ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad
Ad
Ad

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

by

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.

[Read more…]

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

by

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.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Starry Night” (June 21)

by

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.

[Read more…]

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

by

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)

by

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

by

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.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Night Moves” at Disciples Church (June 28)

by

by Kevin McLaughlin

It was nice to finally hear one of ChamberFest Cleveland’s “Sacred and Profane” concerts (“Night Moves” on June 28) in a religious setting — Disciples Church in Cleveland Heights — since it helped the “sacred” music resonate (in more ways than one). As the home of the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s concerts, it’s a well-loved space to experience chamber music.

It turns out, though, you don’t necessarily need a church — or even voices — to convey the spirituality of the opener, Palestrina’s 1572 motet, Dominus Jesus in qua nocte.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: a four-course meal during “Innocence and Experience” (June 26)

by

by Stephanie Manning

ChamberFest Cleveland’s June 26 concert had stiffer competition than usual, with The Cleveland Orchestra simultaneously performing for Wade Oval Wednesdays right down the street. But you wouldn’t have known it from the packed house that filled Mixon Hall that evening at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

The program, titled “Innocence and Experience,” marked the long-awaited festival debut of guitarist Jason Vieaux. (Although the venue was no doubt familiar to him — he’s taught at CIM since 1997.) Vieaux and his fellow musicians kicked off the program with Luigi Boccherini’s Guitar Quintet No. 4 in D, a lively piece with the subtitle “Fandango.”

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: transporting listeners into “Other Worlds” (June 22)

by

by Stephanie Manning

Hearing the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” was not on my ChamberFest Cleveland bingo card. But Brandon Ridenour had other ideas.

“Antonio Vivaldi was the Paul McCartney of his time,” the trumpet player told the audience at the festival’s June 22 concert. Accompanied by string quartet, Ridenour brought his arrangements of both the Beatles and the Baroque to the program — titled “In Other Worlds” — and made a pretty strong case for the connection between 18th-century opera and 1960s pop.

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Vortex” (June 25)

by

by Mike Telin

If you are familiar with William Cowper’s 1785 poem The Task, then you know the famous line “Variety is the very spice of life, that gives it all its flavor.” On Sunday, June 25 at Harkness Chapel, ChamberFest Cleveland presented a program that was steeped in musical variety and spices for the ear.

Written in 1977, Alfred Schnittke’s Moz-Art (after the fragment K. 416d) is based on the first violin part from Mozart’s unpublished pantomime, with dollops of the opening theme of his 40th Symphony stirred into the mix. The quirky five-minute work for two violins asks the players to throw caution to the winds as they seemingly compete to see who can turn a classical line into something absurd faster than the other.

The performance by Itamar Zorman and Diana Cohen was bust-your-gut funny. Bowed notes turned into plucked ones, then scratchings, in tune became out of tune, and slow tempos became fast enough to break the sound barrier. Hilarity ensued when the players swapped out their instruments, Zorman grabbing a very tiny violin while Cohen opted for a viola. After reclaiming their rightful fiddles, the players mischievously walked away whistling.

[Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us