Chamberfest Cleveland 2023 Program

2023 SEASON June 14 - July 1

LIGHTNESS OF BEING

Welcome to ChamberFest Cleveland!

Table of Contents 3 6

Performance shot 2022 “TIMELESS EXPLORATIONS” or three cropeed performance shots

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BODY AND SOUL | Wed June 14 Reinberger Chamber Hall, Severance Music Center KARENIN’S SMILE | Fri June 16 St. Wendelin Church

FIDELITY AND BETRAYAL | Sat June 17 Mixon Hall, Cleveland Institute of Music

DADS, DVOŘÁK, AND DONUTS | Sun June 18 14 Nature Center at Shaker Lakes BRAHMS, AND REDEMPTION | Wed June 21 15 MOZART, Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church BRAHMS, BAGATELLES, AND BREWS | Thu June 22 18 Forest City Brewery

Whether it’s music, painting, film, or poetry, art in any form is about creativity and inspiration. This season, we’ve been particularly inspired by one of our favorite 20th century works of literature, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. Whether or not you’re familiar with the book, the focal themes of love and betrayal, physicality versus spirituality, politics, oppression, human and animal nature, these are themes that are relevant and eternally relatable. Kundera’s deep knowledge and references to classical music throughout the novel make it a particularly potent ground to play and mirror and reflect these ideas through the endlessly diverse world of chamber music. The world being what it is, we chose to spotlight the concept of “lightness,” and we invite you to experience this season with a sense of ease, celebration, and pure delight.

CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS | Sat June 24 19 Kulas Hall, Cleveland Institute of Music VORTEX | Sun June 25 24 Harkness Chapel MUSS SEIN (IT MUST BE!) | Thu June 29 27 ES Mixon Hall, Cleveland Institute of Music MISUNDERSTOOD | Fri June 30 30 WORDS Dunham Tavern LIGHTNESS OF BEING | Sat July 1 33 Mixon Hall, Cleveland Institute of Music

36 ARTIST BIOS 48 STAFF & BOARD 49 IN MEMORIAM 50 THANK YOU

GIVING BIRTH TO THE IMAGINATION A Season Overview by Donald Rosenberg

What a difference a year can make. In 2022, we were still overwhelmed by

be a literal translation in musical terms, but to give birth to the imagination,”

the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, which had an impact on every phase

Rabinovich says. “It gives us a frame. That’s what we’re after — that telescope

of life. Arts organizations responded by programming with an ear toward

to look through, a certain lens of ideas, and then we can be free with it.”

symbolism, inclusivity, and hope. ChamberFest Cleveland was among the groups that reflected the times with a spectrum of enlightening repertoire if

Many of this season’s programs are titled (freely) after chapters in Kundera’s

not solemn, then often serious in expression.

novel, in which the protagonists endure the consequences of the Prague Spring of 1968, when protests supporting reform led to the invasion of

ChamberFest’s 2023 season has a markedly different thrust.

Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union. Kundera introduces a character, Tereza, who is “weighed down” by life and another, Sabina, whose “drama was a drama

“We wanted this season to be lighter and more upbeat,” says co-artistic director

not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden, but

Diana Cohen. “Last year was the fog of Covid. There were a lot of dark pieces.”

the unbearable lightness of being.”

The season’s theme began to come into focus after co-artistic director Roman

Listeners, of course, don’t attend concerts to seek anything unbearable, so the

Rabinovich reread Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The 1984

directors aptly named the ChamberFest season “Lightness of Being.” All of the

novel’s musings about the human condition and music, Rabinovich sensed,

works listeners will hear, in fact, are pleasurable, on different levels, from the

would be a big help in inspiring a compelling selection of works, which they

magisterial beauty of four pieces by Mozart — the season’s record-holder in

clearly did, without rigidly dictating the season’s content. “We didn’t want it to

number of contributions — to the cheeky vibrancy of Poulenc’s Sextet for Piano 1

GIVING BIRTH TO THE IMAGINATION Continued

and Winds, the quirky originality of Janáček’s Concertino, and the descriptive

a novelist, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. In eloquent prose about

delights packed into Saint-Saëns’s The Carnival of the Animals.

music, fate, Beethoven, and the issue of light vs. heavy, Kundera writes that “we believe that the greatness of man stems from the fact that he bears his

The season’s repertoire spans five centuries, from incidental music Henry Purcell

fate as Atlas bore the heavens on his shoulders. Beethoven’s hero is a lifter of

wrote for The Fairy Queen in 1692 to Michael Stephen Brown’s Vortex for Cello

metaphysical weights.” For all its proclamations of “Es muss sein!” (It must be!)

and Strings, which had its premiere just two months ago. Especially notable in

and a prayerful slow movement, the String Quartet No. 16 is the lightest of

a classical field still dominated by deceased white European male composers,

Beethoven’s late string quartets in its embrace of high spirits amid weightier

the season of music by 26 composers includes five living composers who are

moments. And perhaps Tereza in The Unbearable Lightness of Being speaks

women (three others are men). The programs journey across the stylistic map,

for many of us when Kundera notes that “Beethoven became her image of the

with works from 11 countries and numerous musical eras.

world on the other side, the world she yearned for.”

Some of the composers may not yet be familiar to ChamberFest listeners,

We all yearn for a world in which wonders distract us, however briefly, from

but that’s partly the point of their presence. After hearing Carl Frühling’s

the mundane and troubling aspects of life. There can be no doubt that

Clarinet Trio, Sergey Taneyev’s Piano Quintet in G minor, and pieces by living

ChamberFest continues to provide marvels in this respect. The mix of familiar

composers Lera Auerbach, Michael Stephen Brown, Paquito D’Rivera, Selena

and unfamiliar, the variety of compositional approaches and instrumentation

Fisher, Helmut Lachenmann, Caroline Shaw, Gabriella Smith, and Judith

(even with that Sibelian soprano offstage), and the openness to adventure

Weir, audience members might be inclined to try out other pieces by these

make the festival a special extravaganza. More evidence on this last point:

exceptional creative voices.

The program that includes the Sibelius melodrama will find ChamberFest musicians further entering the unknown when clarinetist Ismail Lumanovski

Composers we never tire of hearing aren’t neglected, as they never should

and percussionist Jamey Haddad join colleagues for a group improvisation.

be. Along with Mozart, the beloved include Schubert (Fantasie in F minor for piano four hands), Brahms (String Sextet No. 1), Dvořák (Piano Quartet No. 2),

All of the bursts of creative and performance imagination the festival is offering

and Mendelssohn (Piano Sextet in D major). Sibelius, who wrote extensively

this season speak to our abiding desire to bask in the power that music — more

for chamber ensembles, is also here with an alluring work that has yet to

than any of the other arts — holds on us. We certainly can identify with Franz,

be published: Nights of Jealousy, for the unusual combination of narrator,

the professor in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, for whom “music was

soprano (in the distance), violin, cello, and piano.

the art that comes closest to Dionysian beauty in the sense of intoxication,” writes Kundera. “He considered music a liberating force: it liberated him from

And then there’s Beethoven, whose seminal string quartets alone are reason

loneliness, introversion, the dust of the library; it opened the door of his body

enough for this composer to be an essential participant in any worthwhile

and allowed his soul to step out into the world to make friends.”

chamber music festival. The one ChamberFest entry this season is the String Quartet No. 16, Beethoven’s last, which happens to have a direct connection to Kundera, who studied musicology and composition before he became 2

Here’s to intoxication, liberation, and friendship, ChamberFest-style. © Donald Rosenberg

BODY AND SOUL PRELUDE TALK by Steve Pinkerton at 6:30pm

David Bowlin, violin Diana Cohen, violin Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola Jonathan Swensen, cello Derek Zadinsky, bass Roman Rabinovich, harpsichord Jamey Haddad, percussion

Incidental Music from “The Fairy Queen,” Z. 629 Prelude Hornpipe Air Rondeau Dance for the Fairies Dance for the Green Men Monkey’s Dance Chaconne: Dance for a Chinese Man and Woman

CARL FRÜHLING

Clarinet Trio, Op. 40

Franklin Cohen, clarinet Jonathan Swensen, cello Amy Yang, piano

Mäßig schnell Anmutig bewegt Andante Allegro Vivace

-intermissionANTONÍN DVOŘÁK Jacques Forestier, violin Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola Sterling Elliott, cello Roman Rabinovich, piano

Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat major, Op. 87 Allegro con fuoco Lento Allegro moderato, grazioso Finale. Allegro ma non troppo

Opening night POSTLUDE TOAST with festival artists

14 j u n e

7:30pm

REINBERGER CHAMBER HALL, SEVERANCE MUSIC CENTER

HENRY PURCELL

wednesday

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BODY AND SOUL From the religious to the romantic, the phrase “body and soul” has long held

The score’s nearly 60 selections include dances, arias, duets, choruses, and

a fount of implications. The eponymous 1930 song, with music by Johnny

instrumental numbers played by winds, trumpets, timpani, strings, and

Green and lyrics by Edward Heyman, Robert Sour, and Frank Eyton, is a

harpsichord. The music has been performed in countless versions for period

quintessential reflection of the aching challenges of love — one of the reasons

and modern instruments alike. The sprightly and majestic excerpts on this

it has been recorded by so many popular and jazz artists. Romantic ordeals

ChamberFest program are drawn from the first, third, and fifth acts, whetting

haunt the characters in Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of

the appetite for more Purcellian treasures.

Being, including Tereza, who was “born of a situation which brutally reveals the irreconcilable duality of body and soul, that fundamental human experience.”

If a 17th-century British composer has been feted for centuries, the Austrian composer Carl Frühling remains known largely to pianists and champions of

The works on the first program of this year’s ChamberFest Cleveland present

his orchestral, chamber, choral, and pieces for voice and piano. Frühling (1868-

three distinctive takes on human experience in the pure language of music.

1937) was most admired as a teacher and collaborative pianist who teamed

While there certainly are links between the plot of The Fairy Queen and the

in recital with such eminent violinists as Bronisław Huberman and Pablo de

short pieces Henry Purcell lavished on this semi-opera, these miniatures have

Sarasate. He studied in Vienna during the late 1880s, which may explain his

no need to mimic the action — just as ChamberFest’s programs don’t simulate

music’s resemblance to that of an epic figure of the period and the city —

specific content in Kundera’s book — to work their magic. Nor do they need

Johannes Brahms. Frühling’s art is in full blossom — appropriate: his surname

words, which is also true of both Carl Frühling’s Trio for Clarinet, Cello, and

means “spring” — in the so-called Clarinet Trio, Op. 40, which was published

Piano and Dvořák’s Quartet No. 2 for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello, pieces that

in 1925 but likely was composed several decades earlier.

embrace regional influences and share a tendency to wear their hearts (souls?) on their respective Austrian and Czech sleeves.

Whatever its provenance, the work is rich and affecting, with sweeping melodic content and buoyant conversations among clarinet, cello, and piano. The

Henry Purcell (1659-1695) was one of the great Baroque composers who

opening movement is the most Brahmsian in its warm interplay and wealth

embraced matters of the heart in his stage works as he rose to the pinnacle of

of contrapuntal writing. In the playful second movement, Frühling employs

his profession during his abbreviated life (a century later, Mozart would die at

the popular dance forms of the waltz and Ländler to keep the instruments

almost the same age). He dominated the field of British composers until the

in swirling and tender motion. The pensive slow movement finds musical

20th century. Among Purcell’s many theatrical pieces was an adaptation of

lines transformed through subtle rhythmic and chromatic means, with hints

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that premiered in 1692 as The Fairy

of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde suggesting a source of motivation. Ebullient

Queen. None of the Bard’s text was used in what was deemed “a Restoration

spirits dominate the finale, whose brief clouds are set aside by giddy surges

spectacular,” but the story inspired Purcell to create more than two hours of

of activity, the instruments often savoring the shared material. It is clear from

music, much of it performed during the masques for the principal characters,

this trio that more of Frühling’s music deserves to emerge from the shadows.

and so voluminous and varied that it can hardly be considered “incidental.”

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(Soon after the earliest performances, the score disappeared, only to resurface

By contrast, Antonín Dvořák needs no introduction, since he is a frequent and

in the early 20th century.)

cherished presence in concert halls and opera houses. But there is another

good reason for including him on this program. He shares a homeland with

transformations, and are soon joined by the piano. New ideas pop up or evolve

Kundera, who mentions him in The Unbearable Lightness of Being when the

from previous incarnations of the first subject as they move through major

painter Sabina ponders the nature of identity and wonders what binds Czechs

and minor keys and a spectrum of moods. It’s a euphoric ride typical of this

together. Possibly the landscape, she muses. “Or the culture? But what was

most open-hearted of composers.

that? Music? Dvořák and Janáček? Yes. But what if a Czech had no feeling for music? Then the essence of being Czech vanished into thin air.”

The cello announces the main theme in the touching slow movement. The piano answers in kind, and the other strings add subtle touches as the original

Those of us who love music can hardly fathom how anyone of any nationality

material is expanded into dramatic and tranquil regions. “Grazioso” is Dvořák’s

can’t have a feeling for it, and certainly where Dvořák is concerned. Like so

indication at the start of the third movement, a scherzo that couldn’t be more

many of his works, the Piano Quartet No. 2, Op. 87, is generous in emotion

genial, even when it changes character midway to kick up its local heels with

and fertile in compositional imagination. Dvořák wrote it in the summer of

all sorts of dotted rhythms and arpeggiated piano flourishes. The invigorating

1889, just before he composed the sunny Symphony No. 8, Op. 88. Both

finale is yet another example of Dvořák’s wizardly skill at seamlessly forging

scores are characteristic of Dvořák, a master melodist and virtuoso of motivic

ideas into fresh guises. Everyone is on board to begin the movement, which

development — the ability to take small kernels of material and massage them

abounds in folksy bravura and a kind of Dvořákian lyricism that this composer

into different shapes and atmospheres.

mustered to beguiling effect.

This gift is immediately apparent in the opening bars of Op. 87 as the

© Donald Rosenberg

strings announce the robust first subject, which will undergo numerous 5

KARENIN’S SMILE WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

f r i d a y

16 ST. WENDELIN CHURCH

j u n e

6

7:30pm

David Bowlin, violin Jacques Forestier, violin Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola Kirsten Docter, viola Jonathan Swensen, cello LEOŠ JANÁČEK Roman Rabinovich, piano solo Franklin Cohen, clarinet Andrew Brady, bassoon Nelson Ricardo Yovera Perez, horn Diana Cohen, violin Jacques Forestier, violin Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola

String Quintet No. 3 in C major, K. 515 Allegro Andante Menuetto. Allegretto Allegro

Concertino Moderato Più mosso Con moto Allegro

-intermissionCAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS Diana Cohen, violin Sterling Elliott, cello Roman Rabinovich, piano

Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 92 Allegro non troppo Allegretto Andante con moto Gracioso Allegro

KARENIN’S SMILE There is a moment in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being when the couple Tomas and Tereza attempt to distract their dying dog, Karenin, from his discomfort. (Named after the husband in Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina, the pet nevertheless is female.) They play a favorite game involving rolls, from a nearby bakery, that seem to provide temporary relief, if not for the dog, then for Tomas and Tereza. “Standing there watching him,” writes Kundera, “they thought once more that he was smiling and that as long as he kept smiling he had a motive to keep living despite his death sentence.”

Smiling or otherwise, animals make an enchanting contribution to this program in Leoš Janáček’s Concertino, as they will to an even greater extent later in the festival in Camille Saint-Saëns’ The Carnival of the Animals. It isn’t necessary, of course, for creatures great and small to be on the premises for the works at this concert to prompt smiles. Mozart is at his fetching best in the String Quintet No. 3 in C major, K. 515, while Saint-Saëns goes to extremes of emotion in his Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 92, that can’t fail to keep ears riveted.

But back to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was a very busy writer of masterpieces in 1787. Along with the C major quintet this year, he composed the String Quintet No. 4 in G minor, Ein musikalischer Spaß (A Musical Joke), Eine kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music, for two violins, viola, cello, bass), and the opera Don Giovanni. He scored all six of the string quintets he wrote from 1773 to 1791 for string quartet and an additional viola, causing these works to be referred to, somewhat confusingly, as “viola quintets.” All of the pieces are in different keys. The String Quintet No. 3 in C major has the distinction of being the work that inspired another Austrian composer, Schubert, to write his sublime quintet in the same key, but with a second cello joining a string quartet. (His “Trout” Quintet has an even more unusual instrumentation: piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass.) The presence of the second viola in Mozart’s quintets, it must be said, adds richness to the overall textures, and it provides another voice in the profusion of exchanges throughout the four movements.

