by Neil McCalmont
On Saturday, June 25 at Case Western Reserve’s Harkness Chapel, ChamberFest Cleveland presented “(Fairy) Tales and Tales of the Macabre,” continuing the series’ fascinating programming with even more interesting performances. [Read more…]
by Neil McCalmont
On Friday, June 24 at CIM’s Mixon Hall, ChamberFest Cleveland put on a thrilling concert titled “Obsession,” exploring the more intimate side of several composers’ lives and oeuvres.
“Obsession” began with two of Richard Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, his only vocal composition for which he did not also write the words. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
ChamberFest Cleveland’s concerts organize chamber works under imaginative themes. On Friday evening, June 17 in Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance, the connective tissue that linked works by Bridge, Dvořák, Kurtág, Beethoven, and Brahms in a concert titled “To My Distant Beloved” was the idea of separation anxiety. [Read more…]
by Neil McCalmont
The fifth season of ChamberFest Cleveland — titled “Tales and Legends” — has officially begun, and the world-class festival of chamber music is off to a thrilling start.
WCLV listeners and audience members in Ideastream’s Smith Studio were treated to “Nosh at Noon,” an unofficial inaugural concert on Wednesday, June 15. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
The 2015 season of ChamberFest Cleveland closed with a mostly American program in a spectacular venue: the angular, modernist home of Dr. Eugene and Janet Blackstone in Bratenahl along the shore of Lake Erie. The house, with its west-facing glass curtain wall, overlooks manicured lawns, and, after weeks of unending rain in Cleveland, there were sailboats on the lake as the sun set. The house also integrates a four-manual, custom-built pipe organ sprouting seemingly from every surface. The spaces not occupied by organ pipes (and a concert grand piano) were taken by audience members, in the main living area, an upper gallery and on the stairs. [Read more…]
by Jeremy Reynolds
Nancy Osgood, Board Chair of ChamberFest 2015, began на здоровье! (Good Health!) by dedicating the program to the memory of James Ireland III, one of the great benefactors of the arts in Cleveland. On Friday, June 26, CWRU’s Harkness Chapel hosted the festival’s all-Russian program, which attracted a healthy number of younger listeners in addition to a large number of seasoned concertgoers. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
ChamberFest Cleveland’s “Grab Bag!” concert on Tuesday was informal and eclectic, as the title implies. Seated fairly comfortably in Lee Road’s Wine Spot, the capacity audience was treated to a stimulating mix of instruments and musical styles — as well as a free glass of wine or beer. ChamberFest organizers Diana and Frank Cohen served as gracious hosts, giving impromptu commentaries between numbers. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
“Who’s Romantic?” may sound like the title of a reality TV show, but it’s actually the tagline for the third concert of ChamberFest’s 2015 season on Sunday, June 21 in the warm acoustics of Case Western Reserve University’s Harkness Chapel. Let’s take the question seriously: who is Romantic? ChamberFest presented Mozart’s E-flat Piano Quartet, K. 493, as its first case study. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
An evening of string quartet music can be a beautiful thing, but with a whole cast of musicians in residence, ChamberFest Cleveland enjoys the luxury of being able to field a variety of different ensembles on a single program. On Thursday, June 25 in CIM’s Mixon Hall, a concert that began with a Haydn quartet took on new sonorities with a Britten piece for oboe and three strings, expanded to include more strings plus harmonium and piano for a Johann Strauss Jr. waltz, then involved two pianists, two percussionists and a stage full of sound-generating devices in George Crumb’s Music for a Summer Evening. It was an amazing program. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
On Thursday, June 19, a standing-room-only crowd gathered in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music to hear clarinetist Franklin Cohen perform works by Reich, Brahms and Mozart. From start to finish Cohen proved that he is, without a doubt, one of the greatest musicians of our time. [Read more…]