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Cleveland Chamber Music Society Shostakovich Cycle: five concerts by the Jerusalem Quartet (Apr. 21–30)

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Reviews by Kevin McLaughlin, Daniel Hathaway, & Stephanie Manning

To celebrate its 75th anniversary, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society engaged the dauntless Jerusalem Quartet to play a complete cycle of Dmitri Shostakovich’s fifteen string quartets. The works were performed in chronological order over five evenings in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

The performances were treated like an art exhibition accompanied by an elaborate, 45-page catalog full of documentation about the composer, whose life and career under the Soviet system left an indelible mark on his music. A timeline that runs along the bottom of the program pages helped put Shostakovich’s compositions in historical context. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s 75th birthday party (Part 2)

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by Mike Telin

The Cleveland Chamber Music Society will continue its 75th anniversary with Dmitri Shostakovich’s Quartets Nos. 10 through 12 on April 29, and Nos. 13 through 15 on April 30, performed by the Jerusalem Quartet —  violinists Alexander Pavlovsky and Sergei Bresler, violist Ori Kam, and cellist Kyril Zlotnikov.

The 7:30 pm concerts will be held in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art. James Wilding will give pre-concert lectures at 6:30 pm before each event. Tickets are available online. Click here for more information and to view a full schedule of events.

CCMS’s concerts would not be possible without the dedicated volunteers who have kept the well-oiled machine operating for 75 years. I had the pleasure of speaking to Board President Fern Jennings and Chair of the Programming Committee Steve Somach.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society celebrates 75th birthday with Shostakovich & the Jerusalem Quartet

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by Mike Telin

In 1948, when three faculty friends from Western Reserve University convinced the Budapest Quartet to come to Cleveland to perform a three-concert series, who could have predicted that the humble event would lead to the creation of one of the city’s venerable presenters of classical music. Since its founding in 1950, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society has gone on to create one of the most respected chamber music series in the country.

In honor of its 75th anniversary, CCMS has planned a five-concert celebration from April 21 through 30 featuring the complete Shostakovich quartet cycle performed by the Jerusalem Quartet —  violinists Alexander Pavlovsky and Sergei Bresler, violist Ori Kam, and cellist Kyril Zlotnikov.

The performances will be held in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art. James Wilding will give pre-concert lectures at 6:30pm before each event. Tickets are available online. On April 23 at 3:00 pm in the Museum’s Morley Lecture Hall, there will be a free screening of the 1964 Grigori Kozintsev adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, featuring a searing score by Dmitri Shostakovich. Click here for more information and to view a full schedule of events.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society: solving an annual programming puzzle

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s concert brochure presents information about its seven-concert season, neatly organized to include one concert each month, and all of them scheduled for Tuesday evenings.

This season, the Society has invited the Belcea Quartet, the Danish String Quartet, the Takács Quartet with pianist Marc-André Hamelin, cellist Steven Isserlis with pianist Connie Shih, the Pavel Haas Quartet, tenor Matthew Polenzani with pianist Julius Drake, and solo pianist Garrick Ohlsson to perform at Disciples Church in Cleveland Heights.

How did this series of concerts come together? We went right to the source, programming committee chair Steve Somach, for insights into the selection process. We spoke this week by phone.

Daniel Hathaway: I thought it would be interesting to write an article about how CCMS puts a season together, especially since you’ve got over twenty people on your board. 

Steve Somach: That’s for sure.

DH: It’s always like solving a jigsaw puzzle, but I think in your case, it’s kind of a special one.  [Read more…]

The Jerusalem Quartet: another Chamber Music Society gem (May 2)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

A great string quartet, it is said, plays as one: four players and sixteen strings channeled as a single instrument, even as each player worth his or her own salt retains something distinctive. Time and rehearsals, with luck and hard work, will result in a convincingly melded whole.

The Jerusalem Quartet plays with a remarkably blended, superbly unified voice. On Tuesday evening, May 2 at Disciples Christian Church, unity was in evidence in a splendid program of Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Bartók — another gem in the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s series.

