News

Cleveland Classical | Mike Telin

Founded in 2012 by Diana and Franklin Cohen, ChamberFest Cleveland has become a highly anticipated event each June for people seeking an immersive chamber music experience.

If the absence of live Festival performances this summer is leaving a void in your soul, take note: ChamberFest is collaborating with WCLV 104.9 Ideastream to broadcast nine programs drawing on material from all eight festival seasons on the station’s Wednesday evening “Ovations” Series and six, one-hour Sunday evening broadcasts. WCLV co-founder Robert Conrad will host and produce the series. Click here to view the schedule.

It’s no secret that since the pandemic caused the cancellation of all live performances, there has been a seemingly never-ending “stream” of performances by musicians and arts organizations over the Internet. Coupled with the reality that our lives are now spent in front of a glowing computer screen, this has caused our eyes and minds to grow weary.

Read the full article

Cleveland Classical | Daniel Hathaway

ChamberFest Cleveland patrons will be thrilled to learn that the popular early summer concert series founded in 2012 by Diana and Franklin Cohen won’t be completely missing in action this year due to the pandemic.

In lieu of its ninth season of live performances, ChamberFest is collaborating with WCLV to broadcast nine programs from its high-quality concert archives. The performances, which draw on material from all eight festival seasons, will be broadcast on the station’s Wednesday evening “Ovations” Series on June 24, August 5, and August 12 from 8:00 to 10:00 pm, and in a series of six, one-hour Sunday evening broadcasts from June 28 through August 2, all at 8:00 pm.

Read the full article

Dear Friends,

Over the past several weeks we, like many, have been waiting and watching with hope for a sign that gathering together again in large groups would be safe and welcome. Today we accept with sadness that this is not to be, and announce that our 2020 Festival, Carte Blanche!, will not take place this June as planned. The health and safety of all is paramount and our hearts go out to those who are on the front lines confronting the reality of a pandemic.

While we are heartbroken not to be bringing live performances to the stage for our beloved audiences, our community of musicians are already remarkably and resiliently working with us to reschedule Carte Blanche! in 2021.

Please stay tuned.. Thanks to our Digital Performance Library on YouTube, radio station WCLV, and so many other new and fun ways to connect nothing will deter us from the mission that inspired us: “to nurture a deep family-like connection between musicians and audiences of all ages.”

Music is alive and well and we will all be together again soon.

Yours in music,

Franklin Cohen and Diana Cohen, Co-Artistic Directors

Cleveland Classical | Mike Telin

ChamberFest Cleveland wrapped up its seventh season with an excellent concert on Saturday, June 30 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. “Dawn of a Revolution” included works by Claude Debussy, a world premiere by Sebastian Chang, and a musical tapestry woven with inspired new choreography by David Shimotakahara.

The performance of Debussy’s sublime Violin Sonata by Noah Bendix-Balgley and pianist Roman Rabinovich was, in a word, stunning. Playing with a smooth, liquid tone, Bendix-Balgley made the intricate lines of the opening Allegro vivo sound easy. He brought clarity to the recurring, downward triadic motif that ties the movement together. Rabinovich matched that clarity with his light touch. The duo made everything so effortless it was easy to forget how complicated Debussy’s writing is. The Intermède: Fantasque et léger was highlighted by refined, well-shaped lines and nuanced articulations, while the Finale: Très animé exuded thoughtful energy, bringing this gripping performance to a brilliant close.

Read the full article

Cleveland Classical | Nicholas Stevens

In the fifth concert of this year’s ChamberFest Cleveland season, programming took “A Turn in the Road” amid the festival’s theme of searching for freedom. Three trios played works by Alban Berg, George Crumb, and Antonín Dvořák, each of whom sought liberation from aesthetic constraints in some way. The resulting musical experience on June 21 in the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall had remarkable stylistic and sonic range.

Spoken commentary prefaced the performance by Diana Cohen, Franklin Cohen, and Roman Rabinovich of Berg’s Adagio for violin, clarinet, and piano. Rabinovich pointed out some of the compositional intricacies that lace the score, and even played one of Berg’s themes in a harmonization more reminiscent of Richard Strauss, a contemporary. That the Cohens and Rabinovich viewed Berg’s work as a modernist alternative to Straussian sensuality became clear in performance.

Read the full article

Cleveland Classical | Alice Koeninger

Rick Maron and Judy Eigenfeld’s Glass Box was filled with people celebrating a special Father’s Day brunch complete with chamber music on
Sunday, June 17. The title of the third ChamberFest Cleveland concert, Let Them Loose, felt applicable as the musicians performed in front of windows looking out across the city towards the lake.

Read the full article

ChamberFest Cleveland, the celebrated summer music festival, will embark upon its first Winter Mini Festival this December showcasing world-renowned pianist and ChamberFest fan favorite, Roman Rabinovich. Rabinovich will perform a series of three piano recitals, each dedicated to the solo sonatas of Franz Josef Haydn. The concerts will take place Sunday, December 11th at the Music Settlement at 3:30pm, the Tuesday the 13th at the home of Franklin Cohen at 7:30pm, and Friday the 16th at The Dunham Tavern Museum at 7:30pm. Light refreshments will be available at each concert.

Roman Rabinovich’s musical affinity for Haydn is the centerpiece of his 16-17 season “Haydn Project.” Rabinovich is dedicated to fulfilling his dream of playing all of Haydn’s 45 piano sonatas and is halfway through them. He will perform 15 of the Haydn piano sonatas at the ChamberFest Cleveland Winter Concert Series. He has performed this year at the Lammermuir Festival in Scotland and at the Tel Aviv Conservatory in Israel, along with upcoming debut appearances with the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse (November 2017), and the Calgary Philharmonic (May 2017). In 2018 he will play all of the sonatas in fifteen days at the Bath Festival in the UK.

Praised by the New York Times for his “uncommon sensitivity and feeling,” the eloquent young Rabinovich is the winner of the 2008 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition. Of Haydn, Rabinovich has said, “He is like a magician who sets up expectations, and when you start following him he completely defies them.”

ChamberFest Cleveland, founded by Franklin Cohen, principal clarinetist emeritus of The Cleveland Orchestra, and his daughter, Diana Cohen, concertmaster of The Calgary Philharmonic, has been gaining high praise as part of the Cleveland arts scene since it began in 2012.

Tickets for the Winter Mini Festival are $35 general admission, $25 for young professionals ages 25 to 35, $12 for students, and $5 for children 12 and under. A subscription to all three concerts is $90. To order in advance call (216) 471-8887. Online tickets sales will begin on October 14th at chamberfestcleveland.com. To learn more about featured soloist Roman Rabinovich and the “Haydn Project,” visit http://www.romanrabinovich.net/.

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Wine. Visual art. Human beings. These things can take decades to develop and be appreciated.

ChamberFest Cleveland, on the other hand? It’s only five summers old but already has emerged as one of the region’s richest cultural assets.

Case in point: the festival’s 2016 season. Titled “Tales and Legends,” the just-announced lineup for this summer reflects the depth, creativity, and ambition of a mature institution.

“It’s amazing how much material there really is,” said ChamberFest co-founder Diana Cohen of the 2016 theme. Cohen founded the festival along with her father, clarinetist Franklin Cohen. “That idea of stories? There’s a lot there.”

Read the full article