Ying Fu Archives - Cleveland Classical

Review: ChamberFest Cleveland: Let’s Dance! at Harkness Chapel (June 23)

June 24, 2013 by Special to ClevelandClassical.com

by Nicholas Jones

After opening with two intense concerts on Thursday and Friday, the musicians of ChamberFest Cleveland 2013 let their hair down on Sunday. This was my first opportunity to attend this second year of Franklin and Diana Cohen’s ambitious and highly successful venture, and it was a pleasure to be there with a hall full of Cleveland’s seasoned musical connoisseurs. In addition, thanks to the festival’s decision to give free tickets to 18-and-unders, there were a bunch of youngsters in the audience.

The first half was for strings only. The concert opened with a Boccherini quintet from Opus 11, the one with the famous Minuet that every beginning violinist learns. It is not a demanding piece, technically, but the excellent players brought to it every bit of their formidable technique anyway. Scrupulous attention to Boccherini’s dynamics made the most of his pre-Romantic expressionism, rich with ebbs and flows. [Read more…]

Review: ChamberFest Cleveland at the Transformer Station — an impressive concert venue debut

June 24, 2013 by Special to ClevelandClassical.com

by Timothy Robson

In only its second season, ChamberFest Cleveland is already a summer musical force to be reckoned with. The brainchild of Cleveland Orchestra clarinet principal Franklin Cohen and his daughter, violinist Diana Cohen, the festival is akin to such notable gatherings as Rudolf Serkin’s Marlboro or Benjamin Britten’s Aldeburgh, where the founders invite a “family” of musical guests — in this case, mostly rising artists — attuned to their own artistic goals, with a variety of programming in interesting venues.

The second concert of the 2013 season took place on Friday, June 21, at 9:00 pm (the better to enjoy the Summer Solstice sunlight?) at the Transformer Station, a new Ohio City gallery on W. 29th Street a block south of Detroit Avenue, developed by art collectors Laura and Fred Bidwell in collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony: “Autochthonous”-ly American (Jan. 18)

by Stephanie Manning

The subtitle of William Grant Still’s Symphony No. 4, “Autochthonous,” made for a little vocabulary lesson at the Akron Symphony last weekend.

Meaning “indigenous, or belonging to a particular place by birth or origin,” the composer used the word to describe a distinctly American composition — one including not only African American musical styles, but also those from a variety of American cultures. The Akron Symphony’s January 18 concert was this celebration of our country’s music writ large. [Read on…]

Cleveland Chamber Collective: Music of America VII (Jan. 12)

by Kevin McLaughlin

In a program titled Music of America VII held on Sunday, January 12 at Disciples Christian Church in Cleveland Heights, the Cleveland Chamber Collective presented a concert of attractive and varied new music, inspired by sounds from around the globe — India to Buenos Aires and Bali to Manhattan.

At two and a half hours, the program might have stood a trimming, but it would be hard to know what to cut — the works and performances by familiar and rising Cleveland professionals were uniformly splendid. Director Ty Alan Emerson served as gracious host as well as stagehand and impresario.

In Reena Esmail’s Blaze, a duo for violin (Emily Cornelius) and tabla (Dylan Moffitt) much of the intensity came from Cornelius’s relationship to Moffitt’s exact playing — we were drawn in by the quietness of Moffitt’s tabla and by Cornelius’s attention to it. The two drifted in and out of sync, with the violinist both captive to and rebelling against the insistent rhythm, even while she conjured enigmatic extremes of darkness and ecstasy.
[Read on…]

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