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The cello and first violin introduce the principal material at the start of the

The composer’s individual style, blending elements of Moravian speech and

remarkable first movement — the former outlining the key of C major and

folk music, pervades the Concertino’s quirky activity. The piano begins the

the latter setting up the lyrical side of the narrative. They reverse places, in C

opening movement with a galumphing theme that is answered with three

minor, before all of the instruments share and pass phrases to one another. The

morose notes from the horn — a theme Janáček said depicts a “grumpy

development section continues the cello-first violin argument while thickening

hedgehog.” Egged on by the piano, the mammal moves higher and becomes

the conversation and finally entering into a sunny recapitulation, with violins

more energetic. But the piano dominates, and all the poor hedgehog can do

and then violas moving in genial thirds leading to a serene conclusion. The

is return to the land of stupor. A trilling and pecking E-flat clarinet portrays a

Menuetto that follows finds instruments paired in novel fashion and leads to a

“fidgety squirrel” in the second movement, with the piano brandishing chords

trio section of mysterious, lilting elegance.

and swirling figures that suggest a thwarted attempt to find common ground with the rodent. The seven instruments finally join forces in the shimmering

Mozart the master dramatist comes to the fore in the slow movement, one

third movement, full of “night owls and other night animals.” A hearty piano

of his peerless instrumental operatic scenes, in which first violin and first

cadenza leads to a brilliant close. Janáček described the fourth movement as “a

viola engage in heartfelt discussion. It is not far in mood, and transcendence,

scene from a fairy-tale, where everybody is arguing.” It is part temperamental

to the reconciliation scene at the end of The Marriage of Figaro, composed

Czech dance and part piano display piece that winds up with ensemble glee.

the previous year, with violin as Countess Almaviva and viola as her contrite husband. Everyone is in a mirthful frame of mind in the finale, especially the

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) as both virtuoso pianist and composer can be

first violin, which skitters about and sings merrily along with friends. Mozart

discerned in the enormous Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor that ends this program.

modifies and disperses the opening theme in all sorts of newfangled ways — at

Cast in five movements, the 1892 work is an eruption of Gallic Romanticism,

once impish and tender, as only he can be.

with the piano exploring every nook of the keyboard while trading fervent and nimble ideas with violin and cello. The first movement abounds in moody

Our first encounters with animals at ChamberFest this season happen in Leoš

interplay, while the second is charming and suspenseful as set in patterns of

Janáček’s Concertino, which the Czech composer initially envisioned as a

five. Saint-Saëns marks the central slow movement “appassionato,” which is

piano concerto but turned into a chamber work — or small concerto, as the title

conveyed in the long poetic lines the three instruments unfold and intertwine.

indicates — featuring piano, violin, viola, clarinet, horn, and bassoon. Janáček

The players waltz joyfully in the fourth movement, a striking contrast to the

(1854-1928) had already shown his affection for beasts in his 1924 opera The

sweeping urgency of the finale. Fugal elements add interest and intrigue as the

Cunning Little Vixen, which explores the cycle of life with a cast including

music progresses through transformations of the principal material and into a

foxes, hens, and all sorts of other creatures. When he came up with the idea

heavenly realm leading to a dynamic conclusion.

of the Concertino for pianist Jan Heřman, he initially gave no indication that the four movements had any programmatic implications. Only in 1927, a year after the work’s premiere, did Janáček provide specifics about the figures that inhabit this captivating score.

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© Donald Rosenberg

This concert is dedicated to the memory of Rick Goddard, long-time ChamberFest Cleveland Board Member and past Board Chair, who generously and selflessly gave his love and time to the entire ChamberFest community.

PAQUITO D’RIVERA Franklin Cohen, clarinet Amy Yang, piano FRANZ WAXMAN

Three Pieces for Clarinet and Piano Contradanza Habanera Vals Venezolano Carmen Fantasie

Jacques Forestier, violin Amy Yang, piano JEAN SIBELIUS

Svartsjukans Nätter (Nights of Jealousy), JS 125

Jonathan Swensen, narrator Ashlee Foreman, soprano David Bowlin, violin Sterling Elliott, cello Amy Yang, piano

saturday

17 j u n e

7:30pm

MIXON HALL, CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF MUSIC

FIDELITY AND BETRAYAL

-intermissionFRANZ SCHUBERT

Fantasie in F minor, D. 940

Amy Yang, piano Roman Rabinovich, piano

Allegro molto moderato Largo Scherzo. Allegro vivace Final. Tempo primo

LUMANOVSKI & HADDAD

Improvisation

Ismail Lumanovski, clarinet Jamey Haddad, percussion Franklin Cohen, clarinet Roman Rabinovich, piano

POSTLUDE SOCIAL with festival artists compliments of Mitchell’s Ice Cream

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FIDELITY AND BETRAYAL The character of Sabina in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Venezolano,” or Venezuelan waltz, complete with foot stomps by both players.

is a direct reflection of the title. She lives life as if she knows it is short and to be relished in the moment. The result is a tendency to see relationships

The German-born Franz Waxman (1906-1967) wrote a fair amount of concert

as temporary and disposable. As Kundera writes of Sabina, “Betrayal means

music, including two oratorios, but he is best known for his Hollywood scores

breaking ranks and going off into the unknown.”

for such legendary films as Sunset Boulevard, Rebecca, A Place in the Sun, and The Bride of Frankenstein. He composed the Carmen Fantasie — not to

Whether any of the composers on this program betrayed anyone is not our

be confused with Pablo de Sarasate’s 1882 Carmen Fantasy — for the 1946

concern. They certainly went off into the unknown, writing music of arresting

movie Humoresque as a vehicle for the protagonist, violinist Paul Boray, who

originality and depth. Two of the works may be new to listeners — Paquito

is portrayed by actor John Garfield. All of the violin sequences in the film —

D’Rivera’s Three Pieces for Clarinet and Piano and Jean Sibelius’s Nights of

including excerpts from the Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Tchaikovsky concertos

Jealousy — while the improvisation featuring clarinetist Ismail Lumanovski

— show Garfield going through the masterly motions with inestimable help

and percussionist Jamey Haddad is sure to head into uncharted territory. The

from the hands and artistry of Isaac Stern, who took over from the originally

remaining two fantasies are familiar in one way or another. Carmen, who

scheduled Jascha Heifetz. Waxman’s fantasia, which he expanded for concert

betrays Don José in Bizet’s opera and meets her doom, is a figure of endless

purposes at Heifetz’s request, employs themes associated with the title

fascination, as can be heard in Franz Waxman’s Carmen Fantasie for violin and

character in Bizet’s opera that exploit the solo instrument’s expressive and

piano. In the last year of his life, Schubert composed a number of his greatest

pyrotechnical possibilities. It has long been a popular showpiece for intrepid

masterpieces, among them the Fantasie in F minor for piano four hands, a glorious immersion into darkness and lightness.

Paquito D’Rivera (born 1948) was a virtuoso saxophonist and clarinetist before adding composer to his list of accomplishments. For his contribution to the worlds of jazz, Latin, and classical music, he has won numerous Grammy Awards and received a 2005 National Medal of Arts. The Cuban-American composer wrote Three Pieces for Clarinet and Piano in the early 1990s, turning to music of his homeland and South America to generate these vibrant miniatures. The three movements take the instruments through dance forms based on old models. “Contradanza” hails from a country dance in 18th-century England that here sizzles with irresistible abandon, including foot stomps toward the end. The second movement, “Habanera,” is the first of two on this program. Originally a slow Cuban dance, it was adopted by Bizet for Carmen’s famously seductive aria, which makes a prominent appearance in the Waxman fantasia. D’Rivera heads further south to summon a swirling whirlwind in “Vals 10

violinists, in both Waxman’s duo and orchestral versions.

The seating of two pianists at one keyboard would appear to limit their ability to explore a world of expressive opportunities, but this couldn’t be further from

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) is celebrated chiefly for his seven symphonies, tone

the truth as conjured by Schubert. He wrote the work in early 1828 — he would

poems, Violin Concerto, Finlandia, incidental music to plays, and other works

die at the end of the year at age 31 — and played the premiere with Eduard von

featuring orchestra, but he also wrote a good deal of chamber music. This

Bauernfeld in May. It is performed often and has been recorded by dozens of

repertoire includes songs and instrumental pieces, among them an amalgam

illustrious piano teams. In 1979, the choreographer Heinz Poll used the score to

of the two in the extraordinary Svartsjukans nätter (Nights of Jealousy) for

keen effect in his Fantasy in F minor for Ohio Ballet.

violin, cello, piano, soprano, and narrator. ChamberFest received permission from the Sibelius family to perform the unpublished 1893 score. The setting

The Fantasie in F minor is cast in four movements, which proceed without

of a poem by the Finnish poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg — to be recited here in

pause, maintaining suspense throughout its evolution of moods and pianistic

English — finds the narrator musing of his lost love, whom he encounters in a

reciprocity. The opening movement’s dark theme gives way to the same music

dream while walking in nature. The instruments open the piece with glistening

in F major before bursting into an angry section that will haunt the work. More

gestures that hint at the ardor soon to be explored. As the narrator recalls his

vehemence arrives in the Largo, whose dotted and triple rhythms lead to a brief

aching romance, a woman’s voice is heard in the distance — his former lover,

episode of Schubertian otherworldliness. The following Scherzo is a tripping

Minna, who has become “another’s.”

waltz with clouds on the horizon that gradually take the pianists back to the first movement’s principal theme. But Schubert doesn’t merely repeat what

The work precedes all of Sibelius’s symphonies, dating from the period when

he’s stated: He plunges the players into a massive fugue that builds in intensity,

he was beginning to establish himself as Finland’s foremost composer with

with lines echoed and transformed as they pass back and forth in agitated

such tone poems as Kullervo, Four Legends from the Kalevala, and En saga. His

layers. Then a bar of silence intervenes before the opening movement’s two

series of melodramas range from the dramatic The Wood Nymph and Snöfrid

themes reappear and move tragically to the final bars, which contain what

to the intimate Svartsjukans nätter, written for a concert paying tribute to poet

the musicologist Maurice Brown deems “the most remarkable cadence in the

Runeberg (1804–1877). It is such an outpouring of passion and tenderness that

whole of Schubert’s work.”

one can only wonder why it has never been published. But Sibelius apparently recognized the value of what he had wrought: He drew several of its themes

There likely will be more than a few remarkable cadences — and other musical

for the last two of his six impromptus for piano, which he also scored for string

surprises — when clarinetist Ismail Lumanovski and percussionist Jamey

orchestra. The piano version has been championed by many major artists,

Haddad embark on an improvisation with intrepid ChamberFest allies at

including Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes.

concert’s end. Will these musicians be true to the concert’s title, choosing fidelity to certain themes and progressions or playfully betraying one another

[Text for Nights of Jealousy can be found on the next page.]

Music can be monumental without requiring monumental forces, as illustrated

en route? Stay tuned. © Donald Rosenberg

to supreme effect in Franz Schubert’s Fantasie in F minor for piano four hands.

11

Nights of Jealousy text by Johan Ludvig Runeberg

O dream, O heavenly, sweet, delightful dream! Of you shall I recount the earth’s barren fells, until their dissonant echo forgets the cry of pain they heard from me, and become accustomed to mutter merely A glad greeting to the astonished wanderer.

So quieten, forests, your gentle sighing!

And cease, brooks, your cheerful course for an instant!

And cliffs, raise your greying brows, and all the spirits of the earth: listen – listen!

It was an evening, a Nordic summer evening, an evening when the sun did not retire within the earth’s embrace, but merely kissed her and then hastened back to the day’s delights; it was such an evening – the wide west lay and slumbered in a sea of gold and saffron, and over all the green hills in the east, like rose gardens in the blue stillness, the tattered, purple-tinged clouds gathered.

In dew and voluptuousness, nature lay still, and I – I wandered amid her wonders, silently, like nature herself. I knew no sorrow, but unconsciously within my heart dwelt a silent pain, like the hunter’s dart that in a wounded eagle’s side remains, yet when he later sits at the cliff edge, and mingles his blood with the sun’s rays, then he feels the torment within his breast but knows not from where it comes, nor when it shall cease; so with the melancholy I could not grasp, a riddle to myself, I walked among the field’s beauties, downcast and low.

12

When suddenly, from afar, a gentle sound, as if from lute strings lightly struck, dying in unison, reached my ears.

I listened – another note, and again a sigh from the spirits within the lute, then later calm, a tranquility reigned, like the quiet of a dusky sound, when the last wave passes across the shoals and the rippling water shines like a mirror.

Then at once my pain had gone, and like a flower I felt at ease, just as the earth’s springs dry out, and the heavens rinse my tears, yet unconscious, like a flower, was my joy.

Carefree longing drew me hence to her, from whose embrace the sound had come, to her I hastened, as though borne on wings, and listened, and then listened more.

Then I came into an arbour, where each trunk raised verdant shields against the light, and not a breath of evening breeze disturbed the twilight sanctuary.

No trace of footprints touched the ground, nor sign of working human hands, which seek to raise artistic crowns upon the ruined beauty of the land.

Every plant within the garden bloomed, each tree in sumer leaf arrayed; a flock of birds, air’s feathered children, sat, among the branches with their dreams, as their singing slumbered on their tongues.

I stopped, and there no longer knew, of suffering, or of naught else; my soul was like a ship at sea, stranded without stream or current, and no wind to fill its sails.

But then the heavenly sound came again, and at that instant every spring proclaimed a rich and solemn harmony, which filled melodically with a woman’s voice.

All that was silent in a trance sprang up, each bird then opened up its beak to sing, each leaf within the arbour shook, from every petal rained a gentle dew, and I, I heard the voice so close and near, and knew it then – for it was Minna’s voice.

If you had stood, wrapped in a haze upon a cliff, embraced by spring, and sensed the fragrant roses, even though their crimson hearts you had not seen, and in the warmth you bathed your limbs, although its source was out of sight, and you saw the fleeting storm dispel the hanging mist, as hills and valleys from the formlessness emerged, and if you saw with clarity the friends, who had your sensual joy supplied; then you knew what I became, at the moment Minna’s voice arose, and what I’d suffered, for so long, had sweetly taken, thought so true, within my soul such radiance shone, and love passed like the sun above.

Banished from my heart’s enchanted Eden was a single thought alone, that: Minna, Minna was another’s.

Yet my happiness was all I felt, for us together; nothing more could dim my gladness as I ran to close the distance still between us and fall down before her feet.

But she, without surprise or fear, then looked at me with such a caring smile, as though I had been with her for an age; just like an angel to a child she seemed, as when the mother lays the cradle softly and in the dream the familiar sight appears.

But then the lute was heard no more.

No broken word nor passing sigh was offered; but on the little bridge, and through the gaze between the heavens of our hearts, love, in all its myriad forms, was passed and pleasures and abodes exchanged.

Inseparable was our embrace, our lips could never be apart, and in her arms I lay and sensed the swelling of her breast, and drank the moisture from her cheeks and fainted from the ecstasy – and woke.

Translation © Daniel M. Grimley

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NATURE CENTER AT SHAKER LAKES

s u n d a y

18

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

DADS, DVOŘÁK, AND DONUTS A Father’s Day event in partnership with the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes.

j u n e

Celebrate Father’s Day with a magical outing, observing musicians in their natural habitat! Mini-concerts

11am-1pm

along for all the performances or drop in and out. Performances feature a wide variety of music, from The

take place along a trail leading from the Pavilion to the Gazebo to the Marsh Overlook — you can follow Fairy Queen to Latin jazz and everything in between. Hands-on activities and sweet treats contribute to the al fresco adventure.

Franklin Cohen, clarinet Andrew Brady, bassoon Nelson Ricardo Yovera Perez, horn David Bowlin, violin Diana Cohen, violin Jacques Forestier, violin

A fun-filled event for all ages, featuring ChamberFest Cleveland performances, hands-on music

Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola

exploration, youth writing activities from Lake Erie Ink, and more. Food and beverages are available for

Sterling Elliott, cello

sale from EDWINS Leadership Institute & Restaurant.

Jonathan Swensen, cello Roman Rabinovich, piano Amy Yang, piano 14

There is limited on-site parking at the Nature Center. Additional parking is available on the surrounding streets. Visit the NCSL website for more information: shakerlakes.org.

MOZART, BRAHMS, AND REDEMPTION JUDITH WEIR Zlatomir Fung, cello

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

No. 2: No Justice No. 3: The Wind Blow East No. 4: The Keys To The Prison Quintet in E-flat major for Piano and Winds, K. 452 Largo – Allegro moderato Larghetto Allegretto

-intermissionJOHANNES BRAHMS Itamar Zorman, violin Diana Cohen, violin Maiya Papach, viola Samuel Rosenthal, viola Zlatomir Fung, cello Nicholas Canellakis, cello

String Sextet No.1 in B-flat major, Op. 18 Allegro ma non troppo Andante ma moderato Scherzo. Allegro molto Rondo. Poco allegretto e grazioso

wednesday

21 j u n e POSTLUDE DONOR RECEPTION with festival artists

7:30pm

CULTURAL ARTS CENTER AT DISCIPLES CHURCH

Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida, oboe Franklin Cohen, clarinet William Caballero, horn Andrew Brady, bassoon Roman Rabinovich, piano

Unlocked

15

MOZART, BRAHMS, AND REDEMPTION Metaphors often are helpful guides to meaning and insight, but they can be

passages amid lyricism, and chords conjure a chorus from the Bahamas in

stretched too far. Or can they? The Mozart and Brahms works on this program

“The Wind Blow East” (No. 3). In “The Keys To The Prison” (No. 4), skittish high

have no need for extra-musical analysis; their narratives allow each of us to

statements, folksy gestures, and plaintive harmonics evoke a boy in prison

enter a world of feelings that can never be adequately expressed in words.

singing to his skeptical mother about possessing the keys that will enable him

Judith Weir’s work for solo cello, which ChamberFest Cleveland’s Roman

to escape.