Before composing his Second String Quartet in F major in 1941, Prokofiev felt some pressure by local arts officials to incorporate folk melodies — not his usual practice — drawn from the northern Caucasus region, a remote corner to which the composer had recently been relocated. Whether Prokofiev was being subversive or sincere, there is power in his unvarnished, almost raw representation. On Tuesday night the Jerusalem leaned into the rawness.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society: Jerusalem Quartet at Plymouth (Oct. 22)

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by David Kulma

Tuesday, October 22 was my second opportunity to hear the Jerusalem Quartet. This was their eighth appearance on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s concerts at Plymouth Church, and it’s no wonder they keep getting invited back. In an invigorating program of Mozart, Korngold, and Shostakovich, violinists Alexander Pavlovsky and Sergei Bresler, violist Ori Kam, and cellist Kyril Zlotnikov showed off this elegant quartet’s power and maturity. [Read more…]

Jerusalem String Quartet
returns to CCMS Series

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Jerusalem String Quartet, now beginning its 24th season together, will give the second concert of the 70th season of the Cleveland Chamber Music Society at Plymouth Church on Tuesday October 22 at 7:30 pm. Their program includes works by Mozart, Korngold, and Shostakovich.

One of CCMS’s most frequently-invited ensembles, the Jerusalem Quartet has visited the series once a year since 2017, and once every other year from 2010 through 2015. In addition to Cleveland, the ensemble’s U.S. tours this season will include concerts in Houston, Durham, Baltimore, West Orange New Jersey, and New York, and a return to Boston’s Celebrity Series.

The Quartet’s program on  October 22 begins with Mozart’s Quartet in d, K. 421, one of the set of six quartets the composer dedicated to his mentor, Joseph Haydn. For someone who normally composed rapidly and with little effort — Mozart’s sister noted that he often concocted whole pieces in his head while playing games, then sat down and simply wrote them out — these works inspired the composer to produce music at a level of perfection unusual even for him. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society: Jerusalem Quartet at Plymouth (Oct. 2)

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by David Kulma

The splendid Jerusalem Quartet’s return to the Cleveland Chamber Music Society on Tuesday, October 2 at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights brought welcome respite in a week full of rancor and bitterness. But the powerful Shostakovich quartet that ended the evening brought the inescapable world back into view, both for the weary and the wary. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society presents The Jerusalem Quartet

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by Mike Telin

Sometimes personalities and musical sensibilities among members of a chamber music ensemble just seem to click. Such is the case with the acclaimed Jerusalem Quartet, who first came together while still in high school. But in a 2015 interview with ClevelandClassical.com, violinist Alexander Pavlovsky said that at that time, becoming a world-class string quartet was the furthest thing from their minds. “We did not think a lot about the future. We were only concentrating on building a repertoire and enjoying every moment of being part of such an amazing ensemble.”

On Tuesday, October 2 at 7:30 pm at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society will inaugurate their new season with a return visit by the Jerusalem Quartet — Alexander Pavlovsky and Sergei Bresler, violins, Ori Kam, viola, and Kyril Zlotnikov, cello. The program includes Beethoven’s Quartet in a, Op. 18, No. 5, Ravel’s Quartet in F, and Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 3 in F, Op. 73. CWRU professor David J. Rothenberg will give a pre-concert lecture beginning at 6:30. Tickets are available online.

Tuesday’s concert will mark the Quartet’s fifth appearance on the CCMS series since 2010 — the last was in March of 2017. Looking back at that 2015 interview, we thought it would be nice to re-share some of Alexander Pavlovsky’s responses to questions he graciously agreed to answer by email.

[Read more…]

The Jerusalem Quartet gives insights into their Chamber Music Society program

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by Mike Telin

Jerusalem-Quartet-(Felix-Broede)The Jerusalem Quartet are regulars on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series. On Tuesday, March 21 at 7:30 pm, violinists Alexander Pavlovsky and Sergei Bresler, violist Ori Kam, and cellist Kyril Zlotnikov will return for their fourth visit in eight years to perform music by Haydn, Prokofiev, and Dvořák at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. WCLV’s Mark Satola will give a pre-concert lecture at 6:30 pm.

Though the quartet was unavailable for a telephone interview, violist Ori Kam kindly agreed to respond to questions by email. [Read more…]

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