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Oliver Herbert: a decade at ChamberFest Cleveland

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by Mike Telin

A recipient of a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant, ChamberFest Cleveland cellist Oliver Herbert’s career spans solo performance, chamber music, and curatorial projects.

Those projects have included concert curations for Deutschlandfunk Raderbergkonzerte and the TICA Festival in Hong Kong. He has premiered works by composers Andrew Moses, Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, and Helena Winkelman. In 2025, he was selected for the Orpheum Foundation’s development program for young soloists.

Since making his ChamberFest Cleveland debut as a “Rising Star” in 2016, Oliver Herbert has appeared regularly at the Festival. This week he returns for concerts on June 25, 26, and 27. More information and tickets are available online.

I caught up with Herbert by phone in Chicago, where he was preparing to play the Shostakovich first concerto with the Grant Park Orchestra. I began by asking him how ChamberFest Cleveland has helped him advance his career. [Read more…]

Errollyn Wallen braves the storm to share her Songbook at ChamberFest (June 18)

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by Stephanie Manning

Errollyn Wallen is many things — composer, vocalist, and published author, just to name a few. But you could also say she’s a little bit of a psychic.

As the sky outside the floor-to-ceiling windows in Mixon Hall rapidly darkened with storm clouds on June 18, she launched into her song “Tree.” “I’m perplexed by rooted trees,” she crooned over pizzicattos from her accompanying string quartet, as lightning flashed and the real-life trees bent and twisted in the fierce wind.

Shortly after, ChamberFest co-artistic director Diana Cohen stopped the concert to make a rare request: that everyone in the room make their way down to the Cleveland Institute of Music basement to shelter from the storm. This unusual little detour was just one way the Wednesday evening program lived up to its name, “Mood Swings.”

[Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Starry Night” (June 21)

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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) 

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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 — Luscious Soundscapes (June 16)

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by Mike Telin

On Wednesday, June 16 at 7:00 at The Grove Amphitheatre, ChamberFest’s theme of the evening was Luscious Soundscapes and included music by Richard Strauss and Amy Beach.

However, it was pianist Shai Wosner’s imaginative interweaving of sonatas by Italian Baroque composer Domenico Scarlatti with sonatas by American composer Frederick Rzewski that got things off to a fascinating start. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland:
Looking Ahead at Week 2

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by Mike Telin

The second week of ChamberFest Cleveland begins on Wednesday, June 16 at 7:00 pm at The Grove Amphitheatre in Mayfield. Admission is free, but reservations are required. A full weekly calendar listing is below.

The program “Luscious Soundscapes” begins with pianist Shai Wosner’s imaginative interweaving of sonatas by Italian Baroque composer Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) with sonatas by American composer Frederick Rzewski (1938 -). Wosner’s three pairings include Scarlatti’s Sonata in d K. 141 with Rzewski’s Nanosonata No. 36 (“To a Young Man”), Scarlatti’s Sonata in d K. 9 with Rzewski’s Nanosonata No. 38 (“To a Great Guy”), and Scarlatti’s Sonata in c K. 230 with Rzewski’s Nanosonata No. 12.

If juxtaposing music by these two seemingly dissimilar composers sounds like an oddity, Wosner believes they make an interesting match. “I love Scarlatti and I love Rezewski,” the pianist said during an interview. “And I think that Scarlatti and Rzewski are mavericks in similar ways. Of course their music is very different from one another’s, and Rzewski was not trying to emulate Scarlatti in any way with his short sonatas. The Nanosonatas are almost like a stream of consciousness, but I hear that in the Scarlattis as well.” [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “In Full Swing” (June 14)

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by David Kulma

CIM’s Kulas Hall on Friday, June 14 was the setting for the enjoyable and amazingly performed second concert in ChamberFest Cleveland’s eighth season. Titled “In Full Swing,” the evening featured three works tangentially related to dancing by Leonard Bernstein, John Adams, and Antonín Dvořák. But before the fantastic music-making by professionals, the pre-concert performance by the Deng sisters was easily a highlight. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland stuns with season opener (June 13)

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by Rory O’Donoghue

ChamberFest Cleveland descended from the heavens with “Under the Influence,” the inaugural concert of its eighth season on June 13 in CIM’s Mixon Hall. Exquisite interpretation, unparalleled finesse, and delightful music-making tied the evening’s selections together in performances of simply the highest caliber. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Turning/Tipping Points” at Mixon (June 15)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Pivotal moments in the lives of composers linked works by Louise Farrenc, Paul Hindemith, and Johannes Brahms for ChamberFest Cleveland’s third concert on Saturday, June 15 in CIM’s Mixon Hall. But that program was prefaced by Adam Golka’s new arrangement of Debussy’s La mer for two pianos, an hors d’oeuvre that could easily have been served up as a main course. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland announces Season Eight

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ChamberFest Cleveland, the celebrated summer music festival founded by Franklin Cohen, principal clarinet emeritus of The Cleveland Orchestra, and his daughter, Diana Cohen, concertmaster of The Calgary Philharmonic, returns to the Cleveland scene with Season 8, “Under the Influence.” The festival will take place from June 13 through June 29, 2019, at venues throughout Greater Cleveland, and will include nine concerts plus a special late-night electronic violin performance at The Wine Spot on Lee Road in Cleveland Heights.

Concerts kick off on Thursday, June 13 at 7:30 pm at Mixon Hall. ChamberFest will also make stops at Cleveland State University’s Drinko Hall, the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium, and Harkness Chapel on the campus of Case Western Reserve University.

ChamberFest will welcome back many favorite musicians in addition to Co-founders and Co-artistic Directors, Franklin and Diana Cohen. Yura Lee, Alexi Kenney, Oliver Herbert, Peter Wiley, Roman Rabinovich, Julie Albers, Amy Schwartz Moretti, and more will join new artists including Israeli Philharmonic principal oboe Dudu Carmel and Finnish pianist Juho Pohjonen. Four up-and-coming players will take part in ChamberFest’s “Rising Stars” program.

[Read more…]

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