Rabinovich relates to “the theme of political oppression in Czechoslovakia” as portrayed in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, is another

Speaking of skeptical, one can only wonder what Leopold Mozart must have

matter. These songs are pleas for redemption, to be set free, to be treated

thought when his son wrote to him in March 1784 about his newest work, the

fairly and humanely. What all of the pieces on this program share is a spirit of

Quintet in E-flat major for Piano and Winds, K. 452: “I myself consider it to

generosity cast in music of striking eloquence.

be the best thing I have written in my life.” Big words. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had already composed 37 symphonies, 16 piano concertos, 16 string

British composer Judith Weir (born 1954) is the first woman, since the post

quartets, and a number of operas, including Idomeneo and The Abduction

was created in the 17th century, to serve as Master of the King’s Music, or,

from the Seraglio. Then again, who are we to argue with Mozart, who could

as she was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II in 2014, Master of the Queen’s

be forgiven for changing his mind in coming years upon creating such works

Music. Her duties include writing music for royal events, among them the

as The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, the late symphonies, and so much

Queen’s state funeral in September 2022. Weir has written numerous operas

more? (But not enough, given his death in 1791 at the age of 35.)

and musical-theater works, as well as pieces in other genres. She composed Unlocked in 1999 for cellist Ulrich Heinen. She has said that the collection

The piano-winds quintet is a sterling score in which the instruments are

of five movements arose “out of my interest in the magnificent collection

equals — no easy feat, given the virtuoso piano part. But the keyboard, while

of American folk songs in the Library of Congress, Washington, collected by

occasionally a bit of a show-off (as was its original interpreter, Mozart), is mostly

John and Alan Lomax in the 1930s. A significant proportion of the songs were

collegial in the three contrasting movements. Once the ensemble establishes

collected from prisoners — mostly Black prisoners in Southern jails. The piece

the key of E-flat in the first-movement introduction and the piano plays the

is made up of freely composed cello ‘fantasias’ inspired by five of these songs.”

opening theme, the winds have their expressive say as they all wend their way to the main body. What follows is glistening and playful repartee, with Mozart

16

The soloist on this program, Zlatomir Fung, who in 2019 became the first

taking the instruments briefly away from the home key before deftly thickening

American in four decades to win first prize in the Tchaikovsky International

the plot and summoning acrobatic flourishes from piano and horn to bring the

Cello Competition in Moscow, discusses Unlocked in a YouTube video. The

activity to a close. The winds are in a serene mood in the Larghetto, passing

songs have a common thread, he says, “which I think is what makes these

tender phrases to one another while the piano provides subtle commentary. A

pieces relevant today, and that thread is the promise of hope for a better future.”

few stern moments aside, the aura is lyrical and empathetic, as if the Countess

Fung will play three of the songs. “No Justice” (No. 2) is a set of variations

in Figaro — not to be born for two years — is sharing her bittersweet plight.

on a prison song from Georgia that uses such techniques as strumming, foot

The piano announces the main theme in the last movement, with the winds

stomps, and tapping to reflect the urgency of the text. Yearning lines, pizzicato

in perkiest form as they add their buoyant two cents. They shift into minor

ever so briefly, chatter away, and arrive at a group cadenza during which they imitate one another and expound on the principal material. And before you realize it, “the best thing” Mozart had written to that point has taken its final bow.

By the time he composed his String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 18, in 1860, Johannes Brahms had already written some of his most indelible music, including the two serenades, the Piano Concerto No. 1, and a bounty of piano works, among them the three piano sonatas (but none of the four symphonies). Surely, his first string sextet is one of his “best things” — until that time or later. Aside from Luigi Boccherini, who wrote nine string sextets, Brahms was an early champion of the combination of two violins, two violas, and two cellos. His two string sextets (the second came four years after the first) are beloved for all of the reasons we hold Brahms so dear: the warmth, the contrapuntal interest, the rhythmic intrigue.

The opening movement of Op. 18 finds Brahms at his most rapturous and fertile. In the first two pages alone, the exquisite theme is passed from two cellos and first viola to violins, with the second viola soon arriving as the music expands and reaches an initial euphoric height. The second theme is marked “dolce” (sweet), the lyricism punctuated by pizzicato input from second viola and second cello. And then Brahms becomes even more poetic,

by episodes marked “molto espressivo” and “dolce.” The atmosphere shifts to

as if this is possible, first with an ardent first-cello statement amid undulating

country-dance mode in the Scherzo, which is layered and rhythmically sly,

figures and then moving higher into the first violin and first viola in octaves.

with no pause into an energetic trio section and later an even sprightlier coda.

The development section is made of fragments from the exposition shared

Like the first movement, the Rondo finale begins with the first cello stating

throughout the ensemble. The mood darkens and brightens, with the various

the theme. Brahms develops and varies material with magisterial command

themes caressed and transformed before the ensemble tiptoes on light

through contrasts of texture and evolution of lines. A central section full of

pizzicato feet and ends with a hearty bowed flourish.

bold echoes leads back to the primary theme and charming fluctuations in character as the six instruments race exuberantly to the finish line.

In the second movement, the first viola states the stern theme, which is answered by the first violin and undergoes a series of elaborate variations. One

© Donald Rosenberg

of them features stormy figures passed among the instruments and is followed 17

FOREST CITY BREWERY

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC — AGES 18+

BRAHMS, BAGATELLES, AND BREWS thursday

22 j u n e

7:30pm

A festival celebration and performance in the Waldorf Beer Hall at Forest City Brewery

“Tap” into a fun and fascinating (and free!) flight of musical selections at this popular west side brewery.

Can we interest you in a few neo-Dadaist miniatures? A splash of Balkan music, perhaps? Have you tried the solo horn with a side of electronics? Be sure to save room for a slice of this truly delicious string sextet

by Brahms. Just pure fun for musicians and audience alike, no reservations required...but ID is — 18 and over only.

Denis Savelyev, flute Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida, oboe Ben Chen, clarinet Andrew Brady, bassoon William Caballero, horn Diana Cohen, violin Itamar Zorman, violin Maiya Papach, viola Samuel Rosenthal, viola Nicholas Canellakis, cello Zlatomir Fung, cello 18

Celebrate ChamberFest 2023 with a festive and informal musical gathering. The evening features a selection of solo works and chamber pieces performed by festival artists. Food and beverages are available for sale at the brewery.

The building entrance is located on Freeman Avenue. There is free street parking around the brewery.

Additional parking is available in the parking lot at St. Wendelin’s Parish. Visit the Forest City Brewery website for more information: forestcitybrewery.com.

PRELUDE TALK by Owen Cantor at 6:30pm GYÖRGY LIGETI Denis Savelyev, flute & piccolo Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida, oboe Ben Chen, clarinet William Caballero, horn Andrew Brady, bassoon

SALINA FISHER

Six Bagatelles Allegro con spirito Rubato. Lamentoso Allegro grazioso Presto ruvido Adagio. Mesto Molto vivace. Capriccioso Kintsugi for Piano Trio

Diana Cohen, violin Nicholas Canellakis, cello Roman Rabinovich, piano LUKAS FOSS

Capriccio for Cello and Piano

Zlatomir Fung, cello Orion Weiss, piano -intermissionCAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS Jeremy Johnson, narrator Denis Savelyev, flute & piccolo Ben Chen, clarinet Itamar Zorman, violin James Thompson, violin Maiya Papach, viola Zlatomir Fung, cello Nathan Farrington, bass Roman Rabinovich, piano Orion Weiss, piano Marc Damoulakis, percussion Robin VanLear, director & costume design Dancers: Joshua Brown, Story Rhinehart Cadiz, Stephanie Roston, and Kenya Woods Students from Inlet Dance Theatre Students from Village Family Farms

Carnival of the Animals I. Introduction and Royal March of the Lion II. Hens and Roosters III. Wild Asses (Swift Animals) IV. Tortoises V. The Elephant VI. Kangaroos VII. Aquarium VIII. Characters with Long Ears IX. The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods X. Aviary XI. Pianists XII. Fossils XIII. The Swan XIV. Finale

saturday

24 j u n e

KULAS HALL, CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF MUSIC

THE CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS

7:30pm

POSTLUDE SOCIAL with festival artists compliments of Mitchell’s Ice Cream 19

CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS The theme of “lightness” that ChamberFest is exploring this season reaches a peak in this program featuring works from three centuries, including the second concert paying tribute to creatures who delight (and nourish) human beings. Lightness, it should be stressed, doesn’t imply lightweight: It suggests frames of mind and atmosphere, rather than anything relating to matters of gravity or importance. Grace, color, vivacity, and whimsy appear in the program’s varied styles of works by composers from Hungary, New Zealand, the United States, and France.

György Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles for woodwind quintet dates from 1953, before the Hungarian-Austrian composer (1923-2006) ventured into more experimental territory following his 1956 departure from Budapest for the more welcoming artistic milieu of Vienna and Cologne. He would become one of the most original composers of the 20th century, though, ironically, perhaps best known for the music that provides so much of the otherworldly aura in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, alongside pieces by Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss II, and others.

Ligeti’s quintet is much more intimate, to say the least, but no less bewitching.

The word “bagatelle,” which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “a short

20

unpretentious instrumental composition,” can be traced to François Couperin

Another composer who conjures magical sound worlds is Salina Fisher (born

and a harpsichord work he wrote and played in 1717. The six bagatelles in

1993 in New Zealand), whose Kintsugi for Piano Trio is a study in shimmering

Ligeti’s collection reflect the Oxford definition, as well as the influence

sonorities shared by piano, violin, and cello. As Fisher has written about her

of Ligeti’s compatriot Béla Bartók, who is memorialized in the fifth piece.

2020 work: “Kintsugi is the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with

Throughout the bagatelles, Ligeti defies convention, surprising the ear as the

gold. All the pieces of a broken bowl or pot are carefully joined back together

wind quintet (flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon) embraces spiky rhythms,

with gold-dusted urushi (lacquer). Rather than hiding the damage, kintsugi

extremes of dynamics and range, and mysterious expressive realms. The third

celebrates all the cracks or ‘scars’ for the unique history that they represent.

bagatelle combines waltz-like lines with darting, seven-note figures, the fourth

The object is more beautiful for having been broken. I am personally drawn

dances in exuberant patterns of seven. After the mournful and aching lament

to kintsugi as a metaphor for embracing ‘brokenness’ and imperfection as a

to Bartók, Ligeti sends the quintet on an exuberant and folksy ride alternating

source of strength. This piece for piano trio is my expression and exploration

meters of two and three before literally dying away.

of kintsugi, and involves musical fragmentation, fragility, mending, and finding

beauty in the ‘cracks’.” Violin flutters and crystalline piano figures are melded

the score with narrator, which ChamberFest is honoring, began in the late

with high cello trills and slides. The rhapsodic interplay evolves organically

1940s, when Ogden Nash wrote a set of witty topical verses to accompany

through hushed details, sharp edges, and ruminative gestures.

the music.

Of distinctly more extroverted personality is Lukas Foss’s Capriccio for Cello

Saint-Saëns employs his estimable descriptive powers to portray the four-

and Piano, written in 1946 while the German-born American composer was

legged, airborne, and aquatic protagonists in The Carnival of the Animals.

serving as pianist of the Boston Symphony. The piece received its premiere in

Along the way, he briefly quotes Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Rossini, Offenbach,

1946 at Tanglewood by cellist Gregor Piatogorsky and Foss, who dedicated

Rameau, and even himself. The music is as colorful and light as anything

it to Natalie Koussevitzky, the late first wife of Boston Symphony music

Saint-Saëns wrote, full of good humor and tenderness. The two pianos face

director Serge Koussevitzky. Foss (1922-2009) was born in Berlin and moved

notable challenges, as in the scampering octaves of No. 3 (“Hermonies,” or

to the United States with his family in 1937. He absorbed a wealth of musical

wild asses) and the satirical drudgery of scale practicing in No. 11 (“Pianistes,”

traditions at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he met Leonard Bernstein,

depicted as a species all their own). Saint-Saëns makes fun of himself in No.

and at Tanglewood. The “American” nature of the Capriccio for Cello and

11 (“Fossiles”), borrowing from his own Danse macabre to portray dancing

Piano stems in part from Foss’s familiarity with the music of Aaron Copland,

skeletons (partly via xylophone, mais oui) even as he folds popular tunes and a

including the ballet Billy the Kid. The cello opens with a robust theme that

bit of Rosina’s aria “Una voce poco fa” from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville into

is answered to equally proud effect by the piano. Foss packs an enormous

the mischievous narrative. And Saint-Saëns outdoes anything in Disney under

amount of rambunctious and affectionate activity into this six-minute score,

the sea in No. 7 (“Aquarium”).

which finds the instruments reveling in one another’s company and exploiting the range of their expressive and technical possibilities.

The “lightness of being” that informs so much of ChamberFest’s programming is placed on momentary hold when the cello unfolds the forlorn melody in

The animal kingdom appears in all its diverse splendor in Camille Saint-

“The Swan” amid placid piano lines. (The piece shot to international fame in

Saëns’s The Carnival of the Animals for two pianos and chamber ensemble.

1905, when Mikhail Fokine choreographed a solo for Anna Pavlova titled The

The French composer wrote the 14-movement collection in 1886 but refused

Dying Swan.) But poignancy gives way to rollicking spirits in the finale, with

to publish it or allow public performances during his lifetime, fearing that

the pianos again trilling and scurrying, the carnival bursting with music-hall

the music world would no longer consider him a serious composer. (He did,

exuberance, and many of our animal friends returning to the scene, including

however, allow publication of the ethereal 13th movement, “The Swan,” in a

the hee-hawing donkeys that tip their tails to Mendelssohn’s music for A

version for cello and one piano.) The entire work received a number of semi-

Midsummer Night’s Dream.

private performances shortly after its creation, sometimes with Saint-Saëns as one of the pianists and the musicians “wearing masks of the heads of the various

[Text for The Carnival of the Animals can be found on the next page.]

animals they represented,” according to British writer Edward Blakeman. The full score wasn’t published until 1922, the year after the composer’s death, and

© Donald Rosenberg

quickly became one of his most beloved works. The tradition of performing 21

The Carnival of the Animals verses by Ogden Nash Introduction

Wild Asses

Kangaroos

Camille Saint-Saëns Was wracked with pains, When people addressed him, As Saint Sanes.

He held the human race to blame, Because it could not pronounce his name.

So, he turned with metronome and fife, To glorify other kinds of life.

Be quiet please - for here begins His salute to feathers, fur, and fins.

Have ever you harked to the jackass wild, Which scientists call the onager?

It sounds like the laugh of an idiot child, Or a hepcat on a harmoniger.

But do not sneer at the jackass wild, There is a method in his heehaw.

For with maidenly blush and accent mild The jenny-ass answers shee-haw.

The kangaroo can jump incredible, He has to jump because he is edible.

I could not eat a kangaroo, But many fine Australians do.

Those with cookbooks as well as boomerangs, Prefer him in tasty kangaroomeringues.

Aquarium Tortoises

Royal March of the Lion The lion is the king of beasts, And husband of the lioness.

Gazelles and things on which he feasts Address him as your highoness.

There are those that admire that roar of his, In the African jungles and velds, But, I think that wherever the lion is, I’d rather be somewhere else.

Come crown my brow with leaves of myrtle, I know the tortoise is a turtle, Come carve my name in stone immortal, I know the turtoise is a tortle.

I know to my profound despair, I bet on one to beat a hare.

I also know I’m now a pauper, Because of its tortley, turtley, torper.

Some fish are minnows, Some are whales.

People like dimples, Fish like scales, Some fish are slim, And some are round, They don’t get cold, They don’t get drowned.

But every fishwife Fears for her fish.

What we call mermaids They call merfish.

The Elephant Hens and Roosters The rooster is a roistering hoodlum, His battle cry is “cock-a-doodleum”.

Hands in pockets, cap over eye, He whistles at pullets, passing by.

Elephants are useful friends, Equipped with handles at both ends.

They have a wrinkled moth-proof hide.

Their teeth are upside down, outside.

If you think the elephant preposterous, You’ve probably never seen a rhinosterous.

People With Long Ears In the world of mules There are no rules.

The Cuckoo in the Middle of the Wood Cuckoos lead bohemian lives, They fail as husbands and as wives, Therefore, they cynically dispariage Everybody else’s marriage.

22

Aviary

Fossils

Finale

Puccini was Latin, and Wagner Teutonic, And birds are incurably philharmonic, Suburban yards and rural vistas Are filled with avian Andrew Sisters.

