Assessment: Worldwide roster of classical musicians shine in second Chamberfest West

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            One yr in the past, Chamberfest West inaugurated its new summer time chamber music pageant with a sequence of live shows grandly entitled Massive Bang. This explosive and auspicious starting continued this yr with a second season of Chambertfest West, this time entitled Resonance. Whereas the title may counsel a sure modesty, the live shows have been something however modest. This second incarnation of the brand new pageant demonstrated a powerful maturity past final yr’s high-quality opening, evident within the imaginative programming and within the completely superlative performances.

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           Even essentially the most musically discerning members of the viewers made some extent of stopping me throughout intermissions to rave about particular performers, works, and the programming that had impressed them.

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          Whereas the pageant is modelled upon the Cleveland model of Chamberfest (additionally organized by the CPO concertmaster Diana Cohen and her pianist husband Roman Rabinovich and Cohen’s father, Franklin Cohen), the 2 festivals are totally completely different of their programming and in a lot of the performers. Solely the 2 most important pianists represent a major overlap within the performers.

         Every of this yr’s Chamberfest West’s 5 applications had a unique title and focus, applications that mixed new works with established, conventional masterpieces. New this yr was the participation of soprano Susanna Phillips, a singer of exceptional expertise and excellent voice, whose singing gave a brand new dimension to the pageant. Phillips was featured in a high-quality new set of songs specifically composed for her by pianist/composer Michael Stephen Brown; elsewhere she sang music by Schubert, Respighi, and Korngold.

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        This yr’s pageant had a Shakespearean tinge, evident a program entitled Dances with Shakespeare and within the ultimate program Sunday night labeled If Music Be the Meals of Love. Past Shakespearean allusions, there have been many delicate programming interconnections. These included such parts as a program primarily based on variation methods, a program that featured John Adam’s Shaker Loops, primarily based in a unique sort of variation approach. This program additionally included historical and fashionable harpsichord variations; and even the gradual motion of the concluding Archduke Trio by Beethoven simply occurs to be a set of variations. Clearly, a lot thought and care went into the selection of the works carried out.

 As an alternative of a single venue for the live shows, they have been held in numerous performing areas. I used to be in a position to attend the ultimate two applications, held on the Jack Singer Live performance Corridor stage and the Bella Live performance Corridor of Mount Royal College respectively. However the venue that attracted essentially the most consideration was the Thursday live performance held at The Bow. If this venue is included in subsequent yr’s pageant, a full home might be anticipated.

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  As performances, the 2 live shows I heard may hardly have been bettered. Every contained fashionable or older works adopted by a serious blockbuster that featured one of many two pianists. The Saturday live performance, as talked about above, began with hardly ever heard harpsichord music: William Byrd’s The Bells and Gyorgy Ligeti’s jazz inflected Hungarian Rock. Whereas the harpsichord and piano are each keyboard devices, it’s a very completely different factor to play every instrument. However one had no sense in these performances that each Michael Stephen Brown and Roman Rabinovich are each at coronary heart pianists, so idiomatic was the taking part in of the harpsichord.

            The title piece for this live performance was Shaker Loops, considered one of John Adams’s best-known works, stuffed with advanced textures and coinciding and non-coinciding rhythms, all in his patented minimalist type. Semi-soloistic in its writing, the piece benefitted tremendously from the excessive performing stage of every performer, the evident virtuosity of every participant making a vibrant buzz to the efficiency, consultant, musically talking, of the spiritual ecstasy of New England Shakers of the previous.

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            The ultimate work on this program was Beethoven’s Archduke Trio, one of many composers most tasty chamber works and with a tremendously difficult half for the piano. Michael Stephen Brown, as a performing persona, has one thing of the concerto soloist method about him, and he considerably dominated the musical proceedings, not less than in quantity of sound. Within the efficiency general, nonetheless, the 2 string gamers, violinist Liza Ferschtman and cellist Jonathan Swensen have been worthy companions, not just for their full technical assurance however much more for the conviction they introduced to each observe they performed. This was etched, muscular taking part in,the music constructing to an exuberant conclusion that introduced all the viewers to its ft on the conclusion.

            The ultimate program Sunday was no much less thrilling. Susanna Phillips was splendid within the songs composed for her, her diction clear, and her voice beguiling always. Entitled Love’s Lives Misplaced, the songs are impressed by the love relationship of Clara and Robert Schumann, the eight songs a riff on Schumann’s personal music cycle Frauenliebe und Leben. The enticing poetry by Evan Shinners is suffused with nostalgia in fashionable vein however can also be witty in locations, particularly within the rhymed poem on Kalamazoo.      

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            Michael Stephen, Brown, the composer and accompanist, offered delicate accompaniments, a few of them prolonged instrumental reflections on the texts within the method of Schumann, if with harmonies that evoked the sound world of Ravel. Two mainstream works adopted: Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet and Robert Schumann’s Quintet in E-flat main for piano and strings. Each have been superbly balanced, built-in performances, with a excessive diploma of sophistication in efficiency from all performers.

            A formidable factor of the pageant general was the cadre of gamers themselves: all have the flexibility of concerto soloists, however additionally they have prolonged expertise with chamber music and are dedicated to the thought of creating music with others. The person virtuosity of the gamers all the time serves this frequent musical goal.

            This mentioned, one couldn’t assist discover the management of Franklin Cohen within the Mozart quintet, a piece he should have carried out numerous occasions and wherein a sure autumnal high quality must emerge. Steady and measured, however alive to nuance, this was the best stay efficiency I’ve heard of this nice Mozartian work. Rabinovich was the pianist within the Schumann quintet that closed the pageant in an outstanding account of this extremely enticing piece.

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            The particular, inward, high quality of the gradual motion was transferring, contrasting with the playful qualities of the sparklingly scherzo. A beautiful second got here within the first motion in the place the soulful cello reaches for the highest of a phrase solely to move it off to the viola which has to proceed and full what the cellist begins. Magical moments right here.  Certainly, magical moments abounded on this efficiency, with Rabinovich’s exceptional virtuosity all the time serving the music, pushing it ever ahead and offering the elan to the richly written string elements. Not often has a chamber efficiency moved its viewers so fully.

            As an occasion, this yr’s Chambertfest West was of the best worldwide commonplace and shall be laborious to prime. The one factor sure is that the inventive administrators are going to do their greatest to attempt.

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