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

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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.

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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Inventions of Memory” (June 27)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

ChamberFest Cleveland’s June 27 program, “Inventions of Memory,” offered three distinct meditations on musical remembrance. Presented in the tranquil setting of Harkness Chapel at Case Western Reserve University, eight of the festival’s standout artists illuminated works by Claude Debussy, Brett Dean, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

The program opened with Debussy’s Trois Chansons de Bilitis, a cycle of idealized and slightly prurient visions of antiquity. Mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron and pianist Roman Rabinovich offered a reading attuned to the music’s erotic undertow and bathed in Lydian and whole-tone harmonies.

In La Flûte de Pan, Rabinovich’s shimmering textures evoked the strumming of a lyre as Barron spun out the tale of a young girl’s intimate flute lesson. Her voice, pliant and sumptuous, moved easily between innocence and seduction.
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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Night Moves” at Disciples Church (June 28)

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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.

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

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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.”

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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Fidelity and Betrayal” (June 17)

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by Mike Telin

From the beginning, ChamberFest Cleveland’s artistic directors have turned to creative themes for their programming inspiration. This season the Festival’s guiding light has taken a literary slant with Lightness of Being — after Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But don’t feel like you need to have read the novel to enjoy the concerts — Donald Rosenberg’s brilliantly written program notes will tell you what you need to know.

On Saturday, June 17 in CIM’s Mixon Hall, the program “Fidelity and Betrayal” included works from the standard repertoire, a never-performed work by a well-known composer, a piece inspired by Cuban and South American dances, and music that had never been heard before — anytime, anywhere.

 

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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Karenin’s Smile” (June 16)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

After the seriousness and communal pall brought on by the COVID pandemic, this year’s ChamberFest is asserting “Lightness of Being” as a theme, inspired by Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. In the second concert of the Festival, titled “Karenin’s Smile,” works by Mozart, Janáček, and Saint-Saëns were appropriately buoyant and cheerful, thrilling those gathered at Cleveland’s St. Wendelin Church on June 16.

Mozart wrote two of his six so-called “viola quintets” in 1787 in close succession — one in C major, one in G minor. The C major, with its more amiable and optimistic disposition, was a fitting choice on Friday evening.

Cellist Jonathan Swensen opened with a puckish rising arpeggiated triad, which first violinist David Bowlin answered with equally cheeky delight. The wide-ranging motive hinted at the movement’s dimensions (a good fifteen minutes long), and the violin answer set the bantering pattern. Bowlin made a fine leader, acquitting himself in both Allegro movements with mirthful virtuosity.

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ChamberFest Cleveland:
“Timeless Explorations” (June 25)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The first piece of business at ChamberFest Cleveland’s June 25 concert in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music was rearranging the order of the program. “Timeless Explorations” was to have begun with a new piece, but probably for practical reasons involving a prepared piano, Yevgeniy Sharlat’s Dumka-22 and Beethoven’s Piano Trio, Op. 70, No. 2 traded places.

Violinist Diana Cohen, cellist Jonathan Swensen, and pianist Andrius Žlabys launched the sixth concert of ChamberFest’s tenth anniversary season with an effervescent performance of Beethoven’s least-performed trio. Bedecked with sparkling runs and ensemble flourishes and set in the gemütlich key of E-flat, the piece made an attractive opener and served as a lovely vehicle for the musicians to express their unassuming virtuosity.

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ChamberFest Cleveland: Color X Expanse (June 24)

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by Daniel Hathaway

At the Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church on Friday, June 24, the repertoire was indeed both colorful and expansive as the excellent musicians of ChamberFest Cleveland explored works ranging from the sentimental (Fritz Kreisler’s Three Pieces for Piano Trio) to the evanescent (Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quintet No. 1), from the stark and compact (George Walker’s Piano Sonata No. 5) to the delightfully verbose (Zoltán Kodály’s Duo for Violin and Cello, Op. 7).

Violinist Alexi Kenney, cellist Jonathan Swensen, and pianist Andrius Žlabys raised the curtain with three light pieces arranged by a virtuoso violinist famous for his encores. Kreisler’s takes on The Old Refrain, Farewell to Cucullain (a.k.a. Londonderry Air or Oh Danny Boy), and Miniature Viennese March worked equally well as preludial bon-bons. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: Zooming with cellist & rising star Jonathan Swensen

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by Mike Telin

When looking at cellist Jonathan Swensen’s Facebook page, you can’t help but think that he is one busy guy. And one who has a good time doing what he does.

“I’m enjoying the traveling and the discovery that come with this life,” he said over Zoom. “Every audience and every hall has its special charm. I love experiencing different cultures. But it’s funny because I can go to so many places where I don’t speak anyone’s language, and be able to share something that comes from the heart. Something which any listener can understand, and that is very nice.”

Leading up to Swensen’s ChamberFest Cleveland debut on Thursday, June 23 at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall, I reached him at his home in Copenhagen. [Read more…]

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