The skylark sings a roundelay, The crow sings “The Road to Mandalay,” The nightingale sings a lullaby, And the sea gull sings a gullaby.

That’s what shepherds listened to in Arcadia Before somebody invented the radia.

At midnight in the museum hall, The fossils gathered for a ball.

There were no drums or saxophones, But just the clatter of their bones, A rolling, rattling carefree circus, Of mammoth polkas and mazurkas.

Pterodactyls and brontosauruses Sang ghostly prehistoric choruses.

Amid the mastodonic wassail I caught the eye of one small fossil, “Cheer up sad world,” he said and winked, “It’s kind of fun to be extinct.”

Now we’ve reached the grand finale, Animale carnivale.

Noises new to sea and land, Issue from the skillful band.

All the strings contort their features, Imitating crawly creatures.

All the brasses look like mumps From blowing umpah, umpah, umps.

In outdoing Barnum and Bailey, and Ringling, Saint-Saëns has done a miraculous thingling.

Pianists Some claim that pianists are human, And quote the case of Mr Truman.

Saint Saëns, upon the other hand, Considered them a scurvy band.

A blight they are, he said, and simian, Instead of normal men and womian.

The Swan The swan can swim while sitting down, For pure conceit he takes the crown, He looks in the mirror over and over, And claims to have never heard of Pavlova.

23

VORTEX s u n d a y

25 HARKNESS CHAPEL

j u n e 3

p

m

PRELUDE TALK by Owen Cantor at 2pm

ALFRED SCHNITTKE Itamar Zorman, violin Diana Cohen, violin WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Orion Weiss, solo piano Itamar Zorman, violin James Thompson, violin Samuel Rosenthal, viola Nicholas Canellakis, cello Nathan Farrington, bass

Piano Concerto No. 12 in A Major, K. 414 Allegro Andante Rondeau. Allegretto

-intermissionMICHAEL STEPHEN BROWN

Vortex for Cello and Strings

Nicholas Canellakis, solo cello Diana Cohen, violin Itamar Zorman, violin James Thompson, violin Samuel Rosenthal, viola Maiya Papach, viola Zlatomir Fung, cello Nathan Farrington, bass FRANCIS POULENC Denis Savelyev, flute Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida, oboe Franklin Cohen, clarinet William Caballero, horn Andrew Brady, bassoon Roman Rabinovich, piano

24

Moz-Art (after the fragment K. 416d)

Sextet for Piano and Winds, FP 100 Allegro vivace Divertissement: Andantino Finale: Prestissimo

VORTEX This ChamberFest program draws its title not from a novel but from a work

circumstances. So, the two oboes and two horns in the concerto’s original

receiving one of its earliest performances. It shares the stage with two views of

score give way to the more streamlined string version offered at this concert,

Mozart — first by a Russian composer and then by The Man himself — and the

with no injury to the music.

season’s most insouciant piece, Francis Poulenc’s Sextet for Piano and Winds.

Contrasts are rampant at this concert. Prepare to be propelled into a whirlpool

And what happy and affectionate music it is. Mozart wrote the piece in 1782

— a vortex — of styles and moods.

in Vienna during a productive period that included the composition of The Abduction from the Seraglio, Serenade No. 12 in C minor for Winds, and

Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) was a master of stylistic variety, the ability

the “Haffner” Symphony. The score’s genial nature is established in the first

to meld numerous influences into something new, fresh, subversive, and

movement with the strings shaping the first theme and then handing it over to

meaningful. Initially indebted to his fellow Russian, Dmitri Shostakovich,

the soloist. The piano engages in playful and lyrical interplay with the strings,

Schnittke eventually carved out his own artistic niche through the polystylism

suggesting how agile a player Mozart was, and also how inventive a composer.

that would inform many of his works. He wrote that “the goal of my life is

Further evidence can be heard in the cadenza, written out in the score, which

to unify serious music and light music, even if I break my neck in doing so.”

heads in many directions as Mozart improvises on what he has already shared.

No necks are broken during Moz-Art, his five-minute violin duo, though

He pays tribute to Johann Christian Bach in the Andante, quoting from his late

more than a few rules are. Schnittke borrows themes from Mozart, including

mentor’s overture to La calamità de’ cuori with warm lyricism and offering an

a fragment from an unpublished 1783 pantomime (K. 416d) and the famous

eloquent cadenza. Mozart returns to the brightness of A major in the playful

opening from the Symphony No. 40, as he places the violins in consonant

finale, an Allegretto full of tender and nimble activity.

and dissonant conversation (competition?). Notes clash and caress, tempos change suddenly, one violinist whistles, plucked notes rub shoulders with

Like Mozart, Michael Stephen Brown (born 1987) is an admired pianist who also

bowed ones. It’s all very Classical, except when it isn’t. As Roman Rabinovich

has won acclaim as a composer. He was the recipient of the 2015 Avery Fisher

puts it, “They try to play Mozart but constantly get interrupted with the wrong

Career Grant and appears often with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln

things.” In 1977, a year after he wrote the piece, Schnittke expanded the score

Center. His Vortex for Cello and Strings is the newest piece at ChamberFest

for two violins and two small string orchestras under the title Moz-Art à la

this season, having received its premiere in April under the auspices of Chamber

Haydn.

Music Sedona. In a program note provided to ChamberFest, Brown writes: “Vortex for Cello and Strings is inspired by both Ezra Pound’s quote, ‘the vortex is

Which brings us to real Mozart in the form of the Piano Concerto No. 12 in

the point of maximum energy,’ and the mythical energy believed to exist in the

A major, K. 414. What, a piano concerto on a chamber-music concert? Why

natural landscape of Sedona. Sedona’s beauty and powerful energy has moved

not? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote all of these concertos for himself as

me since I first visited when I was eight years old. Vortex is also a culmination

soloist with a small group of colleagues. A conductor isn’t required in most of

of fifteen years of artistic collaboration with cellist Nicholas Canellakis. We play

these pieces. The pianist can set tempos and collaborate closely with the other

in a cello/piano duo, and I’ve written several works for him. After showing

musicians on details as if they are playing chamber music — which they are.

Nick a draft of Vortex, he was disappointed there weren’t enough beautiful

It was common, in fact, for ensembles to adapt instrumentation for intimate

cello melodies. After a great deal of arguing, I realized he was right. I reworked 25

the piece with that in mind, and the final version intermingles soaring cello

The first movement of the Sextet is marked “Very fast and carried away,” which

melodies with kinetic, pulsating energy. The strings swirl vibrantly all around

tells volumes about the music’s character. The piano and friends race up

the central voice of the cello, as if pushing and pulling against the currents of

scales, the horn whoops into the stratosphere, and the ensemble proceeds

life. You might think of the work as a hero’s journey during uncertain times,

with loony abandon. Poulenc seems to be thumbing his nose at the world as

resolved at the end by all the players uniting in a feeling of celebration.”

he flings flutter-tongued passages, pointed grace notes, and curlicue phrases at our ears. Then the motion stops as the bassoon plays a sad solo and a tune

The urge to celebrate is on copious display in Francis Poulenc’s Sextet for

resembling “My Melancholy Baby” makes its way around the group. But the

Piano and Winds, a staple of the wind repertoire. The French composer (1899-

jazzy events of the early part of the movement return to conclude the romp.

1963) was a member of the group known as Les Six, founded in the 1920s, of young French and Swiss composers who revolted against Romanticism

The oboe introduces a sugar-coated tune in the second-movement

and Impressionism and produced music that balanced the serious with the

“Divertissement,” but the serenity is interrupted by a middle section abounding

irreverent. Poulenc was a master in this regard, capable of writing works as

in musical hijinks before settling back into lyrical mode. Rude remarks begin

penetrating as the opera Dialogues des Carmélites (1956), songs, and choral

the last movement, a scene of heightened frivolity set in a music hall or

pieces or whipping up pieces as zany and sentimental as the Sextet for Piano

cabaret. Then everything stops and the music settles back into the nostalgic

and Winds (1931-32). He wrote the last during the same period he composed

world of “My Melancholy Baby,” suggesting that life is destined to balance the

the whimsical chamber cantata Le bal masqué, which shares some material

light with the dark.

with the Sextet, and the motoric, Mozart-like Concerto for Two Pianos. © Donald Rosenberg 26

PRELUDE TALK by Rabbi Roger C. Klein at 6:30pm

thursday LERA AUERBACH

Piano Trio No. 1, Op. 28

Diana Cohen, violin Julie Albers, cello Michael Stephen Brown, piano

Prelude Andante lamentoso Presto

29 j u n e

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135

Daniel Chong, violin Amy Schwartz Moretti, violin Jessica Bodner, viola Jay Campbell, cello

Allegretto Vivace Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo Der schwer gefasste Entschluss

-intermissionSERGEY TANEYEV Daniel Chong, violin James Thompson, violin Teng Li, viola Julie Albers, cello Michael Stephen Brown, piano

Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 30 Introduzione: Adagio mesto – Allegro patetico Scherzo: Presto – Moderato teneramente Largo Finale. Allegro vivace

7:30pm

MIXON HALL, CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF MUSIC

ES MUSS SEIN (IT MUST BE!)

27

ES MUSS SEIN (IT MUST BE!) Fate is not something we can control, even if we try. Milan Kundera addresses

Lera Auerbach, born in 1973 in Chelyabinsk, Soviet Union, has thrived not only

the issue in The Unbearable Lightness of Being through the lens of Tomas,

as a composer, but also as a pianist, author, playwright, and visual artist. She

who realizes he must respond to his separation from Tereza by leaving Zurich

has said that she was not influenced by Russian composers; she came to the

and returning to her in Prague. “Es muss sein. Es muss sein,” Tomas says. He is

United States at the age of 17 during a concert tour. But her music does have

quoting Beethoven, a stalwart believer in the concept of fate, who prints the

the expressive power of Shostakovich, if with a distinctive personality all its

phrase at the start of the last movement of his final string quartet, No. 16 in F

own. “To me, music is communication,” Auerbach told San Francisco Classical

major, Op. 135, under the title “Der schwer gefasste Entschluss,” or “the difficult

Voice in 2013. “Somehow I guess the intensity that I put into my work is able to

decision.” Beethoven’s transcendent quartet shares a ChamberFest program

translate to the listener, or reach the listener through the performers. It’s hard

with pieces by Russian-born composers for whom destiny played vital roles

to tell. What I try to do as an artist is just to be very honest with each piece.”

in the trajectory of their careers. Auerbach defected from her homeland in 1991 to pursue a new musical life. Taneyev was a titanic pianist and teacher —

In her Piano Trio No. 1, Op. 28, from the mid-1990s, Auerbach explores a

his students included Rachmaninoff, Gliere, and Scriabin — whose music was

range of moods packed into 13 minutes of music. The short Prelude begins

destined, unjustifiably, to loom in the shadows of works by such colleagues as

with the piano introducing a darting theme soon answered by disembodied

Tchaikovksy and Rimsky-Korsakov.

cello and violin playing harmonics. The cello sings mournfully in the Andante lamentoso, with the piano shaping rising figures and the violin offering hushed responses. The Presto finale shows another side of Auerbach’s art, full of energy, propulsion, and foreboding, the strings occasionally eerie. An audacious race leads the ensemble to a vehement close.

Ludwig van Beethoven never heard his String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135, in performance. It received its premiere in March 1828, a year after his death. The work is almost a summation of Beethoven’s achievement as composer of string quartets, at once charming, affecting, and aware of his place as artist and mortal. Unlike the revolutionary quartets immediately preceding it, Op. 135 embraces matters of Classical style with masterly humility. Which is not to say that the music is in any way conventional. Beethoven continually astonishes with a freshness of imagination and feeling that seizes us from the opening playful gestures to the finale’s delightful farewell.

With the instruments starting things off by teasing us in the first movement, we don’t discern the key of this F major quartet until the fifth bar. Beethoven constantly switches gears in rhythm, texture, and thematic material, stopping

28

now and then to take a breath before tweaking what’s already been stated. The

Taneyev is always clear about his emotional intentions. The opening of the first

Vivace second movement finds the strings skipping blithely in offbeat patterns,

movement is marked Adagio mesto, slowly and sad, with the piano intoning

with a dizzying dance midway that fades back and takes up earlier activity.

the initial theme and strings answering accordingly. They arrive suddenly at the main body, Allegro patetico, fast and pathetic. What follows is an extended

The third movement, marked “singing and tranquil,” is among the most

unfolding of brooding, lyrical, and potent ideas that become more ardent

touching in the Beethoven canon. Each instrument plays a crucial role in this

as the instruments weave lines around one another. The players thunder

act of musical reverence, moving slowly in the opening section and almost

and dance, commiserate and yearn. Taneyev’s penchant for chromaticism

standing still as Beethoven continues his rumination. He returns to the

pervades the movement, which somehow never feels padded, even though

movement’s key of D-flat major as the instruments expand on the main theme

the musicians (and listeners) are occupied for about 19 minutes. Think of

and bring the movement to peaceful resolution.

Schubert’s “heavenly length” transferred to Russia, and you get the picture.

Beethoven generates the content of the finale from the “Muss es sein?”—“Es

The remaining movements are shorter, though no less compelling. The

muss sein!” motives printed at the top of the movement beneath the heading

Scherzo is an elfin march of intricate and captivating interplay, with piano and

“Der schwer gefasste Entschluss.” Whatever the “difficult decision” implied by

strings occasionally engaged in giddy competition. Taneyev changes course

the title, the motives take the ensemble through bright, endearing interplay

for a trio of lilting tenderness before returning to the opening march, with

interrupted by momentary darkness. “Muss es sein?” the strings plead before

glittering piano figures adding to the festive atmosphere. The Largo begins

offering a hesitant “Es muss sein!” They tiptoe through a quick coda and wind

with a heavy unison statement, followed by a passacaglia-like phrase in the

up determined to put an exclamation point on the matter: “Es muss sein!” —

cello that permeates the movement. Songful string lines, filigreed piano

and goodbye.

passages, and urgent melding of materials add to the striking and impassioned nature of the movement.

If Beethoven says what he needs to say in 24 minutes, Sergey Taneyev requires nearly twice as long to get his musical thoughts off his chest in the massive

It may be wise to fasten seat belts for the finale, a profusion of ideas that

Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 30 (1910-11). It is worth the effort onstage and

alternate between ferocity, ardor, and grandeur. Taneyev somehow builds

off. Here is an extraordinary, and largely unknown, work that shows Taneyev

the narrative to greater heights as he knits instrumental lines together on

(1856-1915) to be a composer of remarkable vision and technical prowess, as

the way to what can only be called a euphoric conclusion that his student

well as a Romanticist never reluctant to turn up the artistic heat. Tchaikovsky

Rachmaninoff must have envied.

called him the “Russian Bach” for his mastery of polyphony; others dubbed him the “Russian Brahms” for similar reasons. The piano writing in the Quintet

© Donald Rosenberg

indulges in virtuosic flights, just as Taneyev evidently did at the keyboard. But the density of material for all the instruments also shows his command of counterpoint in richly colored and expressive splendor.

29

DUNHAM TAVERN

f r i d a y

30

j u n e 7:30pm

WORDS MISUNDERSTOOD GYÖRGY LIGETI

Poème symphonique (for 100 metronomes)

CAROLINE SHAW

Limestone & Felt

Teng Li, viola Jay Campbell, cello GABRIELLA SMITH

Carrot Revolution

Diana Cohen, violin Amy Schwartz Moretti, violin Jessica Bodner, viola Jay Campbell, cello MAX BRUCH Amy Schwartz Moretti, violin Diana Cohen, violin Daniel Chong, violin James Thompson, violin Teng Li, viola Jessica Bodner, viola Julie Albers, cello Nathan Farrington, bass

30

String Octet in B-flat major Allegro moderato Adagio Allegro molto

WORDS MISUNDERSTOOD The arts reflect the sensibilities of their age. Some works embrace the status quo in style and substance. Others are ahead of their time and must wait to find acceptance, or even acknowledgement that they exist. This program of music most listeners may never have heard is an opportunity to open ears and take in an array of sound worlds. ChamberFest Cleveland co-artistic director and pianist Roman Rabinovich calls it “a funky program, not without humor.”

The evening’s title, like so many others at this year’s festival, comes from Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in which the characters of the painter Sabina and her lover, the professor Franz, are constantly testing one another’s limits. “If I were to make a record of all Sabina and Franz’s conversations, I could compile a long lexicon of their misunderstandings,” Kundera writes. Franz goes further, questioning the ability of words to communicate and espousing the ineffable power of music. As Kundera writes of Franz, “what he yearned for at that moment, vaguely but with all his might, was unbounded music, absolute sound, a pleasant and happy allencompassing, overpowering, window-rattling din to engulf, once and for all, the pain, the futility, the vanity of words. Music was the negation of sentences, music was the anti-word!”

No words, but certainly hints of misunderstanding, greeted the September 1963 premiere in Hilversum, the Netherlands, of György Ligeti’s Poème

audacious absurdity, but everyone sat politely afterwards as Ligeti explained

symphonique, which is scored for the unusual instrumentation of 100

his creation, in German. (The video was never broadcast and only rediscovered

metronomes. The work couldn’t be more different from the composer’s

in recent years.)

