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Jeannette Sorrell and CityMusic shed new light on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (May 14)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Audiences often associate Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with orchestral mass — huge string sections, blazing brass, and symphonic muscle.

On May 14 at Fairmount Presbyterian Church, conductor Jeannette Sorrell and CityMusic Chamber Orchestra offered another approach, a leaner fate-knocker that surrendered none of its dramatic power.

From the podium, Director of Development Em Laudeman Ezell acknowledged Sorrell’s connection to CityMusic during the ensemble’s founding years. With Apollo’s Fire, Sorrell had already shown that a smaller professional ensemble in Cleveland could thrive outside the major-orchestra model. Her appearance for this series felt less like a guest engagement than a return.

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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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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.”

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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Sing Hallelujah!” (June 26)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Sometimes the only thing that connects works in a concert is that they all appear on the same program page. That certainly characterized the mix of two Brahms songs, the premiere of a violin and piano work, a “repetitive music” classic for duo pianists, and a well-known piano trio that were featured in ChamberFest Cleveland’s sold out program “Sing Hallelujah!” on June 26 in Mixon Hall.

Johannes Brahms was partial to works that explore the lower, more mellow range of voices and instruments, as represented here by a pair of songs. Throughout both Gestillet Sehnsucht and Geistliches Wiegenlied, mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, violist Kim Kashkashian, and pianist Amy Yang produced rich, expressive musical lines that projected beautifully into the hall. The “Sacred Crib Song” was especially endearing for quoting the well-known 14th-century Christmas song “Joseph lieber, Joseph mein,” a little joke referring to the work’s dedicatee, Joseph Joachim.

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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: “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.

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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: “Reflections” at Church of the Saviour (June 13)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The second program of ChamberFest Cleveland’s 2025 season, titled “Reflections,” offered a varied but carefully sequenced triptych, was presented on June 13 at Church of the Saviour in Cleveland Heights. Works by Arvo Pärt, Anton Arensky, and Camille Saint-Saëns captivated with a blend of suspended time, remembrance, and fervent sweep.

Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel (“Mirror[s] in the Mirror”) was a remarkable opener, drawing violinist Gabrielle Després and pianist Michael Stephen Brown into a meditative dialogue and listeners into a quasi-hypnotic state. Després’s playing was austere and strangely luminous — testaments to her musical imagination and steady bow arm. She beautifully shaped each phrase — sharpening the listeners’ focus and slowing the collective pulse. Brown’s piano triads resonated with bell-like purity, so finely braided with Després’s lines that the effect was clairvoyant. As each violin note faded, the piano gently cued the next — gestures mirroring one another like eternal reflections in glass.

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ChamberFest 2025: a conversation with composer/pianist Roman Rabinovich

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by Mike Telin

Ever since childhood, Roman Rabinovich has been driven by a desire to create — whether that was sculpting from dirt and found objects or improvising character pieces on the piano.

Although you may know him as an extraordinary pianist and ChamberFest Cleveland co-artistic director, you may not know him as an accomplished composer. That’s about to change.

On Thursday, June 26 at 7:30 pm in Mixon Hall, Rabinovich will make his ChamberFest debut as a composer/pianist with the U.S. premiere of his Cappriccio Errante for Violin and Piano. The program also includes Brahms’s Two Songs for Voice, Viola and Piano, John Adams’ Hallelujah Junction, and Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 1. Tickets are available online.

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ChamberFest Cleveland & Piano Cleveland partnership brings James (Zijian) Wei back to town

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by Mike Telin

Not only did James (Zijian) Wei win First Prize at the 2024 Cleveland International Piano Competition, he also won four special prizes, one of which was the ChamberFest Cleveland Prize. That prize was awarded for the first time during the 2024 CIPC and was the result of a new partnership between Piano Cleveland and ChamberFest Cleveland.

How did that partnership come about? “Yaron Kohlberg is one of my old friends from Israel, and ChamberFest has been wanting to collaborate with the Piano Competition for a long time,” pianist and ChamberFest co-artistic director Roman Rabinovich said during a Zoom conversation.

“We’re always exploring opportunities to bring our winners back to Cleveland and create partnerships with local organizations,” Piano Cleveland artistic director Yaron Kohlberg said by phone, “and ChamberFest is a natural fit.” [Read more…]

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