating program that was technically and mentally challenging — both for the guitarist and his Mixon Hall audience — on Friday, June 7.
The extra strings on that instrument added range and resonance to Spera’s program, which began and ended with famous works from the passacaglia family, with a contemporary piece at its center.
At the end of his “Mystery” Sonatas — fifteen little suites for violin and continuo based on the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries of Christ represented by the beads on the Rosary — Heinrich Ignatz Franz Biber added a postlude in the form of a passacaglia for solo violin based on a four-bar descending bass figure. [Read more…]
The presentation of young and emerging artists has always been a priority for the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival. And for Festival followers it’s an opportunity to be made aware of young guitarists, and then watch them mature as musicians. 
The best chamber music performances are the ones where the synergy of the players is so captivating that you simply sit back, relax, and let yourself get lost in the music. Such was the case when the Patterson-Sutton Duo — Kimberly Patterson (cello) and Patrick Sutton (guitar) — made a return visit to the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival on Sunday afternoon, June 4.
On Thursday, June 1 at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall, guitarist Jason Vieaux opened the 2023 Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival with a sparkling display, mixing assured technique with an impressively broad guitar ethos. In a program stretching from Albéniz to Metheny, Vieaux acquitted himself with ease and authority, setting a high bar for every festival recital to follow.
You’d think that two instruments that create their sound by plucking strings might not provide enough variety to sustain interest over the course of a whole program, but guitarist Colin Davin and harpist Emily Levin have news for you.
Over the past few years Petra Poláčková has enthralled audiences at the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, and on Sunday afternoon, June 5, at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Kulas Hall, the young Czech musician demonstrated why she has become a Festival favorite.
Anyone who has been paying attention to the world of contemporary chamber music during the past twenty years will recognize the names of flutist Molly Barth and guitarist Dieter Hennings — together known as Duo Damiana.