Six Bagatelles performed earlier this season at ChamberFest. As a video of the premiere of Poème symphonique made for Dutch television reveals,

Seven decades later, Poème symphonique remains an invigorating example

the audience sat uneasily as 10 men and women dressed in concert attire

of Ligeti’s relentless exploration of sonic possibilities. The piece also was the

wound up the metronomes, turned them on (at Ligeti’s signal), and left the

composer’s way of criticizing what was happening in the music world at the

platform. During the 10 minutes that followed, the metronomes ticked away

time. “What bothers me nowadays are above all ideologies (all ideologies, in

at different tempos, the textures thinning and the rhythmic motion decreasing

that they are stubborn and intolerant towards others), and Poème symphonique

as machines gradually dropped out, leaving a single metronome to have its

is directed above all against them,” he wrote. “So I am in some measure proud

dying say (minus words). Some listeners snickered at the sound of so much

that I could express criticism without any text, with music alone.”

31

Words also aren’t needed for the rest of this program. Caroline Shaw, winner

the death of his wife and Germany’s defeat in World War I, the piece became a

of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music, a year earlier composed a work that paints

String Octet in B-flat major the following year, not long before Bruch’s death.

images of diverse textures. In Limestone & Felt, a viola and a cello limn hard

The score existed only in the composer’s own handwritten manuscript until it

and soft surfaces. As the composer (born 1982) has written, “These are materials

was published in 1996.

that can suggest place (a cathedral apse, or the inside of a wool hat), stature, function, and — for me — sound (reverberant or muted). In Limestone & Felt,

Bruch dedicated the piece to a friend, the German-born violinist Willy Hess,

the hocketing pizzicato and pealing motivic canons are part of a whimsical,

whose artistry can be discerned in the extravagant writing for the first violin.

mystical, generous world of sounds echoing and colliding in the imagined

Indeed, the String Octet sometimes sounds like a concerto for violin and

eaves of a gothic chapel. These are contrasted with the delicate, meticulous,

strings as the “soloist” scales the heights in rapturous and acrobatic phrases

and almost reverent placing of chords that, to our ears today, sound ancient

redolent of what Bruch had woven into his two most beloved scores, the Violin

and precious, like an antique jewel box. Ultimately, felt and limestone may

Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 (1866), and Kol Nidrei, Op. 47 (1880), for cello

represent two opposing ways we experience history and design our own

and orchestra. The German Romanticism that pervades those early works

present.”

is firmly in place in the String Octet many decades later, even as Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and others were heading in new directions.

Another gifted American composer, Gabriella Smith, mashes together a mad assortment of ideas in Carrot Revolution, which ChamberFest co-artistic

The String Octet is warm and forceful, abounding in glowing thematic

director Diana Cohen likens to “rock music for string quartet.” Smith (born 1991)

narratives and rich harmonic writing. The opening movement begins with an

was inspired to create the piece in 2015 on a commission from the Barnes

almost prayerful layering of string lines before the first violin takes the reins and

Foundation in Philadelphia for an exhibition titled “The Order of Things,”

drives the dramatic activity. Bruch’s mastery of counterpoint imparts notable

which also involved three visual artists. As she walked through the museum,

inner interest to the intricate conversation, with motives echoed by the lower

the composer thought of a quote mistakenly attributed to Cézanne: “The day

strings. The second-movement Adagio is a solemn song underpinned by

will come when a single, freshly observed carrot will start a revolution.” The

dotted figures. A nostalgic middle section as lovely as anything Bruch wrote

result is a work in which all sorts of musical styles bump into one another,

leads back to more troubled sentiments and then an aura of wistful resignation.

with the instruments immersed in a hyperactive flow of interplay with roots

The buoyant finale returns the first violin to the role of primary narrator. Bruch

from ancient sources to newfangled ideas. “The piece is a patchwork of my

provides ample contrasts of key and texture, including short, soaring lines for

wildly contrasting influences and full of weird, unexpected juxtapositions and

lower instruments, and whips up a burst of animated energy to end his vibrant

intersecting planes of sound, inspired by the way Barnes’ ensembles show old

swan song.

works in new contexts and draw connections between things we don’t think of as being related,” Smith has written.

The final work on the program is the oldest, and the last, written by German composer Max Bruch (1838-1920). Begun as a string quintet in 1919, soon after 32

© Donald Rosenberg

MIXON HALL, CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF MUSIC

LIGHTNESS OF BEING PRELUDE TALK by James O’Leary at 6:30pm

HELMUT LACHENMANN

Pression

Jay Campbell, cello WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Franklin Cohen, clarinet Amy Schwartz Moretti, violin Diana Cohen, violin Jessica Bodner, viola Jay Campbell, cello

Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581 Allegro Larghetto Menuetto – Trio I – Trio II Allegretto con variazioni

-intermissionFELIX MENDELSSOHN Daniel Chong, violin Jessica Bodner, viola Teng Li, viola Julie Albers, cello Nathan Farrington, bass Michael Stephen Brown, piano

Piano Sextet in D Major, Op. 110 Allegro vivace Adagio Menuetto. Adagio – Trio Allegro vivace

saturday

01 j u l y Closing night POSTLUDE SOCIAL with festival artists

7:30pm

33

LIGHTNESS OF BEING And so, we come to the final program in the 2023 season of ChamberFest

sounds emerge as fingers stroke the strings from below and the bow glides

Cleveland, which has drawn inspiration from, but not been restrained by,

along the bridge. The results are provocative and beautiful.

themes in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The program’s title, echoing that of this year’s festival, is reflected to supreme effect in the works by two

Nothing is remotely provocative about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Quintet

of the most famous prodigies in music, Mozart and Mendelssohn. The living

for Clarinet and Strings in A major, K. 581, which resides in a realm of sublime

German composer Helmut Lachenmann’s Pression for cello stands as a stark

beauty. As noted earlier in ChamberFest, Mozart considered his Quintet in

contrast to the worlds of his Austrian and German predecessors. Such is the

E-flat major for Piano and Winds, K. 452, composed in 1784, to be “the best

ever-changing nature of the human condition, as Milan Kundera probes in

thing I have written in my life.” But he could have made the same claim about

his novel: “The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth,

so many of his other works, including the Clarinet Quintet, from 1789. Mozart

the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of

wrote the piece for his favorite clarinetist, Anton Stadler, on whom he would

burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the

bestow the equally celestial Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra in A major,

earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free

K. 622, two years later (just two months before the composer’s death at 35).

as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?...”

“Lightness of being” couldn’t be summoned more luminously than in K. 581, in Helmut Lachenmann, born in 1935, has alternated between weight and

which the clarinet and string quartet enter into conversations at once poetic

lightness as one of the champions of musique concrète, a style embracing

and entrancing. The strings open the first movement with a theme of infinite

recorded sounds but expanded by the composer as musique concrète

warmth answered by the clarinet in sophisticated, chipper fashion. This is

instrumentale to define music that explores a range of acoustical sounds.

clearly a meeting of equals: Each instrument contributes commentary as the

As the composer has written, “This piece originated as an introduction to

narrative unfolds in all its graceful wisdom. The second violin introduces a

instrumental musique concrète. In this sort of piece it is common for sound

tender new theme that the clarinet mirrors in minor. Mozart wanders from A

phenomena to be so refined and organized that they are not so much the

major in the short development section and introduces fugal elements, with

results of musical experiences as of their own acoustic attributes. Timbres,

the clarinet playing buoyant arpeggios until the opening material returns with

dynamics, and so on arise not of their own volition but as components of a

new expressions on its face.

concrete situation characterized by texture, consistency, energy, resistance.

This does not come from within but from a liberated compositional technique.

As is often the case in Mozart, the slow movement, Larghetto, is a scene of

At the same time it implies that our customary sharply-honed auditory habit is

operatic poignancy, with the clarinet spinning lines of ineffable delicacy.

thwarted. The result is aesthetic provocation: beauty denying habit.”

The first violin and clarinet trade phrases, and the clarinet rises softly above shimmering, muted strings before returning to the main theme and a gradual

34

Pression for cello, written in 1969 and revised in 2010, exemplifies this aesthetic

descent to the tranquil close. The hearty Menuetto, unusually, has two trios,

through sundry pressures via extended techniques. Fingers lightly touch the

rather than one. The first trio, for strings, shifts into A minor, with the first

strings and slide up and down. The bow grazes the bridge and beneath the

violin wandering above the others. The clarinet plays a charming, Ländler-like

tail piece. The player taps and rubs the body of the instrument. Otherworldly

figure in the second trio, which includes two-octave arpeggios this instrument

negotiates so nimbly.

intricacy. The strings introduce the graceful theme that will pervade the first movement, and the piano extends the delightful discourse, while skipping

Never at a compositional loss, Mozart offers a brilliant finale, Allegretto con

about the keyboard and exulting in Mendelssohn’s youthful lyricism. As the

variazioni, in which everyone has the chance to comment on the theme. The

strings take up these ideas, the piano journeys through eighth-note figures and

clarinet is typically acrobatic and lyrical, the strings alternate between support

a triplet marathon of exhilarating sparkle — a hallmark of Mendelssohn style —

system and featured quartet. In the third variation, the viola plays a lamentation.

that spills into the development section and all the way to the recapitulation.

The clarinet’s ability to scamper is celebrated in the fourth variation. An Adagio finds the players in a serene frame of mind, with the clarinet again touchingly

The Adagio is marked “dolce,” and Mendelssohn delivers all of the sweetness

agile. Light breaks through clouds for the jovial final Allegro, almost a gleeful

at his teenaged beckon. Mozart hovers over the lyrical lines, with the piano

foreshadowing of Papageno in The Magic Flute two years later.

embroidering amid string sighs. A stormy Menuetto in D minor follows, its trio shifting into F major and strings waltzing gently alongside graceful piano

“The Mozart of the nineteenth century.” That’s what Robert Schumann called

flourishes.

Felix Mendelssohn, who showed gifts at a young age similar to those of his Salzburg counterpart. By the time he was 17, Mendelssohn had already

Mendelssohn the keyboard whiz and frolicsome spirit inhabits the finale. The

composed his remarkable Octet and the glistening overture to A Midsummer

piano simply can’t restrain itself while flickering around the strings, which do

Night’s Dream. Both his exceptional compositional skill and pianistic prowess

their best to mirror their colleague’s irrepressible, sixteenth-note glee. But wait!

can be heard in the Sextet in D major for Piano and Strings, Op. 110, which

Mendelssohn thrusts the ensemble back to the Menuetto’s turbulent theme —

he wrote in 1824 at the age of 15. The score wasn’t published until 1868, more

and then just as quickly returns to the finale’s main material at a breakneck

than two decades after Mendelssohn’s death, but it has been taken up by

pace to bring the work, and ChamberFest Cleveland’s 2023 season, to a fiery

musicians eager to explore more of this composer’s rich chamber repertoire.

finish.

Especially pianists, in this case. The Sextet — for piano, violin, two violas,

© Donald Rosenberg

cello, and double bass — features a keyboard part of eye- and finger-crossing 35

ARTIST BIOS ARTISTIC DIRECTORS Violinist DIANA COHEN is the co-founder

FRANKLIN COHEN, clarinet, is the co-

Pianist ROMAN RABINOVICH was named

and

ChamberFest

founder and co-artistic director of ChamberFest

as a co-artistic director of ChamberFest Cleveland

Cleveland. She leads a multi-faceted career as a

co-artistic

director

of

Cleveland. He was the longest serving principal

in 2022. At the opening of the 2022-23 season,

concertmaster, chamber musician, curator, and

clarinetist and most frequent soloist in the history

he made his Carnegie Hall Concerto Debut,

soloist. She was appointed Concertmaster of the

of The Cleveland Orchestra, and was named

stepping in at 24-hours’ notice with the Orpheus

Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra in 2012 and has

Principal Clarinet Emeritus, the first honor of its

Chamber Orchestra in Mozart’s Concerto K. 271.

appeared as soloist with numerous symphony

kind since the orchestra’s founding. Mr. Cohen

orchestras, including those in Calgary, Richmond,

has been the featured soloist in more than 200

Rochester, Lansing, Grand Rapids, and Charleston,

performances throughout the United States,

among others. Ms. Cohen has toured and

Asia, and Europe. His Deutsche Grammophon recording of Debussy’s First Clarinet Rhapsody, conducted by Pierre Boulez, won two Grammy Awards in 1996. Mr. Cohen has collaborated with such leading artists as Vladimir Ashkenazy,

Other solo appearances include the Royal Scottish

Emanuel Ax, Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Goode,

National Orchestra, Edmonton Symphony, NFM

Menahem Pressler, and András Schiff, and has

Leopoldinum, Israel Symphony, Punta Gorda Symphony, and Helena Symphony. Recent recital

36

recorded with the Grammy-winning Orpheus

engagements include Phillips Collection, Portland

Chamber Orchestra, and performed with the

Piano International, the Steinway Series at Royal

East Coast Chamber Orchestra, Sejong Soloists,

Welsh College of Music and Drama, Philip Lorenz

The Knights, The Cleveland Orchestra, and New

Memorial Piano Series, Maverick Concerts, and

York Philharmonic. A graduate of the Cleveland

Music at MoCA Concert Series. Mr. Rabinovich

Institute of Music, she was awarded the Jerome

made his Israel Philharmonic debut under Zubin

Gross Prize in Violin and this year is the recipient

performed with the Guarneri, Takacs, Tokyo, and

Mehta at age ten, having immigrated to Israel a

of the 2023 Alumni Achievement Award. She

Emerson String Quartets. He gained international

year before from Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Winner

was also inducted into the Cleveland Heights

recognition as the first clarinetist awarded First

of the 12th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano

High School Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame.

Prize at the 1968 Munich International Music

Master Competition in 2008, he studied at the

Together with her husband, pianist Roman

Competition. Mr. Cohen has been on the faculty

Curtis Institute of Music and The Julliard School,

Rabinovich, Ms. Cohen founded Calgary’s first

of the Cleveland Institute of Music since 1976,

and was among the first of three young pianists

international chamber festival, ChamberFest West,

with former students in orchestras and ensembles

to be championed by Sir András Schiff for his

which had its inaugural season in July 2022.

throughout the world.

‘Building Bridges’ series.

FESTIVAL MUSICIANS JULIE ALBERS is Principal Cello of the Saint

JESSICA BODNER is the violist of the

Parker Quartet’s appointment as Blodgett Quartet-

Paul Chamber Orchestra. She made her major

Grammy

in-Residence.

orchestral debut at seventeen with The Cleveland

She has recently appeared at venues such as

Orchestra and has performed in recital and with

Carnegie Hall, 92nd Street Y, Library of Congress,

DAVID BOWLIN is on the violin and chamber

orchestras throughout North America, Europe,

Concertgebouw

Hall

music faculty at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music,

Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand.

(London),

Philadelphia

where he also serves as Chair of Strings. First prize

Ms. Albers moved to Cleveland in high school

Chamber Music Society, and Seoul Arts Center,

winner of the 2003 Washington International

to pursue studies through the Young Artist

as well as festivals including Chamber Music

Competition, he has performed extensively as

Program at the Cleveland Institute of Music. After

Northwest,

Lake

a soloist, with premieres of violin concertos

winning the Grand Prize at the XIII International

Champlain Chamber Music Festival, Yellow Barn,

written for him at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart

Competition for Young Musicians in Douai, France,

Perigord Noir in France, Monte Carlo Spring

Festival, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, and

she toured that country as soloist with Orchestre

Arts Festival, San Miguel de Allende, Istanbul’s

Aspen Music Festival. As a chamber musician,

Symphonique de Douai. She was named the

Cemal Recit Rey, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,

he has toured with Musicians from Marlboro and

Hitzacker, and Heidelberg String Quartet Festival.

performs regularly with the Oberlin Trio and the

Recent collaborators include mezzo-soprano

Bowlin-Cho Duo. He is a founding member of

Fleur Barron, clarinetists Charles Neidich and

the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE)

Award-winning

Parker

(Amsterdam),

Musikverein

Wigmore

(Vienna),

ChamberFest

Quartet.

Cleveland,

and a former member of the Naumburg Awardwinning Da Capo Chamber Players. Mr. Bowlin

first Gold Medal Laureate of South Korea’s 2003 Gyeongnam International Music Competition. Ms. Albers participated in a three-year residency with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two.

Jörg Widmann, pianists Menahem Pressler, Shai

Her album with ChamberFest’s Orion Weiss on

Wosner, Gloria Chien, and Orion Weiss, violinists

Artek includes works by Rachmaninoff, Beethoven,

Soovin Kim and Donald Weilerstein, violists Kim

has performed as guest concertmaster with

Schumann, Massenet, and Piatagorsky. She serves

Kashkashian and Roger Tapping, cellists Deborah

the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Saint Paul

as an assistant professor at Mercer University in

Pae, Marcy Rosen, Natasha Brofsky, and Paul Katz,

Chamber Orchestra, Marlboro Festival Orchestra,

Macon, Georgia, where she holds the Mary Jean

and percussionist Ian Rosenbaum. Ms. Bodner

and IRIS Orchestra. He has appeared at the Banff,

and Charles Yates Cello chair at the McDuffie

is a faculty member of Harvard University’s

Bowdoin, Bridgehampton, Chesapeake, Olympic,

Center for Strings.

