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Rocky River Chamber Music Society goes all-Stravinsky for season closer

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Clarinetist Daniel McKelway and trumpeter Amanda Bekeny are familiar collaborators in a sense. Both are on the board of the Rocky River Chamber Music Society and both are frequent performers on the series — although it has never actually brought them face-to-face, instrument-to-instrument, bell-to-bell, onstage together at the same time for the same piece. Something they decided they ought to change.

To be fair, there isn’t a whole lot of music that could bring them together. But there is a pair of beloved pieces with unusual, colorful instrumentations, both by the same composer. “I don’t know which of us thought of it first, but there was an immediate idea of, ‘Wait a minute — Stravinsky,’” McKelway said during a recent interview.

They were thinking in particular of the Octet, which combines woodwinds and brass, and L’Histoire du Soldat (“Soldier’s Tale”), which brings together woodwinds, brass, strings, and percussion — plus narrator, telling the story of a soldier who strikes an ill-advised bargain with the devil.

Those two pieces and those two people — L’Histoire, the Octet, McKelway, and Bekeny — form the nucleus of the Rocky River Chamber Music Society’s season-ending concert, which will take place on Monday, May 15 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church. Attendance is free, and the concert will also be livestreamed. [Read more…]

New Morse Code at Rocky River Chamber Music Society

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by Mike Telin

For over a decade, the innovative duo New Morse Code — Hannah Collins (cello) and Michael Compitello (percussion) — have been creating projects that shed light on society’s pressing issues. These include The Emigrants, a documentary chamber work by George Lam, and dwb (driving while black), a chamber opera by Roberta Gumbel and Susan Kander.

The ensemble was recently named the inaugural grand prize winner of the Ariel Avant Impact Performance Prize, which supports the development and touring of new works that address sustainability goals and scientific innovation.

On Monday, March 13 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, Rocky River Chamber Music Society will host New Morse Code in a program that will include works by Caroline Shaw, Sam Suggs, Andy Akiho, Osvaldo Golijov, Robert Honstein, Florent Ghys, and Viet Cuong. The concert is free.

I caught up with both the cellist and percussionist by phone and began our conversation by asking why they chose these pieces for their program. [Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society: The Butler Piano Trio (Feb. 6)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On February 6, the Butler Piano Trio (Sandy Yamamoto, violin, Joshua Gindele, cello, and Colette Valentine, piano), treated the West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church audience to a compelling evening of generous and potent music making.

Abundantly evident in the performance of Rachmaninoff’s Trio élégiaque No. 1 — a cohesive single-movement work written when the composer was just nineteen — was the Butlers’ special chemistry. The group seemed to exhibit an extrasensory awareness of shared phrasing, expression, and rhythmic timing. Valentine managed Rachmaninoff’s virtuosic piano writing with ease, trading iterations of the elegiac theme with the strings in powerful combination. Three instruments were present onstage, but the music seemed to emit from a single voice.

Beethoven’s Trio in D, Op. 70, composed in 1808, is nicknamed “Ghost” for its eerie Largo movement. According to the unsigned program notes, Carl Czerny thought it evoked Hamlet’s meeting with the ghost of his father, but it was in fact part of Beethoven’s sketch for a never-completed Macbeth opera. The Butlers’ performance was taut and aptly unnerving. In the dramatic Largo the group relentlessly pressed the repeated rhythmic figure (triplet and sixteenths), conjuring a doomed march imposed by a spectral martinet. [Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society to present the Butler Trio

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by Mike Telin

If you were to ask just about any musician why they enjoy playing chamber music, they will tell you that it’s because they get to make music with people they enjoy. Case in point, the Butler Trio — Sandy Yamamoto (violin), Joshua Gindele (cello), and Colette Valentine (piano).

“We are all on faculty at the University of Texas, but the Trio formed when I left the Miró Quartet back in 2011,” Yamamoto said by telephone from Austin. “Josh [the cellist in the Miró] and I weren’t quite ready to be done with making music together, so we talked about playing in a piano trio. At the time Colette had joined the faculty so we asked her if she would play some trios with us.”

On Monday, February 6 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, the  Rocky River Chamber Music Society will play host to the Butler Trio. The program will include Rachmaninoff’s Trio Élégiaque No. 1, Beethoven’s Piano Trio in D (“Ghost”), and Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E-flat with guest violist Lembi Veskimets. The concert is free. Click here to access the live stream.

[Read more…]

Boston’s Balourdet String Quartet opens Rocky River series (Sept. 26)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Rocky River Chamber Music Society opened its 64th season on Monday, September 26 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church with a performance that symbolized part of what the organization is all about.

