by Nicholas Jones
“Who’s Romantic?” may sound like the title of a reality TV show, but it’s actually the tagline for the third concert of ChamberFest’s 2015 season on Sunday, June 21 in the warm acoustics of Case Western Reserve University’s Harkness Chapel. Let’s take the question seriously: who is Romantic? ChamberFest presented Mozart’s E-flat Piano Quartet, K. 493, as its first case study. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
On Thursday, June 19, a standing-room-only crowd gathered in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music to hear clarinetist Franklin Cohen perform works by Reich, Brahms and Mozart. From start to finish Cohen proved that he is, without a doubt, one of the greatest musicians of our time. [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
In its first three seasons, ChamberFest Cleveland made itself an indispensable set of summer events that helped satisfy the seemingly insatiable appetite for chamber music in Cleveland. Organized by Cleveland Orchestra principal clarinet Franklin Cohen and Diana Cohen, concertmaster of the Calgary Philharmonic, this year’s fourth festival has expanded to ten concerts over a two-week period in late June, in six venues, some of them traditional concert halls, others, more unusual sites. [Read more…]
by Jarrett Hoffman
The first concert in season four of Franklin and Diana Cohen’s ChamberFest Cleveland begins on Wednesday, June 17 at 8:00 pm in SPACES Gallery. This year’s theme is “Crossing Borders” — borders including those of geography, culture, style, mood, and career path. We caught up with violinist/violist Yura Lee, a veteran of the festival, who will be performing on the first five concerts (June 17, 18, 19, 21, 23) as well as the tenth and final concert on July 1. See our interview with the Cohens for details about each concert.
Yura Lee is the winner of the only first prize awarded across the four categories in the 2013 ARD Music Competition in Munich. The recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, she is also currently a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center as both violinist and violist.
by Daniel Hathaway
The last Cleveland performance by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in 2010 brought two pianists and two percussionists to town for music by Shostakovich, Crumb and Bartók and shifted the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s center of gravity westward to Waetjen Auditorium at CSU. On Tuesday evening, the Societies colluded once again, but this time the agenda was all strings and the venue was Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Ghosts from the past, the present and the future were brought to life on Saturday, June 28 in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music. But these were not the ghosts made famous by Charles Dickens but rather, through a 4,000 year-old Chinese tradition, where humans, spirits of the past and future and nature communicate with one another. All of this happened during ChamberFest Cleveland’s spectacular production of Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera for String Quartet and Pipa, [Chinese lute] with Water, Stones, Paper and Metal. Commissioned by the Kronos Quartet nearly 20 years ago, ChamberFest added another dimension to the haunting work with the world premiere of inventive and stylistically sensitive choreography by Groundworks Theater artistic director David Shimotakahara. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
Three has been the magic number throughout ChamberFest 2014, and nowhere more than in its closing concert in CIM’s Mixon Hall on Sunday afternoon. The music was rich and, as usual with ChamberFest, the musicianship masterful. This very enjoyable program, titled “3X,” included three works, each featuring instruments in multiples of three.
The contribution of “three” was the well-known Beethoven Piano Trio in D, opus 70, known as the “Ghost.” Like other chamber works from Beethoven’s middle period, the “Ghost” is intense, full of contrasts that surprise and excite. Violinist Diana Cohen (ChamberFest’s artistic and executive director), cellist Gabriel Cabezas, and pianist Orion Weiss gave a performance that brought out both the strength and the subtlety of the piece. [Read more…]
By Daniel Hautzinger
Intelligent programming at its best not only uncovers interesting musical connections, but can also lend insight into the world beyond music. The repertoire for ChamberFest’s eighth concert, at Fairmount Presbyterian Church, is a fine example. The juxtaposition of three works from a 35-year period by “Three Bouncing Czechs” provided a glimpse into different historical moods, revealing the drastic psychological damage wrought by World War I.
Erwin Schulhoff was born in Prague in 1894. He was wounded in WWI while serving in the Austro-Hungarian military, and ended the war in an Italian POW camp. The first movement of his String Sextet was composed in Dresden in 1920, two years after the end of the war, the final three movements in Prague in 1924. It is an intense work, devoid of hope: the death and desolation of the war Schulhoff had just witnessed pervade every note. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hautzinger
“I would write to you only by means of music,” said Robert Schumann in a letter to his wife, the composer and pianist Clara Schumann. Theirs is a storied coupling, beginning against the wishes of Clara’s father, ending with Robert’s mental breakdown and early death, and complicated by their close relationships with Johannes Brahms. All three being heart-on-their-sleeve Romantic composers, and with Robert’s letter in mind, it makes sense to explore this “Love Triangle” through their music.
On June 26 in the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall, ChamberFest did just that in a sold-out concert, presenting a work by each of the three with intermingled readings from their letters by ChamberFest Speaker Patrick Castillo (the above quote comes from those). [Read more…]
By Mike Telin
It appears that the stars have aligned for ChamberFest Cleveland’s third season birthday party. Inspired by the number three, Artistic Directors Diana Cohen and Franklin Cohen have put together some truly creative concert programs, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by my reviewer colleagues. And, as we have come to expect from ChamberFest, the performances by the outstanding group of musicians that have assembled for these concerts are second to none. Such was the case on Sunday, June 22, at Dunham Tavern Museum Barn, when the players – keeping with the number three – scored a Hat-Trick before a capacity crowd during a concert titled “Revolving Thirds: From Darkness to Light,” that featured music by Mozart, Penderecki and Schubert. [Read more…]