Department of Music in conjunction with the

and Ojai festivals, ChamberFest Cleveland, the 37

Boston Chamber Music Society, and the Kneisel

MICHAEL STEPHEN BROWN, pianist

Hartford Symphony, as well as Third Horn with

Hall Chamber Music Festival.

and composer, was the winner of the 2018

the Montreal Symphony and Montreal Opera, and

Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center and

Acting Third Horn with the Boston Symphony

ANDREW BRADY joined the Saint Paul

a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant. He recently

Chamber Orchestra in 2022-23 season as Principal

performed as a soloist with the National, Seattle,

Bassoon, having previously held that position in

Grand Rapids, North Carolina, New Haven, and

both the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Louisiana Philharmonic. As a soloist, Mr. Brady has performed concertos by Hertel, Rossini, Mozart, Weber, and Zwilich with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Southeast Symphony, the Los Angeles

and Boston Pops. Born in New Mexico and raised

Doctor’s Symphony, and The Colburn Orchestra.

in Wisconsin, Mr. Caballero’s early horn studies included working under Larry Simons, Barry Albany Symphonies and in recital at Carnegie Hall,

Benjamin, and Basil Tyler, as well as studying

the Mostly Mozart Festival, and Beethoven-Haus

the piano and pipe organ. He graduated from

Bonn. He is an artist of the Chamber Music Society

New England Conservatory in Boston. Currently,

of Lincoln Center, and regularly performs recitals

he is the associate teaching professor of horn

with his duo partner, cellist Nicholas Canellakis.

at Carnegie Mellon University School of Music.

He was selected by András Schiff to perform on an

Recent chamber music performances include

He appears regularly as Principal Bassoon with

international recital tour. As a composer, Mr. Brown

performing Brahms’s Horn Trio in E-flat major

the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra, and

recently toured his own Piano Concerto around

with Gil and Orli Shaham in Zankel Recital Hall

has performed as the guest principal with the Los

the US and Poland with several orchestras. He was

at Carnegie Hall, and appearing live on NPR’s

Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl and

the Composer and Artist-in-Residence at the New

Performance Today in its Washington, DC studios.

at Carnegie Hall, and on European tours with the

Haven Symphony for the 2017-19 seasons and a

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. In past summers,

2018 Copland House Residency Award recipient.

Cellist JAY CAMPBELL is the only musician

Mr. Brady has been a proud member of the

A native New Yorker, he lives there with his two

ever to receive two Avery Fisher Career Grants —

Chineke!

19th century Steinway D’s, Octavia and Daria.

in 2016 as a soloist, and again in 2019 as a member

Orchestra,

the

United

Kingdom’s

of the JACK Quartet. He made his concerto debut

first ensemble for Black and ethnically diverse

38

classical musicians, including a performance

WILLIAM CABALLERO has served as

with the New York Philharmonic in 2013. In 2016, he

at the 2017 BBC Proms. He graduated from The

Principal Horn of the Pittsburgh Symphony

worked with Alan Gilbert as the artistic director for

Colburn Conservatory of Music, where he studied

Orchestra for 33 seasons, under Maestros Manfred

Ligeti Forward, part of the New York Philharmonic

with Richard Beene. Other major teachers and

Honeck, Mariss Jansons, and Lorin Maazel. He

Biennale at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

influences include Anthony Parnther, Rick Ranti,

previously held the same position with the

He was Artist-in-Residence at the Lucerne

and Suzanne Nelsen.

Houston Symphony, Houston Grand Opera, and

Festival and appeared at the Berlin Philharmonie

with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.

Artist-in-Residence; Europe and Asia tours with

Erie Philharmonic. He has performed as a guest

He returned to the Los Angeles Philharmonic

the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center,

musician in subscription concerts with The

in 2022 as curator and cellist for his second

including appearances in London’s Wigmore Hall,

Cleveland Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, and the

Green Umbrella concert. Deeply committed to

the Louvre in Paris, Seoul Arts Center, and the

Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Equally dedicated

collaborative music, Jay is a member of the JACK

Shanghai and Taipei National Concert Halls; and

to chamber music, Mr. Chen has been a member

recitals across North America with his longtime

of the award-winning North Coast Winds quintet

duo

since 2015. Festival appearances include the

collaborator,

pianist-composer

Michael

Brown. Mr. Canellakis is the artistic director of

Artosphere

Chamber Music Sedona in Arizona. A graduate

Music Festival, Pacific Music Festival, National

of the Curtis Institute of Music and New England

Repertory Orchestra, Sarasota Music Festival, and

Conservatory, he began his Chamber Music

ChamberFest Cleveland. He performs with his

Society of Lincoln Center career as a member of

husband, pianist Dean Zhang, in the Edgewater

Quartet, the Junction Trio with violinist Stefan

the Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two), and has

Duo, presenting recitals nationwide.

Jackiw and composer/pianist Conrad Tao, and

been in residence at Carnegie Hall as a member of

the multidisciplinary artist collective AMOC. He

Ensemble Connect.

Festival

Orchestra,

Breckenridge

DANIEL CHONG is the founding first violinist of the Parker Quartet, garnering wide recognition

frequently works with composers and performers like Helmut Lachenmann, Patricia Kopatchinskaja,

As a young musician, clarinetist BEN CHEN

for his performances in such venues as Carnegie

John Zorn, Tyshawn Sorey, and many others.

made his American solo debut at the Kennedy

Hall, the Library of Congress, the Musikverein, and

Center after winning the National Symphony

Wigmore Hall. Recent solo engagements include

Orchestra’s Summer Music Institute concerto

National Sawdust (New York City), Seoul Arts

competition. He returned to the nation’s capital

Center, and Jordan Hall (Boston). He received the

eight years later, serving as Assistant Principal/

Cleveland Quartet Award and top prizes at the

E-flat Clarinet with the Kennedy Center Opera

Concert Artists Guild and Bordeaux International

House Orchestra. Mr. Chen was previously

String Quartet Competitions. He can be heard

Principal Clarinet of the Youngstown Symphony

on the Zig-Zag Territoires, Naxos, and Nimbus

and Bangor Symphonies, Erie Philharmonic, The

and currently holds positions with the Sarasota

Records labels, with a recent release on the ECM

Orchestra Now, and New Haven Symphony as

Opera Orchestra, Cleveland Pops Orchestra, and

New Series featuring the Parker Quartet and Kim

Cellist

NICHOLAS CANELLAKIS is an

artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, performing regularly in Alice Tully Hall and on tour internationally. Recent concert highlights include concerto appearances with the Virginia, Albany, Delaware, Stamford, Richardson, Lansing,

39

Kashkashian. Mr. Chong has performed at major

has performed with Chamber Music Society

KIRSTEN DOCTER is an associate professor

music festivals including the Marlboro Music

of Lincoln Center, the Gilmore Festival, the

of viola and chamber music at the Oberlin

Festival, Mostly Mozart, Festspiele Mecklenburg-

New Music Consort, and the Pulse Percussion

Conservatory of Music. First prize wins at the

Vorpommern, and Perigord Noir Music Festival.

Ensemble, and is a founding member of the Time

Primrose International and American String

An advocate for new music, he has worked with

Table Percussion Quartet.

Teachers

György Kurtág, Augusta Read Thomas, Helmut

Association

Viola

Competitions

launched her on a career that includes a 23-year

Lachenmann, and Chaya Czernowin. He won a

CYNTHIA KOLEDO DEALMEIDA was

2011 Grammy Award with the Parker Quartet for

appointed by Lorin Maazel as Principal Oboe of

series and festivals, and numerous appointments

their recording of György Ligeti’s string quartets.

the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 1991. Prior

as a masterclass clinician and teacher. Ms. Docter’s

to that, she was Associate Principal Oboe of the

MARC DAMOULAKIS has

festival appearances include performances at the

Philadelphia Orchestra under Riccardo Muti. She

Aspen Music Festival, Seattle Chamber Music

been a member of The Cleveland Orchestra since

received a Bachelor of Music from the University

Society, and Kneisel Hall. Her work can be heard

Percussionist

tenure with the Cavani Quartet, concerts on major

August 2006, named as Principal Percussion in

on the Azica, Albany, and New World labels. She

2013. He is co-chair of the percussion department

previously served on the chamber music and

at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He performs

viola faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music

as a soloist, chamber musician, and is a

and the University of Michigan. She has been a

committed educator and clinician at institutions

jury member of the Primrose International Viola,

and festivals worldwide. Throughout his career, he has performed and recorded as a guest artist with the New York Philharmonic, Atlanta

of Michigan, studying with Arno Mariotti, and a

Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Houston

Master of Music degree from Temple University,

Symphony, Sarasota Orchestra, and the Hong

a student of Richard Woodhams. Ms. DeAlmeida has been featured as soloist with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in concertos by J.S. Bach, Leonardo Balada, Alan Fletcher, Francaix, Haydn,

Fischoff National Chamber Music, and Sphinx

Mozart, Lucas Richman, Richard Strauss, and

competitions. In the summer Ms. Docter serves

Vaughan Williams. An avid chamber musician, she

on the viola faculty of the Perlman Music Program

appears frequently in recital at Carnegie Mellon

and Bowdoin International Music Festival.

University. She performs and teaches as a faculty

40

Kong Philharmonic. Mr. Damoulakis is an active

member of the Music Academy of the West in

Cellist STERLING ELLIOTT is a 2021 Avery

chamber musician, playing regularly with the

Santa Barbara, California, and has performed at the

Fisher Career Grant recipient and the winner of

Strings Music Festival, ChamberFest Cleveland,

Strings Festival in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, La

the Senior Division of the 2019 National Sphinx

and the Sun Valley Music Festival “In Focus” Series,

Jolla Festival in La Jolla, California, and Marlboro

Competition. He has appeared with the New York

where he is also the principal percussionist. He

Music Festival in Vermont.

Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the

Boston Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, the

Symphony. He was recently named Principal Bass

Key Bank Music Scholarship and the Excellence

Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony,

of the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra under James

for the Arts Scholarship. She studied at Cleveland

and the Dallas Symphony. He recently performed

Conlon and Placido Domingo. He has appeared

the Brahms Double Concerto with Gil Shaham

at the Marlboro Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the Olympic Music Festival, ChamberFest Cleveland, and the Da Camera Society. In addition to performance, Mr. Farrington is deeply interested in cinema. His LA-based audio company, Hazard Audio, connects top classical minds with creative artists in movie and TV production. Recent

State University and The University of Akron, and was awarded African American Spiritual

at the Aspen Festival and made his German

performance scholarships named for her teacher,

debut in Munich in May 2022, collaborating with

the late A. Grace Lee Mims. Ms. Foreman was

Daniel Hope. Other recent performances include

Apollo Fire’s first Artistic Outreach Intern, singing

appearances

Cincinnati,

the role of Princess Pamina at in-school workshops

North Carolina, and Fort Worth Symphonies,

and performances. She currently performs with

with

the

Colorado,

and Buffalo Philharmonic, among others. He has

Apollo’s Fire as a MOSAIC Artist Fellow.

been presented in recital by the San Francisco

projects include co-writing a score for a Martin

Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, Shriver

Scorsese-produced

a

Canadian violinist JACQUES FORESTIER

Hall, Tippett Rise, and Capitol Region Classical. Mr.

Bridge, co-arranging a score to accompany

has performed in concert halls across North

Elliott is currently a Kovner Fellow at The Juilliard

Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, and managing a

America, Europe, and Asia. Hailed by CBC Music

School. He performs on a 1741 Gennaro Gagliano

commission by Dafnis Prieto for soloists People of

as one of the “Top 30 Hot Classical Musicians

cello on loan through the Robert F. Smith Fine

Earth and orchestra.

Under 30”, he began his studies at the age of two

documentary

Building

under the instruction of his mother. He currently

String Patron Program, in partnership with the Sphinx Organization.

Soprano ASHLEE FOREMAN is a native of

holds the Thomas D. Watkins Fellowship at the

Akron, Ohio, and graduated from the Cleveland

NATHAN FARRINGTON is a bassist,

School of the Arts. She studied voice with the

singer, and composer living in Los Angeles.

late Dr. A. Grace Lee Mims of the Cleveland Music

He regularly appears in the bass sections of

Settlement, Amanda Powell of Apollo’s Fire, and

many of America’s top orchestras including

Noriko Paukert of Cleveland. She joined the Akron

the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philadelphia

Symphony Orchestra in Porgy and Bess (2011) and

Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the New

Titanic: The Musical (2012), and The Cleveland

York Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra, the

Opera in her debut of Clara in Porgy and Bess

Curtis Institute of Music, studying with Shmuel

East Coast Chamber Orchestra, and the Seattle

(2019). Ms. Foreman has been the recipient of the

Ashkenasi and Pamela Frank, as well as with Itzhak 41

Perlman at the Perlman Music Program. A top

Cello Biënnale Amsterdam. A winner of the 2017

2012 he was voted the Top World Percussionist

prize winner at the Stulberg International Strings

Young Concert Artists International Auditions and

in DRUM Magazine and one of the top four world

Competition, the Irving M. Klein International

the 2017 Astral National Auditions, Mr. Fung has

percussionists by Modern Drummer (July 2007).

Strings Competition, the Johansen International

taken the top prizes at the 2018 Alice & Eleonore

Mr. Haddad is currently a professor at the Oberlin

Competition, the Shean Strings Competition, and

Schoenfeld International String Competition, 2016

Conservatory of Music and the Cleveland Institute

the OSM Manulife Competition, among others, Mr.

George Enescu International Cello Competition,

of Music.

Forestier made his solo debut with the Edmonton

2015 Johansen International Competition for

Symphony Orchestra at age eleven, and has gone

Young String Players, 2014 Stulberg International

TENG LI is the Principal Viola of the Los

on to perform with orchestras and ensembles

String

Angeles Philharmonic, after more than a decade

internationally. He is grateful for the support of

International Competition.

Competition,

and

2014

Irving

Klein

performing in the same role with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Li is an active recitalist

many, including the Anne Burrows and Edmonton

JAMEY

HADDAD

is

Community Foundations for their generosity in

Cleveland

supporting his education.

regarded as one of the foremost world music and

jazz percussionists. He has been the percussionist

native

and

for Paul Simon for more than 20 years. Other

youngest musician ever to win First Prize at the

collaborations include Sting, Michael League

International

The

first

American

in

four

decades

Cello

(Snarky Puppy), Bokanté, Osvaldo Golijov, Yo-Yo

FUNG is a recipient

Ma, Dawn Upshaw, Esperanza Spalding, Joe

of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship 2022

Lovano, Billy Drewes, Dave Liebman, Elliot

Tchaikovsky

Division, ZLATOMIR

Competition

and chamber musician who has participated in

Simon

the festivals of Marlboro, Mostly Mozart, Santa Fe,

Shaheen, and The Paul Winter Consort. His own

Music from Angel Fire, Rome, Moritzburg, and the

group Under One Sun had a 2017 release and

Rising Stars Festival in Caramoor. She has been

was featured in Downbeat Magazine. Mr. Haddad

a featured soloist with the National Chamber

is a recipient of the Cleveland Arts Prize and was

Orchestra, the Santa Rosa Symphony, the Munich

Goldenthal,

Brazil’s

Assad

Brothers,

Chamber

Orchestra,

and

the

Haddonfield

Symphony, among others. Her discography and a 2020 Avery Fisher Career Grant. Recent

includes a solo CD, entitled 1939, in addition to

orchestral engagements include the BBC and

many recordings with the Toronto Symphony

Rochester Philharmonics, Milwaukee and Sante

recordings. She has won the top prize at the

Fe Symphonies, Baltimore Chamber Orchestra,

Johanson International and the Holland-America

and others, with a world premiere of a new cello

42

Music

Society

Competitions,

the

Primrose

concerto by Katherine Balch with the Dallas

recognized as a Legend of Jazz by the Cleveland

International Viola Competition, the Irving K. Klein

Symphony Orchestra. International tours include

Jazz Society. He is a Fulbright Scholar and has been

International String Competition, and the ARD

a recital at Wigmore Hall and two performances at

awarded multiple NEA grants for performance. In

International Music Competition.

