by Joshua Rosner
The audience at Mixon Hall was abuzz with anticipation Thursday night, June 22 for the fifth installment of the sixth season of ChamberFest Cleveland. “Fin de Siècle” (end of century) was a tapestry of compositions with roots in Austria from before and after the First World War. The evening consisted of works by Brahms, Ravel, and Korngold and was designed to showcase pianist Orion Weiss, a Lyndhurst native. [Read more…]
by Neil McCalmont
“Dad, I think we should have a festival.” Recalling the words of his daughter Diana, Franklin Cohen related how ChamberFest Cleveland first got started. “We loved the way summer music festivals felt like a family,” he explained. “What a great way to reach the core of the average audience member.”
After more than a dozen thrilling concerts, the festival’s fifth season has come to a close. Though the number of artists and performances has grown since its 2012 inception, ChamberFest still holds this mission at its core: “To nurture a deep family-like connection between musicians and audiences of all ages.”
The father-daughter duo of Franklin and Diana Cohen founded and co-direct ChamberFest Cleveland. Diana is concertmaster of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, her father the principal clarinet emeritus of The Cleveland Orchestra. They set out to found a festival — partly inspired by their experiences at the Marlboro Music Festival — with the goal of “great players, great music-making, and great community.” [Read more…]
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 Daniel Hathaway
On Saturday evening, June 18 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, Jewish patriarchs, matriarchs, and rabbis held works by Haydn, Kljuco, Britten, and Golijov in their embrace for a ChamberFest Cleveland concert titled “Isaac’s Dreams.” No matter how closely the pieces adhered to the theme, the performances were uniformly superb. [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 Mike Telin
The fifth in a series of articles highlighting ChamberFest artists
“ChamberFest is very special,” pianist Roman Rabinovich said during a telephone conversation from Wales, where he was performing three solo recitals. “It’s not a generic festival at all. It has such a warm atmosphere, and such interesting programming. This will be my third Festival, and I’m really looking forward to it.”
Tonight, June 20 at 8:00 pm at Dobama Theatre, Roman Rabinovich will make his first 2016 ChamberFest Cleveland appearance during “Movie Night” when he teams up with pianists Marat Portan and Orion Weiss for some comical and lighter works, including Sousa marches and a piece for piano six-hands. [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 Mike Telin
ChamberFest Cleveland added a new spin to the phrase “Something Borrowed, Something Blue” on Saturday, June 27 in Mixon Hall. Although no wedding took place, the program featured music that perfectly marries the classical ethos with jazz and folk idioms. As violinist Jinjoo Cho and pianist Roman Rabinovich prepared to open the concert with Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, suddenly from offstage, the sounds of the opening clarinet line from Rhapsody in Blue filled the hall. [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 Daniel Hathaway
Music for four hands on one piano has usually been a parlor game rather than the subject of public performance. Composers dabbled in that genre to satisfy an enthusiastic market of amateurs who wanted to amuse themselves and friends at home — and arrangers made versions of chamber and orchestral music so that musicians could study repertoire before the advent of sound recording. But Orion Weiss and Anna Polonsky’s refreshingly informal performance of music by Dvořák, Debussy, Schumann, Ravel, and Fauré at Dunham Tavern on Sunday afternoon, June 28 made a terrific case for four-hand music as a recital vehicle in its own right. [Read more…]