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Cleveland Chamber Music Society: Isserlis & Shih dazzle at Disciples (Feb. 27)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Rarely has a recital program packed Disciples Christian Church with as much excitement or as many people as on Tuesday, February 27. Happily, cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Connie Shih more than lived up to expectations.

The program, presented by the Cleveland Chamber Music Society, included highlights of 20th-century Russian cello repertoire — sonatas of Shostakovich, Kabalevsky, and Rachmaninoff, plus one unsung gem by the cellist’s grandfather. Mstislav Rostropovich — the late-great cellist-progenitor for a large swath of modern cello works, including the Kabalevsky — seemed to hover as inspiration and patron saint.

Isserlis, who adopts the posture and breathing habits of a singer, produced a voluptuous tone, a range of colors, and a princely demeanor from the start. Shih was the ideal collaborator, an eloquent and graceful player in her own right, with a massive technique.

[Read more…]

Isserlis and Levin: Beethoven sonatas on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society Series

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by Daniel Hathaway

IsserlisLevin031015Those who thought they knew the Beethoven cello sonatas probably had to think again after last Tuesday’s recital by Steven Isserlis and Robert Levin on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. Over the last decade, the two performers have turned these pieces inside out and explored every crevice in their musical narrative. Heard in a performance like that on Tuesday evening, the results of that joint inquiry are a revelation. [Read more…]

Cleveland Chamber Music Society: a conversation with fortepianist Robert Levin

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by Daniel Hathaway

Isserlis-LevinWhen British-born cellist Steven Isserlis and American fortepianist Robert Levin present their all-Beethoven program on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series at Plymouth Church on Tuesday evening, March 10, the audience will come as close as humanly possible to hearing the three sonatas and a variation set as Beethoven conceived them. Isserlis will play a period cello with gut strings, and Levin will perform on a Wilhelm Leschen instrument built in Vienna in 1825.

Even that impressive level of authenticity might not perfectly suit these three sonatas. “Unlike the violin sonatas, the cello sonatas really span the entirety of Beethoven’s development as a composer,” Levin said in a telephone conversation from his home in Cambridge, MA, where he recently retired from the Harvard music faculty. “There are the two opus 5 sonatas from his early period, the great A-Major sonata, op. 69, from the middle period, and the visionary sonatas of op. 102 which inaugurate the late period.” [Read more…]

Review: Oberlin Artist Recital Series: Steven Isslerlis & Jeremy Denk at Finney Chapel (February 5)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Isserlis-Denkglobetrotting British cellist Steven Isserlis recently passed through Northeast Ohio twice in eight days, performing with Kyrill Gerstein on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society Series on January 29 (our review appears here) and joining his fellow Oberlin alumnus Jeremy Denk on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series in Finney Chapel on February 5 (popping off to Chicago and New York for concerts and masterclasses in between). What’s even better than hearing Isserlis perform twice on successive Tuesdays is hearing him play two very different, superbly constructed programs with two equally fine partners.

In Cleveland, Isserlis built his program around both of Brahms’s sonatas, separated by Liszt’s own arrangements of early songs and prefaced by Bartók’s First Rhapsody and Busoni’s Finnish folk song variations. In Oberlin, he drew back the curtains on what could have been a typical chamber music concert in Paris during the Belle époque — that brief cultural golden age between the 1870s and the first World War — including two out-of-period works that fit right into the spirit of the occasion.  [Read more…]

Review: CCMS: Steven Isserlis & Kirill Gerstein at Plymouth Church (January 29)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Isserlis-GersteinChamber music recitals all too often follow the Chinese menu approach — one piece from Column A, one from Column B… Not so with the program the British cellist Steven Isserlis and Russian-born pianist Kirill Gerstein are touring with this month, which is fascinating for its choices and clever in its ordering of pieces. And this pair of musicians, who got together by accident but seem perfectly suited for one another, put it across brilliantly to the large Cleveland Chamber Music Society audience at Plymouth Church on Monday evening, an intergenerational crowd infused with young cellists, pianists and chamber musicians.

Here was the ground plan: both of Brahms’s cello sonatas, early and late, introduced by short pieces by Bartók and Busoni based on folk music and separated by two of Liszt’s late cello arrangements of his earlier songs. Liszt the revolutionary and Brahms the conservative didn’t get along at all during their lifetimes, but seemed as happily at ease with their proximity here as did Gerstein’s high-tech tablet computer (no page turner needed!) and Isserlis’s retro, gut-wound cello strings.  [Read more…]

Preview: Cleveland Chamber Music Society: a conversation with Kirill Gerstein before his recital with Steven Isserlis

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 By Mike Telin

AsGERSTEIN-Kirill the saying goes, “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” or perhaps more apropos to the world of artistic collaborations, “if you’ve got a good thing going, don’t change.” Cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Kirill Gerstein will continue a long partnership on Tuesday, January 29 at 7:30 pm in Plymouth Church, when the Cleveland Chamber Music Society presents them in recital. The program brings together music by 19th and 20th century composers including Liszt’s Romance oubliée and Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth, Busoni’s Kultaselle, variations on aFinnish folksong, Brahms’s Sonata No. 1 in E minor and Bartók’s Rhapsody, as well as Brahms’s Sonata No. 2 in F-major. [Read more…]

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