by Mike Telin
ChamberFest Cleveland wrapped up its seventh season with an excellent concert on Saturday, June 30 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. “Dawn of a Revolution” included works by Claude Debussy, a world premiere by Sebastian Chang, and a musical tapestry woven with inspired new choreography by David Shimotakahara. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
In the penultimate concert of their 2018 season, ChamberFest Cleveland offered the program “Behind Bars” on Friday, June 29 in Reinberger Chamber Music Hall at Severance Hall. The title was a reference to twentieth-century composer, organist and teacher Olivier Messiaen, who was being held in a German POW camp in 1940 when he composed his Quartet for the End of Time. That work received a searingly intense performance on the second half of the program, rendering the music that preceded it almost trivial by comparison. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
“Forging New Paths,” the title of ChamberFest Cleveland’s sixth concert this season, refers to a time when critics feared that classical music was dying. In an article titled “New Paths,” Robert Schumann predicted that his young colleague Brahms would become German art music’s savior. The unstated premise was that it needed one. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
In the fifth concert of this year’s ChamberFest Cleveland season, programming took “A Turn in the Road” amid the festival’s theme of searching for freedom. Three trios played works by Alban Berg, George Crumb, and Antonín Dvořák, each of whom sought liberation from aesthetic constraints in some way. The resulting musical experience on June 21 in the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall had remarkable stylistic and sonic range. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Every composer has their own way of approaching their craft. “When I write a piece, whether it’s for orchestra or chamber ensemble, I want everybody to have a moment in the spotlight,” Sebastian Chang said during a telephone conversation. “Most of the time that works out great and results in something that is fun to play. But when Alex asked me to write a timpani part, that pretty much changed everything.”
On Saturday, June 30 at 7:30 pm at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, clarinetist Franklin Cohen, violinist Diana Cohen, timpanist Alexander Cohen, and pianist Roman Rabinovich will perform the world premiere of Chang’s Cryptogenic Infrastructure Fantasy (CIF) as part of ChamberFest Cleveland’s season finale. “Dawn of a Revolution” will also include Debussy’s Violin Sonata, and David Shimotakahara’s choreography of selections from Ligeti, Beethoven, Ravel, Pärt, Shostakovich, and Ginastera, performed by GroundWorks Dance Theater. Tickets are available online.
Chang, who serves as pianist and resident composer for the Louisville Orchestra, began writing CIF with a mission to correct an injustice that orchestral timpanists often experience. “They usually rest for 300 bars, then play a single note just to punctuate a big moment. They don’t get a lot of time in the spotlight and I wanted to fix that with this composition.”
by Jarrett Hoffman
Drafted into the French army at the start of World War II, Olivier Messiaen soon found himself captured by the Germans and held at the prisoner-of-war camp known as Stalag VIII-A. There, a guard with a love of music provided the composer with the necessities of his craft — paper, pencils, erasers, and a quiet place to work — and he set about writing his Quatuor pour la fin du temps, which he and three fellow musician-prisoners would premiere in the camp’s Barrack 27.
You can’t overstate the contrast in time and place between that barrack at Stalag VIII-A in Görlitz, Germany, 1941, and Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance Hall in Cleveland, Ohio, 2018. But perhaps the two settings will be linked by some small thread on Friday, June 29 at 7:30 pm, when Reinberger plays host to ChamberFest Cleveland’s concert titled “Behind Bars” — and four performers close out the evening by contending with those marks on paper that comprise Quartet for the End of Time.
Taking on that eight-movement work will be violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley, clarinetist Franklin Cohen, cellist Julie Albers, and pianist Roman Rabinovich. I reached the string players and pianist by phone and by email to talk about a few specific movements and how they plan to interpret the work as a whole. Selections from our separate conversations are presented here in a roundtable format.
by Daniel Hathaway
Although ChamberFest Cleveland dubbed its third concert “The Independent Spirit,” it might just as aptly have been titled “The Indefatigable Pianist” in honor of Roman Rabinovich. He spent the entire evening at the keyboard on Saturday, June 16 in Mixon Hall, flawlessly spinning out one elegantly articulated phrase after another. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
The seventh season of Chamberfest Cleveland opened on Thursday, June 14 at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall. The festival, brainchild of Cleveland Orchestra principal clarinet emeritus Franklin Cohen and his daughter, violinist Diana Cohen, concertmaster of the Calgary Symphony, has become an imaginative and well-attended fixture of June in Cleveland. The opening program typified the festival by combining familiar works with the more unusual. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
“When a father-in-law asks, it’s the law,” Roman Rabinovich said during a recent conversation. As fans of ChamberFest Cleveland know, that father-in-law is co-artistic director Franklin Cohen. His request? An arrangement of Brahms’ Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel to be performed at the Festival — and his son-in-law happily obliged.
Rabinovich’s nonet version of that solo piano work will receive its premiere on Saturday, June 23 at 7:30 pm in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music. And the web of connections in that program, titled “Forging New Paths,” is worth spending an evening on itself. There’s the Handel-to-Brahms thread: on one end of the program is the Baroque composer’s Trio Sonata in c, HWV 386a, while on the other end are Brahms’ Handel Variations — in their new clothes picked out by Rabinovich. And in between is Ligeti’s homage to Brahms: the Trio for Horn, Violin, and Piano — a rare instrumentation for which the big B also composed.
You’ll see Rabinovich at the harpsichord in the Handel sonata, but our conversation focused on his arrangement of the Brahms for flute, clarinet, horn, bassoon, string quartet, and double bass. [Read more…]
by Hannah Schoepe
Whisking the listener away on a diverse journey of sounds, the AHA! Festival will present a piano trio from a fellow local summer series, ChamberFest Cleveland. Pianist Roman Rabinovich, cellist Oliver Herbert, and violinist David Bowlin will come together to play gems of the chamber music repertoire by Brahms, Kodály, and Janáček on Friday, June 8 at 2:00 pm in Drinko Hall at Cleveland State University.
Friday’s program will feature Brahms’ effervescent Piano Trio No. 1 in B, completed in 1854 and revised throughout the composer’s life. One of the most popular trios of all time, it reflects both the vivaciousness of Brahms’ youth and the emotional depth of his maturity. We recently spoke with David Bowlin, who admitted that the work is his favorite on the program. “I love the whole B-major trio,” he said. “Everyone loves the B-major trio!”
The concert also includes a modern twist: the Kodály Duo for Violin and Cello, and Janáček’s Pohádka (“Fairytale”) for piano and cello.
