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Review: ChamberFest Cleveland: Riot [Like It’s 1913!] at Mixon Hall, CIM (June 29)

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by Daniel Hathaway

CFC-June-29ChamberFest Cleveland continued to pack ’em in on Friday evening at CIM’s Mixon Hall, when an enthusiastic, capacity crowd gathered for a program entitled Riot [Like It’s 1913]. It wasn’t 1913 until the second half and even then the closest thing to a popular uprising was an immediate standing ovation, but the work that generated the theme of the evening was Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Not the big one, but the composer’s rehearsal version for two pianos (played by Orion Weiss and Matan Porat), spiffed up for the occasion with percussion parts arranged by Scott Christian and Alexander Cohen (who played them) and Diana Cohen (who rooted from the audience).

Stravinsky’s orchestration is rich with color and vibrant with rhythm. The two-piano version necessarily sheds a lot of symphonic hues (something that’s obvious from the opening bars, when that strained high bassoon solo gets translated to the keyboard), but the visceral quality of the composer’s groundbreaking rhythms only becomes enhanced on the piano. Add to that five timpani, bass drum, cymbals, gongs and other instruments culled from the orchestral batterie, and the effect is super-thrilling. [Read more…]

Review: ChamberFest Cleveland: Let’s Dance! at Harkness Chapel (June 23)

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by Nicholas Jones

Harkness-062313After opening with two intense concerts on Thursday and Friday, the musicians of ChamberFest Cleveland 2013 let their hair down on Sunday. This was my first opportunity to attend this second year of Franklin and Diana Cohen’s ambitious and highly successful venture, and it was a pleasure to be there with a hall full of Cleveland’s seasoned musical connoisseurs. In addition, thanks to the festival’s decision to give free tickets to 18-and-unders, there were a bunch of youngsters in the audience.

The first half was for strings only. The concert opened with a Boccherini quintet from Opus 11, the one with the famous Minuet that every beginning violinist learns. It is not a demanding piece, technically, but the excellent players brought to it every bit of their formidable technique anyway. Scrupulous attention to Boccherini’s dynamics made the most of his pre-Romantic expressionism, rich with ebbs and flows. [Read more…]

Review: ChamberFest Cleveland at the Transformer Station — an impressive concert venue debut

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by Timothy Robson

Transformer-Station-062113In only its second season, ChamberFest Cleveland is already a summer musical force to be reckoned with. The brainchild of Cleveland Orchestra clarinet principal Franklin Cohen and his daughter, violinist Diana Cohen, the festival is akin to such notable gatherings as Rudolf Serkin’s Marlboro or Benjamin Britten’s Aldeburgh, where the founders invite a “family” of musical guests — in this case, mostly rising artists — attuned to their own artistic goals, with a variety of programming in interesting venues.

The second concert of the 2013 season took place on Friday, June 21, at 9:00 pm (the better to enjoy the Summer Solstice sunlight?) at the Transformer Station, a new Ohio City gallery on W. 29th Street a block south of Detroit Avenue, developed by art collectors Laura and Fred Bidwell in collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art. [Read more…]

Review: ChamberFest Cleveland 2013 opening concert — Continuum: The Divine Cosmos at Mixon Hall (June 20)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Mixon-062013The second iteration of ChamberFest Cleveland opened June 20 in CIM’s Mixon Hall on festive, thoughtful and ecstatic notes with music by Matan Porat, Mozart and Messiaen, preceded by a free preludial concert by Sphinx Competition prize-winning cellist Gabriel Cabezas and pianist Orion Weiss.

ChamberFest is an extended family affair that draws a number of close musical friends into its orbit, but its immediate family is Franklin, Diana and Alexander Cohen, an unusual trio of clarinet, violin and timpani for whom Matan Porat wrote an ingratiating festival fanfare entitled Start Time. Ringing changes on ChamberFest’s theme, (It’s) About Time, the short piece gave all three instruments a workout as they joined in and responded to one another after an arresting timpani solo.

The main work on Thursday evening’s program was Olivier Messiaen’s mystical Quartet for the End of Time, a work so emotionally intense that it can fill out an entire concert all by itself without the need for musical companionship. [Read more…]

Preview: ChamberFest Cleveland season two — (It’s) About Time — June 20-30

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by Mike Telin

COHEN-Frank-&-DianaFollowing on the heels of their highly successful premiere season, ChamberFest Cleveland artistic directors Frank and Diana Cohen have again assembled an impressive lineup of artists who will perform a variety of musical offerings in an expanded array of diverse venues.

Beginning on Thursday, June 20, and running through Sunday, June 30, (IT’S) ABOUT TIME explores the different elements of time as related to the musical experience, through metaphoric and literal representations of musical time. “We struggled a lot with the title,” Diana Cohen told us by Skype. “Our returning guest speaker, Patrick Castillo, had the idea that the title should be about the interesting aspects that exist in the relationship between time and music. We couldn’t come up with a name, then somebody said, ‘so, it’s about time,’ and it stuck.”

Cohen says the decision to expand to eight ticketed concerts as well as increasing the number of free programs this season was not easy. “There was a lot of debate in terms of how much we should expand, in part because what we liked about last season was the fact that everything was sold out in addition to the incredible amount of community support we received.” Cohen says that last season’s audience surveys, which were full of “honest” feedback,  helped them a lot in making decisions about this season. [Read more…]

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