ISMAIL LUMANOVSKI launched a career

University’s McDuffie Center for Strings, she was

Sphinx Chamber Orchestra, and has performed in

as a soloist and chamber musician in both classical

concertmaster of the Florida Orchestra and the

recitals and chamber music concerts throughout

and cross-over repertoire. His performances

Oregon Symphony. She has premiered concertos

the United States, Latin America, Europe, and

throughout the United States, Europe, Australia,

for Grammy winner Matt Catingub and her Mercer

Asia, including an acclaimed 2011 debut recital

the Middle East, South America, and Asia have

colleague

collaborated

at London’s Wigmore Hall. She was the founding

received critical acclaim, mesmerizing audiences

with James Ehnes for Prokofiev’s Sonata for Two

violist of the Dover Quartet, playing in the group

across the globe. Mr. Lumanovski has taken the

Violins and Bartók’s 44 Duos (both contributions

from 2008-2022. During that time, the Dover

Christopher

Schmitz,

stage in countless venues, including Carnegie

Quartet was the First Prize-winner and recipient of

Hall (New York), United Nations (New York),

every special award at the 2013 Banff International

Musikverein (Vienna), Luzerner Saal (Luzern),

String Quartet Competition and winner of the Gold Medal and Grand Prize in the 2010 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. Ms. Pajaro-van de Stadt’s numerous awards also include First Prize of the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition to Chandos recordings receiving consecutive

and top prizes at the Sphinx Competition and

Juno Awards for Classical Album of the Year in

the Tokyo International Viola Competition. She

2014 and 2015), and performed the complete Organization

cycle of Beethoven String Quartets in Seoul,

(Geneva), Lufthansa Technik (Hamburg), Pierre

Korea, with the Ehnes Quartet. Recognized as a

Boulez Saal (Berlin), National Radio Symphony

deeply expressive artist, Ms. Moretti enjoys the

Hall (Katowice), Emirates Palace (Abu Dhabi),

opportunity to travel and perform concerts around

Cemal Resit Rey (Istanbul), Expo Yeosu (Korea),

the world. Her many festival appearances include

Heydar Aliev Merkezi (Baku), Casa de la Musica

Bridgehampton, ChamberFest Cleveland, Evian,

(Quito), Berklee Performance Center (Boston), and

La Jolla, Meadowmount, Music@Menlo, Seattle,

is a member of the newly-formed piano quartet

many others. He appeared as the soloist in Elliott

and Manchester Music Festivals. The Cleveland

“Espressivo!”

Carter’s Clarinet Concerto for the composer’s

Institute of Music has honored her with an

Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, and Anna

100th birthday celebration in New York, alongside

Alumni Achievement Award, the San Francisco

Polonsky.

musicians from the New Juilliard Ensemble and

Conservatory of Music their Fanfare Award, and

the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, under

she was named to Musical America’s “Top 30

MAIYA PAPACH is Principal Viola of the

the legendary musical director Pierre Boulez.

Professionals” in 2018.

Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. A member of

World

Intellectual

Property

alongside

esteemed

colleagues

the orchestra since 2008, she has made solo

AMY SCHWARTZ MORETTI

MILENA PAJARO-VAN DE STADT,

appearances in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante

has a musical career of broad versatility. Before

viola, has appeared as soloist with the Tokyo

with concertmaster Steven Copes, Benjamin

becoming the inaugural Director of Mercer

Philharmonic, the Jacksonville Symphony, and the

Britten’s

Violinist

Lachrymae,

and

Woolrich’s

Ulysses 43

Awakes. Ms. Papach has made frequent national

summer of 2016, he has attended the renowned

Music, and a Master’s degree in Curatorial, Critical,

and international appearances as a chamber

Perlman Music Program. Recent summer festival

and Performance Studies at The Orchestra Now of

musician, with versatile performances of both

Bard College. He is pursuing a Doctor of Musical

traditional and contemporary repertoire. She

Arts at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns

is a founding member of the International

Hopkins University. Mr. Savelyev performs and

Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), with whom she performed frequently at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, New York’s Le Poisson Rouge, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and dozens of experimental venues. She has toured

performances include Ravinia’s Steans Music

extensively in the former Soviet Union with the

Institute, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival,

Da Capo Chamber Players, across North America

Encore String Quartet Intensive, and Music from

with Musicians from Marlboro, and has made

Angel Fire. Later this summer, he will attend the

gives lessons worldwide, loves collaborating with

appearances at Prussia Cove (UK), the Boston

Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont. A prize winner

other artists, and is passionate about teaching. He

at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition

is an Altus Flutes Artist.

(Razumovsky String Quartet) and the Johansen

Chamber Music Society, the Chesapeake Chamber

International Competition, Mr. Rosenthal received

Cellist JONATHAN SWENSEN made his

the Silver Medal at the 2021 Primrose International

concerto debut at the age of twenty performing

Viola Competition. He is currently a Kovner Fellow

the Elgar Cello Concerto with Portugal’s Orquestra

at The Juilliard School, where he is completing his

Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música. Since then

Master’s degree with Misha Amory and Hsin-Yun

he has appeared as soloist with the Greenville

Huang.

Symphony

Orchestra,

Mobile

Symphony

Orchestra, Ciudad de Granada, Venice State

Music Festival, the Chattanooga Chamber Music Festival, and Chamber Music Quad Cities. She is

Flutist DENIS SAVELYEV is an international

Symphony Orchestra, Poland’s NFM Leopoldinum

currently a member of Accordo, a Twin Cities-

soloist, chamber, and orchestral player based

Orchestra, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Odense

based chamber ensemble.

in New York and Baltimore. Newly accepted member of the Marlboro Festival, he is the first-

Violist SAMUEL

44

ROSENTHAL began

prize winner of the 2017 New York Flute Club

his musical studies in Cleveland, studying with

Competition, “Rising Star“ at the 2021 Galway Flute

Jeffrey Irvine as a member of the Young Artist

Festival, and Young Artist of the 2019 National

Program at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Flute Association. From Lviv, Ukraine, Mr. Savelyev

His passion for chamber music was ignited by

started to play the flute at age five. He earned a

formative work with the Cavani String Quartet and

Special Degree in Music at Gnesin Academy of

Symphony Orchestra, Armenian State Symphony

Cleveland Quartet violinist Peter Salaff. Since the

Music in Moscow, Master’s at Mannes School of

Orchestra, and the Sun Symphony Orchestra in

Vietnam. Winner of the prestigious 2022 Avery

Chamber Orchestra. He was invited to perform

heard on the Naxos, Telos, Bridge, First Hand,

Fisher Career Grant, he received First Prize at the

in Budapest as part of the First Bartok World

Yarlung, and Artek labels. Awards include the

2018 Young Concert Artists Susan Wadsworth

Competition and in Sendai for the Seventh Sendai

Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of

International Auditions, the 2018 Khachaturian

International Violin Competition. Mr. Thompson

the Year, Gilmore Young Artist Award, Avery Fisher

International Cello Competition, and the 2019

holds Bachelor of Music, Master of Music, and

Career Grant, and Mieczyslaw Munz Scholarship.

Windsor International String Competition. Young

Artist Diploma degrees from the Cleveland

A native of Ohio, he attended the Cleveland

Concert Artists presented his recital debuts in New

Institute of Music; his primary teachers include

Institute of Music and The Juilliard School, where

York on the Michaels Award Concert at Merkin

Jaime Laredo, William Preucil, and Paul Kantor. He

he studied with Emanuel Ax.

Concert Hall, and in Washington, DC on the

currently resides in Rochester, New York, with his

Alexander Kasza-Kasser Concert at the Kennedy

wife, violinist Jeanelle Thompson.

Pianist AMY YANG balances an active career as a soloist, chamber musician, and pedagogue.

Center’s Terrace Theater. Mr. Swenson currently attends the New England Conservatory of Music

Pianist ORION WEISS has performed with

In 2020, she shared the stage with Anne-Marie

for graduate studies.

dozens of orchestras in North America, including

McDermott, Yefim Bronfman, Paul Neubauer, and

the Chicago Symphony, Baltimore Symphony,

the Dover Quartet in a myriad of performances

JAMES THOMPSON enjoys a

Boston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and

at Bravo! Vail. Additionally, she gave her solo

multifaceted career as a chamber musician,

New York Philharmonic, and at major venues and

debut while joining forces with the Jasper String

soloist, educator, and lecturer. He is currently

festivals worldwide. An avid chamber musician,

Quartet in piano quintets by Tania Léon and Joan

Violinist

on faculty at Music@Menlo and has been a

Tower for Philadelphia Chamber Music Society’s

member of the Chamber Music Society of

35th season. 2021 brought appearances with

Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program since 2021. Mr.

violinist Tessa Lark at Wigmore Hall, Gardner

Thompson performs regularly for chamber music

Museum, Cal Performances, Rockport Music

organizations across the country, and serves

Festival, and International Violin Competition of Indianapolis Series. Ms. Yang’s recent appearances include Hawaii Concert Society, Chameleon Arts he performs regularly with violinists Augustin

Ensemble of Boston, The Seattle Series, Music at

Hadelich, William Hagen, Benjamin Beilman, and James Ehnes; pianists Michael Brown and Shai Wosner; cellist Julie Albers; and the Ariel, Parker, and Pacifica Quartets. In recent seasons, he has as the director of Music@Menlo’s annual winter

performed with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra,

residency in California. Solo engagements include

San Francisco Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra,

appearances with The Cleveland Orchestra,

Pittsburgh

the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, the

Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra, and

Pine Street, Coastal Concerts (DE), Philadelphia

Cleveland Pops Orchestra, and the Blue Water

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Mr. Weiss can be

Chamber Music Society (with violist Roberto

Symphony,

Toronto

Symphony

45

Díaz and oboist Philippe Tondre), Santa Fe Music

Atlanta Symphony, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra,

Roosevelt University in Chicago.

Festival (with violinists Danbi Um and Paul Huang),

KBS Symphony Seoul, Frankfurt Radio Symphony,

Cleveland Chamber Music Society, and Chamber

DEREK ZADINSKY has performed in The

German Radio Philharmonic, Orchestre National

Music San Francisco. Ms. Yang is the Associate

Cleveland Orchestra as Assistant Principal Bass

du Capitole de Toulouse, Kremerata Baltica, and

Dean of Piano Studies and Artistic Initiatives at the

since 2021, and as a section member previously,

American Symphony. As a recitalist he performed at

Curtis Institute of Music.

starting in 2012. He currently teaches at the

Carnegie Hall’s Distinctive Debut series, Wigmore

Cleveland Institute of Music, Oberlin Conservatory

Hall, People’s Symphony Concerts, the Louvre

NELSON RICARDO YOVERA PEREZ

Museum, Suntory Hall, and Frankfurt Radio. Mr.

is a member of the horn section in the Civic

Zorman is a member of the Israeli Chamber Project

Orchestra of Chicago and Third Horn of the Battle

and the Lysander Piano Trio, which won the 2012

Creek Symphony Orchestra. He was Principal

Concert Artists Guild Competition. He studied

Horn of the Classical Music Institute Symphony

at the Jerusalem Academy, The Juilliard School,

Orchestra (San Antonio, TX) and the orchestras of

Manhattan School of Music, and the Kronberg

Opera San Antonio and Ballet San Antonio. He is a frequent substitute with the Chicago Symphony

of Music, and Cleveland State University. Mr.

Orchestra and has participated in many summer

Zadinsky has a Bachelor of Music degree from the

festivals, including Marlboro Music Festival, Spoleto

Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with

Festival, and Classical Tahoe. From 2015 to 2018,

Harold Robinson and Edgar Meyer. As a chamber musician, he has performed with Carter Brey, Ray Chen, Jinjoo Cho, Vadim Gluzman, Ida Kavafian, Joseph Silverstein, and members of the Dover

Academy. He is currently a Visiting Guest Artist at

Quartet. As a soloist, he has performed twice with

the Eastman School of Music. Mr. Zorman plays a

orchestras in Carnegie Hall, and has recorded an

1734 Guarneri Del Gesù violin from the collection

album on the Oberlin Music Label, available for

of Yehuda Zisapel.

streaming on Apple Music, Spotify, and Amazon Mr. Yovera Perez was a member of the Simón

Music. Additionally, he has an edition of Bach’s

Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela (the

Cello Suite No. 5 published on Apple Books.

46

RISING STARS The

youngest musician to win a position), including

Rising

Star

Program

of

ChamberFest

multiple tours of Europe and Latin America

Violinist ITAMAR

ZORMAN is the winner

Cleveland, in which talented artists in the early

under the baton of Maestro Gustavo Dudamel.

of the 2014 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, 2013

stages of their careers are chosen to perform

He served as Associate Principal Horn of the San

Avery Fisher Career Grant, and 2011 International

alongside established festival artists, is generously

Juan Symphony Orchestra of Argentina from 2018

Tchaikovsky Competition in Russia. He has

supported by Drs. Beth Sersig and Christopher

to 2021. He is currently pursuing a Bachelor of

performed as a soloist with Mariinsky Orchestra,

Brandt, among others. The program has seen the

Music in Horn Performance with David Cooper at

Israel

Cleveland debuts of many important artists.

Philharmonic,

New World

Symphony,

GUEST ARTISTS FOR THE CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS In Cleveland, ROBIN VANLEAR is perhaps

in 2021. He has performed in gospel, classical,

from Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi.

best known as the founder and director of Parade

and theatric settings, including roles in Godspell,

Recent works include her 2021 Screendance Today

the Circle and the department of Community Arts

Pippin, and Bach’s St. John’s Passion. A University

Could Be the Day, created with Inlet’s Summer

at the Cleveland Museum of Art. However, for the

School alumnus, he attended Kenyon College, the

Dance Intensive students and her documentary

past 34 years, since moving to Cleveland from

University of Iowa, and Rutgers Business School.

Halfway There: Stories of Life, Loss, and Love in

Santa Barbara, CA, Ms. VanLear, often working

West Jackson, produced in collaboration with the

as Art Acts, has been active creating art all over

JOSHUA BROWN graduated with a BA in

homeless population of West Jackson. Ms. Roston

Greater Cleveland. She has created masks and

Theatre Education and a Dance Minor at Ohio

has danced with Inlet since 2018 and serves as the

puppets for The Cleveland Orchestra. Her puppets

Wesleyan University. He danced for Inlet Dance

company’s video production coordinator.

are showcased annually at the CCC JazzFest.

Theatre from 2004 to 2020. Since 2020, he has

Together with Mark Jenks, Ms. VanLear created the

been teaching and training others as an Inlet

KENYA WOODS is a native of Cleveland,

opening parade for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Teaching Artist, occasionally returning to perform.

Ohio, and holds more than 30 years of experience

Her most recent projects include an installation

He currently trains the dancers in Inlet’s Trainee

in dance performance, choreography, teaching,

at Holden Arboretum, a nature trail at Hopewell

and Apprentice Program.

and leadership.

She holds a degree in dance

from Tennessee State University and is certified

Therapeutic Farms, and an annual Lantern Festival for Coventry Village each December. Ms. VanLear

STORY RHINEHART CADIZ is an artist

in Lester Horton Pedagogy, the official technique

was awarded the Robert P. Bergman Award

and choreographer who lives in Shaker Heights

taught at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center.

from the Cleveland Arts Prize and two Creative

with her husband, two daughters, and their

Madame Darvash, Dr. Diane McIntyre and Lynn

Workforce Fellowships. Her newest puppets,

dog, Banton. When she is not choreographing

Simonson have influenced her teaching style

based upon Romare Bearden’s Wrapping It up

or dancing inbrilliant costumes and/or giant

as well. Ms. Woods is currently a faculty teacher

at the Lafayette and created through a Karamu

puppets with her mom, Robin VanLear, she is

of Dance at Case Western Reserve University

House Room in the House Residency, will debut

teaching creative writing to kids and teenagers

for students in the MFA Theater Program. She

June 23 and 24 at this year’s CCC JazzFest.

through Lake Erie Ink. She is thrilled to be getting

continues to teach dance to students of all ages

to perform for the first time in a concert with her

and lead programs that help cultivate technique,

daughter, Sienna Cadiz.

artistry, body awareness and empowerment and

JEREMY JOHNSON is the President and CEO of Assembly for the Arts, an arts advocacy

appreciation for dance.

organization that strengthens and unifies the

STEPHANIE ROSTON is a Columbia,

voice of greater Cleveland’s arts and culture sector.

Missouri native. She began dancing in youth

INLET DANCE THEATRE, a professional

A Cleveland native, Mr. Johnson interned at New

musical theater at the age of 13. She studied

contemporary dance company, was founded

York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. He

with Karen Grundy at the School of Missouri

in 2001 by Executive/Artistic Director Bill Wade.

worked in philanthropy and arts administration

Contemporary Ballet. Ms. Roston received her

Inlet embodies his longstanding belief that dance

in New Jersey before returning to his hometown

BFA in Dance Performance and Choreography

viewing, training, and performing may serve 47

STAFF & BOARD as tools to bring about personal growth and development. During Inlet’s 22-year history, they have transformed from a small dance company with local impact into a celebrated organization that impacts people internationally.

Our core

strengths reside equally in performance and education. Whether performing at local venues, conducting regional residencies or international exchanges, Inlet continues to inspire, educate, and innovate – all with the vision that dance can further people. ChamberFest Cleveland welcomes students from Inlet’s dance program to perform in The Carnival of the Animals.