RRCMS regularly ferrets out ensembles that have only recently arrived on the world stage and presents them free of charge. The Balourdet String Quartet, which hangs its shingle in Boston at the New England Conservatory, is such a group, having been formed at Rice University in 2018 and quickly built a following and an impressive list of engagements.

Well-earned, because they’re terrific. Named after Antoine Balourdet, the celebrated head chef at the Hotel St. Bernard in Taos, New Mexico near the Taos School of Music, the Balourdet offer up well-curated, delectable musical menus that are apparently analogous to the chef’s wizardry in the kitchen. [Read more…]

Richard Hawkins & Friends at the Rocky River Chamber Music Society

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by Mike Telin

When the Oberlin Conservatory’s Richard Hawkins was asked to curate a concert for the Rocky River Chamber Music Society, he knew right away that it was an opportunity to program works that would include his Oberlin Conservatory faculty friends. “It’s always nice to present chamber music for winds and strings that people might not know,” the clarinetist said during a telephone conversation.

On Monday, February 28 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, Hawkins will be joined by Sibbi Bernhardsson (violist), Kirsten Docter (viola), James Howsmon (piano), Dmitry Kouzov (cello), Drew Pattison (bassoon), and Jeff Scott (horn) in a forgotten quintet from the turn of the 20th century, a light-hearted trio from the early 1980s, and a masterpiece sextet from 1935. The performance is free and face masks are required. The event will be live streamed on the RRCMS Facebook page. [Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society: Arsentiy Kharitonov, piano (Nov. 15)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Russian pianist Arsentiy Kharitonov played the second concert in the Rocky River Chamber Music Society Series on Monday evening, November 15, not in the Society’s home venue — West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church — but at Lakewood Congregational Church, due to COVID-19 concerns. I watched the recital, a hybrid event with in-person attendance permitted, via the live stream.

Unlike most concert pianists, who seem to have taken to the keyboard while they were still learning to walk, Kharitonov only began his studies at the age of 16. But he plays with such naturalness and easy virtuosity that you’d never imagine he came late to the party. [Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society: pianist Arsentiy Kharitonov

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by Jarrett Hoffman

One challenge of concert previews is balancing a discussion of the music against a portrait of the artist. In the case of pianist Arsentiy Kharitonov, who will visit the Rocky River Chamber Music Society for a free concert on Monday, November 15 at 7:30 pm at Lakewood Congregational Church (masks required), those two worlds of content collided. The way he described his program — works by Bach, Schubert, Schumann, Johann Strauss, Scriabin, and Rachmaninoff — was very telling about the way he thinks about music.

The Russian-born Kharitonov, who is a first-prize winner of both the Franz Liszt International Piano Competition and the All-National Composer’s Competition (Russia), spoke to me by telephone from his current homebase of Denton, Texas, not far from Dallas.

Jarrett Hoffman: One thing that stands out about your program is that each half contains a transcription of Bach: Ferruccio Busoni’s take on the famous violin Chaconne, and the Alexander Siloti version of the Organ Prelude in g. Are transcriptions in general an interest of yours?

[Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society:
after 40 years, the Auryn did what they wished

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by Jarrett Hoffman

It bears explaining when headlines have announced the disbanding of a storied ensemble, their Wikipedia entry reads in the past tense, and yet the group appears on the calendar for an important upcoming occasion.

That event in this case is the opening of the Rocky River Chamber Music Society’s 63rd season on Monday, October 4 at 7:30 pm at Lakewood Congregational Church, with an audience both in-person (masks required) and remote, in both cases with free admission.

And that ensemble, performing in Cleveland for the first time, is the German-based Auryn Quartet — founded in 1981, winners of both the London International Competition and ARD Munich Competition a year later — who after four decades have not undergone a single change of personnel.

So, are the Auryn back from the dead? Not exactly. “Corona changed everything,” violist Stewart Eaton explained in a telephone conversation. “We had to delay the final implementation of the ending of the quartet.”

[Read more…]

RRCMS ends season with three quintets (May 17)

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by Jarrett Hoffman

The Rocky River Chamber Music Society’s live-streamed 62nd season came to a rousing conclusion on Monday, May 17, when five wind players and a pianist came together around quintets by masters of old and new.

Anton Reicha’s 24 woodwind quintets don’t have the most exciting reputation, but his Op. 88 in E-flat is superb: beautiful, varied, and in the right hands, compellingly picturesque. Those right hands (and left ones too) were those of flutist Mary Kay Fink, oboist Frank Rosenwein, clarinetist Robert Woolfrey, hornist Richard King, and bassoonist Barrick Stees, who together gave a first-rate performance, both deeply polished and deeply fun.

[Read more…]

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