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CityMusic Chamber Orchestra at Fairmount Church (Mar. 20)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The connective tissue of CityMusic Chamber Orchestra’s varied program on Thursday, March 20 — a miscellany of music by Caroline Shaw, Felix Mendelssohn, and Franz Schubert — seems to be that there was none, other than the desire to play these disparate and individually charming pieces. I attended the concert at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights and felt myself fortunate to be in the company of such fine musicians.

Annunziata Tomaro, who has guest conducted for CityMusic before, showed herself to be an engaging presence at the podium. If it were up to me — which it isn’t — Tomaro would immediately be engaged as the orchestra’s next music director. She’s that good.

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Tri-C Classical Piano Series: Roman Rabinovich (Jan. 26)

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by Peter Feher

The resplendent sound of a symphonic brass section filled the Tri-C Metro Auditorium on Sunday afternoon, Jan. 26. Never mind that there was only a single piano onstage.

Listening to Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in its original solo piano version from 1874, you can’t help but hear the orchestration that Maurice Ravel would supply for the work some 50 years later. Ravel wasn’t the first musician to arrange the suite, but the way he approached the various movements — from the stately opening Promenade to the crashing finale of “The Great Gate of Kiev” — has forever reshaped the piece.

It was fitting, then, that pianist Roman Rabinovich devoted some time to the French composer before performing Mussorgsky’s score on Sunday. On the first half of his recital for the Tri-C Classical Piano Series, Rabinovich played Ravel’s Sonatine, along with three other works that creatively connected with Pictures at an Exhibition. The result was a deeper artistic experience of Mussorgsky on the second half.

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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Night Moves” at Disciples Church (June 28)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

It was nice to finally hear one of ChamberFest Cleveland’s “Sacred and Profane” concerts (“Night Moves” on June 28) in a religious setting — Disciples Church in Cleveland Heights — since it helped the “sacred” music resonate (in more ways than one). As the home of the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s concerts, it’s a well-loved space to experience chamber music.

It turns out, though, you don’t necessarily need a church — or even voices — to convey the spirituality of the opener, Palestrina’s 1572 motet, Dominus Jesus in qua nocte.

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ChamberFest Cleveland: Lost in Paradise (June 21)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

The theme of the June 21 ChamberFest concert may have been “Paradise Lost,” but the performances and repertoire were of such high caliber, there was nowhere you would rather have found yourself.

A joyful noise opened the concert. J.S. Bach’s Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen featured soprano Sarah Shafer and trumpeter Brandon Ridenour in a sparkling account of the cantata Bach liked so much that he designated it as suitable for performance “in ogni tempo” — at any time.

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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Rite of Spring” on the summer solstice (June 20)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

On June 20, the day when the two warm seasons join, ChamberFest Cleveland put on a program that was more about springtime than summer.

Titled “Rite of Spring” — for Stravinsky’s ballet and the stem-winder of an arrangement for two pianists and two percussionists that ended the concert — tonight’s program was distinctly light in mood, including silly songs by Bernstein and P.D.Q. Bach, a couple of tearjerkers by Dvořák and Kurt Weill, and dance music by HK Gruber and Martinů.

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ChamberFest Cleveland: transporting listeners into “Other Worlds” (June 22)

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by Stephanie Manning

Hearing the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” was not on my ChamberFest Cleveland bingo card. But Brandon Ridenour had other ideas.

“Antonio Vivaldi was the Paul McCartney of his time,” the trumpet player told the audience at the festival’s June 22 concert. Accompanied by string quartet, Ridenour brought his arrangements of both the Beatles and the Baroque to the program — titled “In Other Worlds” — and made a pretty strong case for the connection between 18th-century opera and 1960s pop.

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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Fidelity and Betrayal” (June 17)

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by Mike Telin

From the beginning, ChamberFest Cleveland’s artistic directors have turned to creative themes for their programming inspiration. This season the Festival’s guiding light has taken a literary slant with Lightness of Being — after Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But don’t feel like you need to have read the novel to enjoy the concerts — Donald Rosenberg’s brilliantly written program notes will tell you what you need to know.

On Saturday, June 17 in CIM’s Mixon Hall, the program “Fidelity and Betrayal” included works from the standard repertoire, a never-performed work by a well-known composer, a piece inspired by Cuban and South American dances, and music that had never been heard before — anytime, anywhere.

 

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ChamberFest Cleveland: “Karenin’s Smile” (June 16)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

After the seriousness and communal pall brought on by the COVID pandemic, this year’s ChamberFest is asserting “Lightness of Being” as a theme, inspired by Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. In the second concert of the Festival, titled “Karenin’s Smile,” works by Mozart, Janáček, and Saint-Saëns were appropriately buoyant and cheerful, thrilling those gathered at Cleveland’s St. Wendelin Church on June 16.

Mozart wrote two of his six so-called “viola quintets” in 1787 in close succession — one in C major, one in G minor. The C major, with its more amiable and optimistic disposition, was a fitting choice on Friday evening.

Cellist Jonathan Swensen opened with a puckish rising arpeggiated triad, which first violinist David Bowlin answered with equally cheeky delight. The wide-ranging motive hinted at the movement’s dimensions (a good fifteen minutes long), and the violin answer set the bantering pattern. Bowlin made a fine leader, acquitting himself in both Allegro movements with mirthful virtuosity.

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ChamberFest 2023:
Lightness of Being

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by Mike Telin

From the beginning, ChamberFest Cleveland’s programming has centered around creative themes such as The Big Bang (2012), Crossing Borders (2015), and most recently X (2022). For season eleven, which runs from June 14 through July 1, the Festival takes on a literary slant with Lightness of Being.

During a Zoom conversation with Roman Rabinovich and Diana Cohen — two of the Festival’s three artistic directors — Rabinovich said that he has been a fan of Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being for many years. “Last summer I reread it, I think for the third time, and it really pulled me in. It’s rich in ideas that are very deep but also entertaining and timeless. And Kundera is also an amazing writer about music — you can tell he has a deep knowledge of classical music.”

Cohen added that like music, that novel explores every aspect of the human condition with its archetypes of personalities, relationships, politics, war, and culture. “It explores so many different multitudes that we decided to see what we could do with it.”

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ChamberFest Cleveland at The Madison (July 1)

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by Jacob Strauss

ChamberFest Cleveland put on a spectacular event on July 1 at The Madison. They proclaimed that it was unorthodox fitting a round into a square in the old luxury faucet plant located at 46th and Payne in Midtown.

Pianos with pins and tape on strings, a bass drum and tam tam, crotales, Almglocken, and vibes. Microphones were hooked up all around the instruments. The feed was sent to speakers around the room. Lighting designer Nicholas Houfek hung incandescent globes over the arrangement of instruments from thin black wires stretching across the beams. [Read more…]

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