VILLAGE FAMILY FARMS is an urban community

farm

located

10

miles

from

downtown Cleveland, serving and educating the

ARTISTIC & ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF Diana Cohen....................................Co-Artistic Director Franklin Cohen................................Co-Artistic Director Roman Rabinovich........................Co-Artistic Director Jessica Peek Sherwood.................Executive Director FESTIVAL STAFF Gary Adams....................................................Photography Alan Bise................................................Audio Production Mackenzie Brauns.................Personnel & Production Erica Brenner........................................Video Production Cheryl Carter....................................Box Office Manager Eric Farnan..............................................Festival Librarian Tom Frattare...................................Production Manager Andrew Jerabek......................................Graphic Design Kameryn Lueng..............................Box Office Assistant Anderson Oleskiewicz.......................Festival Assistant Deedee Paster................................................Artist Liaison Sector-Santina...........................................Arts Marketing Lily Sherwood.............................................Festival Intern

community on fresh, locally grown produce. In the heart of the predominantly African American neighborhood of Hough, Jamel Rahkeera and family have transformed vacant lots into a growing and thriving ecosystem in an effort to engage residents in community gardening while selling their chemical-free goods to local stores and restaurants and at farmers markets. ChamberFest Cleveland is thrilled to include talented students from Village Family Farms as performers in this production of The Carnival of the Animals.

48

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Rebecca Carmi, Chair Dan Lindsay, Vice Chair Diana Cohen, President Daniel Bollinger Franklin Cohen Julie Comber-Martin Joyce Glickman Barbara Gross Robert Jackson Dr. Michael Lederman Ellen Loughan Benjamin McKelvey Hedy Milgrom Sarah Kappus Peck Costa Petridis James Robinson Dr. Beth Sersig Kyle Stimpert Christina Thoburn

ADVISORY BOARD Jonathan Biss Irad Carmi Alexander Cohen Marcia Kodish Cohen Gayle Gathercole Lauren Generette John Gibbon Dr. Bernette Jaffe Dr. Damir Janigro Mary Beth Karakul Kurt Karakul Marjorie Kitchell Rabbi Roger C. Klein Nancy Osgood Jeanne Tobin Orion Weiss

IN MEMORIAM

In the past few months, ChamberFest Cleveland has lost three pillars of our extended family: Richard P. (Rick) Goddard, Barbara S. Robinson, and William P. (Bill) Blair III. Their infectious enthusiasm, wise counsel, and generous support played an immeasurable role in our success, and we remember them with deep fondness and gratitude.

Richard P. Goddard, Board member and past Chair of the Board

developing close friendships with several returning musicians

of ChamberFest Cleveland, passed away on March 9, 2023,

who stayed with them year after year. Rick financially supported

in his Cleveland Heights home following a short illness. Born

the organization both personally and as a corporate donor

and raised in Indiana, Rick graduated from Oberlin College in

through Calfee, Halter & Griswold, and he made it possible for

1974 and Washington & Lee University School of Law in 1979.

ChamberFest to hold several benefit events in the firm’s lobby

He joined the Cleveland law firm Calfee, Halter & Griswold in

throughout the years. As annual Ambassador Pass holders,

June 1979, where he became a partner in both the litigation

Rick and Anne could be found in the audience at every festival

and labor departments. Rick and his wife, Anne Unverzagt, were

performance. We will be eternally grateful for Rick’s generosity

among the original supporters of ChamberFest Cleveland. As

of time and expertise as he supported the organization

housing hosts, they graciously welcomed a multitude of guest

on so many levels. Rick will be dearly missed by all of us at

artists into their home beginning in ChamberFest’s first season,

ChamberFest Cleveland.

Born in Cleveland, Barbara S. Robinson was

William P. Blair III passed away on February

celebrated for her devotion to culture and

2, 2023. Born and raised in Canton, Bill was a

the arts in Ohio. She was at the forefront

proud alumnus of The Ohio State University,

of efforts to promote and support arts and

where he received the degrees of Bachelor

culture locally, regionally, and at the state

of Arts in History and Government, Master

and national levels, with an extraordinary

of Arts in Public Administration, and Juris

record of leadership. She served as Chair of

Doctor from the College of Law. He was

the Ohio Arts Council for many years, was

dedicated to his hometown and to his state,

named one of Cleveland Magazine’s “Most

and served with distinction as Executive

Influential” people, and was the recipient of numerous awards and honors

Counsel to the Director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources,

including the Cleveland Arts Prize, Cleveland Institute of Music Luminary

Canton City Prosecutor, private practice attorney since 1977, and as one

Award, the Ohio Governor’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and the

of the state’s most dedicated arts and culture advocates. A passionate

Cleveland Heritage Medal. Barbara was instrumental in the development

supporter of classical music, Bill was a member of ChamberFest Cleveland’s

of ChamberFest Cleveland, serving on its Advisory Board since the

Advisory Board since the organization’s start, lending his voice and

organization’s inception. We are grateful for her love and commitment to

expertise to strengthen and further its mission. His legacy of arts advocacy

the arts in Cleveland and beyond.

will be appreciated for years to come.

49

THANK YOU BENEFACTOR ($5,000 AND ABOVE) Dr. Christopher P. Brandt and Dr. Beth Sersig Yuval Brisker Rebecca and Irad Carmi Franklin and Marcia Cohen Patrick and Kris Ellingsworth Jeffrey and Norma Glazer Joyce Glickman Renate Miller + Barbara Robinson + DONOR ($2,500-$4,999) William P. Blair, III + Diana Cohen and Roman Rabinovich Robert and Donna Jackson Morton and Judith Levin Kenneth and Amy Rogat Dale and Marcie Rubin PATRON ($1,000-$2,499) Carol Battle Mark and Kathleen Binnig Richard Bogomolny and Patricia Kozerefski Daniel Bollinger Marshall and Brenda Brown Alexander Cohen and Tiffany Fauval Barbara Ann Davis John and Pam Gibbon Richard Goddard + and Anne Unverzagt Francis and Maureen Greicius Brooks M. Jones, Jr. Rabbi Roger C. Klein Larry and Barbara Kronick Michael Lederman and Sharmon Sollitto Richard and Barbara Lederman Dan and Courtney Lindsay Ellen and Frank Loughan Benjamin and Sarah McKelvey Deborah Neale Nancy Osgood Sarah and Edward Peck Douglas and Lois Rose Joel and Beth Scott Alice Sherman Charna Sherman Jessica and Tom Sherwood Stephen and Martha Somach Susan Starrett and Jerold Smith John and Ann Steinbrunner Kyle and David Stimpert Bruce and Virginia Taylor Christina and Tom Thoburn

50

Heartfelt thanks to everyone who makes ChamberFest Cleveland possible!

Individual donors as of May 26, 2023

SUPPORTER ($500-$999) Tom and Abby Abelson Ruth Anna Carlson and Albert Leonetti Irene Ten Cate and Parswa Ansari Gary and Debra Franke Barbara Hawley and David Goodman Franklin and Kathleen Hickman Bernette Jaffe Kurt and Mary Beth Karakul Stephan and Lillian Levine Glenn and Ida Mercer Bert and Marjorie Moyar Costa Petridis Patricia Plotkin John and Linda Roush Judy Solganik George and Mary Stark Ronald and Eugenia Strauss Jordan and Jeanne Tobin Carl Tretter Stephen Warner and Carolyn Gladiel Warner Israel and Judith Weitzman CONTRIBUTER ($250-$499) Grete Anderson William and Catherine Annable Bonnie Baker Nancy Bronson David and Debby Daberko Avrum and Phyllis Froimson Gayle Gathercole Robert Gilkeson Barbara Gross and Terry Pollack Linda Johnson Junior Ratner Club William Katzin and Katherine Solender Michael and Sarah Knoblauch Jeff Litwiller Christopher and Gaylee McCracken Vincent M. Monnier Peta Moskowitz Diane Paster Jane Peterson and Philip Star Jeffrey Pollock and Martha Brandt Pollock Richard and Joanne Prober Donald Rosenberg Melvin and Susan Schwarzwald Gunter Schwegler Jan C. Snow Avi Stern and Bracha Cohen Don and Jackie Stimpert Terry Woods

FRIEND (UP TO $249) Nancy A. Adams Anne Adamson Penny Adelstein Samuel Adler Carolyn Alpert Eleanor and Richard Aron James Baker Ken and Sharen Bakke Katherine Ball Victoria Baraz Marilyn Bedol PJ Bednarski Paulette Beech Cynthia Beeker Gina Beim and Mark Freeman Nancy and Russell Benghiat Eleanor Bergholz Judy Bidgood Kaaren Biggin Matthew Bittner Sharon Bleiweiss Stephen Bottorff and Pat Moyer Terry Boyarsky Debra Brass Jung Wha Brindle Kristen Brooks Sharon Broniatowski Mary Brownell David and Doris Budin Jane Busch Claire Brugnoletti Denise Buckley Sharon Chapman Charla Coatoam Joanne Cohen and Morris Wheeler Robert and Sharon Cohen Dana Crowe Anthony Day Ralph Day Joan Delahay Wendy Deuring Maureen Dinner Mary Doherty Michael Doherty Christine Dolce Patricia Dorner Kate Drummond Joan Englund Paul and Caryl Eyre Barbara Fitzhugh and Howie Smith Antonia Forster Douglas and Gail Fox Adam and Susan Fleischer Carol Frankel Hollie Freedman Jean Friedman

Bruce Frumker and Judith Ryder Frumker Richard Galaska Loraine Gardner Peter Garlock Barbara A. Gartland Margaret Geiger Joel Genuth Francesca German Janet Ghiandoni David Gilson Maggie Ginn Walter Ginn Sheldon and Nan Gisser Ruth Anne Goldberg Lois Goldwasser Kathleen González Sally Good Florence Goodman Ron and Marcia Grant Dan Greicius Peter and Joanne Griesinger Dennis Grossman and Julie Short Tom and Kirsten Hagesfeld Megan Hall David and Loraine Hammack Sally Hanley Patti Hester Edith Hirsch Shirley Hoffman Robin J. Holzman Fannie Hood Richard Horvitz and Erica Hartman-Horvitz Anne Hunter Gale and Jim Jacobsohn Nancy Jamieson Catherine Joslyn Maxine Karns Debby Kastner Joel and Nancy Kay Robert Keefe Louis Kelsch and Robin Lieberman Julie Ketterer Emily and Paul Klarreich Donald and Kathleen Kne Andrew and Joan Kohn Nancy and Rik Kohn Emily Koritz Kristen van Kranenburgh Andrew and Susan Krembs Jackie Krentzman Barbara Kuby Chris and Marilyn Langmack Jonathan and Leah Lass Mark Lewine Joanne Lewis

Debra Light Georgia and Whitney Lloyd Agnes Loeffler Jackie Lurie Nikolay Makinin Adin Mann and Suzanne Zilber Richard and Patricia Martin Kevin McCardle Daniel McCroskey Mary McDonnell Frank McNutt Frederick T. McGuire Barbara C. Megery Ian Mercer Betty Meyers Brenda Mikota Antoinette Miller Paula Mindes Glen Minner Timothy Minnis Juanita Monteiro Barbara Morrison Sarah Mortimer Marjorie Moskovitz Barbara Nahra Molly Nash Steve Nash Rachel Wayne Nelson Andrei and Anastasia Nova Mark O’Keefe Patrick Percival Laura Peskin Stacey Pickering Dan Polster and Deborah Coleman Elinor Polster Quentin and Gay Quereau Lyndsey Deane Ratchford Charles Ratner and Ilana Horowitz Ratner A. Rich Marcia Rohweder Daniel Rose Illene Rosewater Dan Rothenfeld Pauline Ryder Marjorie Bell Sachs William Saks Peter and Sylvia Salaff Rodolfo Salas Wilma Salisbury Rick and Judy Schiller Gail and Elliott Schlang Bruce Schwartz and Shelley Roth Lewis and Diane Schwartz Linda Serra M. Ruth Severiens Laura Sheridan

Ronna Sherman Shmuel Shkop Bella Shteyngarts Elaine Siegel Jay and Toby Siegel Allan Silberger Howard and Beth Simon George Smiga Bill Smith Debbie Smith Gretchen D. Smith Kempton and Nancy King Smith Rochelle Solomon Linda Sperry Myron Stern Rachel Sternberg Judith Stroup Diane and Arthur Stupay Peter and Karen Sullivan Fan-Chia Tao Paul Teske Virginia Thomas Carol Tizzano Diane Tizzano Jim and Jean Triner Howard and Sara Tucker Oleksiy Turchyn Steve and Denise Umans Mirfee Ungier Felix and Inna Vilinsky Lorene Ward Ginger Ware Harriet Warm Dave and Diana Watt Beth Weiner Carol Weiss Lita Weiss Robert and Judith Weiss David and Patricia Welle Stephen Wertheim Kathryn Westlake Morley and Ina White Morgan Williams Carol Wilson Kathryn Wisch Pamela and Leonard Young Nan Zieleniec and Michael Kirsch Sandra Zieve + deceased

INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT $30,000-$50,000 The Cleveland Foundation The Milton and Tamar Maltz Family Foundation Paul M. Angell Foundation $20,000-$29,999 The George Gund Foundation $10,000-$19,999 National Endowment for the Arts Ohio Arts Council

FESTIVAL PARTNERS Cinematheque at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cleveland Institute of Music Fireside Book Shop Inlet Dance Theatre Literary Cleveland Loganberry Books Mac’s Backs Books on Coventry Nature Center at Shaker Lakes Open Doors Academy Rainey Institute Seigal Lifelong Learning Program (CWRU) Visible Voice Books

$5,000-$9,999 Kulas Foundation John P. Murphy Foundation $2,000-$4,999 Balgley Family Charitable Foundation Cleveland Israel Arts Connection (a program of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland) Harry Fox and Emma R. Fox Charitable Foundation David and Inez Myers Foundation

CORPORATE SPONSORSHIPS

HOST FAMILIES Steve Brown and Betsy Mahlke David and Carol Entrikin Richard and Christine Elliott Gary and Deb Franke Kurt and Mary Beth Karakul Willie Katzin and Katie Solender Bob and Katie Kibbe Michael and Sarah Knoblauch Glenn Meyer and Kristin Brooks Deedee Paster Bill and Cari Ross Joseph and Antje Vendemia Bryan and Ginger Ware

CONCERT SPONSOR LEVEL Eaton Corporation MUSICIAN SPONSOR LEVEL Beacon Financial Partners CORPORATE HOST LEVEL Danco Home Pro First National Bank Goldman Sachs – Steve Callahan and Joe Hall

SPECIAL THANKS ClevelandClassical.com Carol and David Entrikin Debra Franke John and Pamela Gibbon Cassie Goldbach Grace Harper Mitchell’s Fine Chocolates Mitchell’s Homemade Ice Cream Murray Hill Market Phoenix Coffee Elisabeth Plumlee-Watson Steinway Piano Gallery of Cleveland Valerie Suffron Aaron Terkel Christina Thoburn Matt Weinkam

David and Inez Myers Foundation

51

52

The Wine Spot — proud supporter of ChamberFest Cleveland since 2012. Join us on our patio for a glass of wine, pint of beer or a craft cocktail. We look forward to serving you!

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Wednesday, July 5 at 7:30pm

Thursday, July 13 at 7:30pm

Mixon Hall Cleveland Institute of Music

Mixon Hall Cleveland Institute of Music

July 5 - 16, 2023 Presented by

yu

kho

v

o: E

Phot

for Young Artists

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vg e

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Eva Gevorgyan

CIPC for Young Artists Chamber Round

Gabriela Montero

Sunday, July 9 at 7:30pm Reinberger Chamber Hall Severance Music Center

In partnership with

Our summer programming kicks off with featured recitals leading up to the 2023 CIPC for Young Artists.

You won't want to miss these exceptional performances!

54

CIPC for Young Artists Concerto Round Saturday, July 15 at 7:30pm Gartner Auditorium Cleveland Museum of Art

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November 14, 2023 Danish String Quartet

January 23, 2024 Takács Quartet & MarcAndré Hamelin, piano

February 27, 2024 Steven Isserlis, cello & Connie Shih, piano

March 12, 2024 Pavel Haas Quartet

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May 7, 2024 Garrick Ohlsson, piano

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SO MANY REASONS TO GIVE ChamberFest Cleveland lives by its mission to nurture a deep family-like connection between musicians and audiences of all ages.

Since 2012, CFC has presented world-class chamber music performances throughout the Cleveland metro area. Our 11th season brings expanded community partnerships and outreach to provide even more ways to be introduced to the festival and explore the music and musicians.

With increased digital content and radio broadcasts, CFC now reaches thousands of local, national, and international fans - students and adults alike! Spreading joy and camaraderie through music is the cornerstone of all we do.

Your generosity helps to make it all possible! Please make a gift today to support the music and musicians we love. Every gift, no matter the size, makes an impact.

THANK YOU! ONLINE: chamberfestcleveland.com/donate/ | PHONE: (216) 471-8887 MAIL a check (payable to ChamberFest Cleveland): 20620 John Carroll Boulevard, Suite 217, Cleveland, Ohio 44118