Transformer
Station
June
21
 |
| Synergy in a high-powered industrial space. |
A
good festival breaks new ground even as it builds a core audience
around familiar programming. A great festival takes listeners places
they’ve never been – musically and, in the case of Cleveland, to
the West Side.
Though
a confirmed cosmopolite, this critic had not been to the Transformer
Station in Ohio City before the Friday night ChamberFest concert. The
building proved to be as interesting as the music. A one-time
electrical substation that powered the Detroit Ave. streetcar line,
it is a solid and attractive piece of industrial architecture built
in 1924. Owners Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell preserved and refurbished
all the best elements, including an eye-popping ceiling crane capable
of lifting 15 tons, and grafted on a clean, modern addition that
mirrors the 1971 Marcel Breuer addition to the Cleveland Museum of
Art. The Transformer Station now houses the Bidwells’ collection of modern
art, and will be mounting exhibitions in conjunction with CMA.
The
concert took place in the expansion, where the sound was surprisingly
good. Actually, it was amazingly good, to the point where commentator
Patrick Castillo declared it one of the best chamber music venues
he’s ever heard. That may say more about Castillo than the
facility, which supports a warm and full though not very crisp sound,
with powerful resonance in the lower registers. An array of
portable sound baffles helped. Still, there’s no question that
along with a fine new gallery, the Bidwells have created a promising
performance space.
“I
will encourage ChamberFest to put us on their calendar next year,”
Fred Bidwell says. “I thought the program and the performances were
terrific, particularly the more contemporary pieces, which seemed to
be really well-suited to the space.”
Did
the Friday concert really need to open with a repeat of Mozart’s
Quintet from the previous night? From a planning standpoint,
probably. Musically, it wasn’t much of an improvement, once again
technically flawless but emotionally bloodless. The tight quarters
gave the piece a little more life, but could not instill passion and
urgency.
The
star of the evening was violinist/violist Yura Lee, whose feet barely
touch the ground when she is sitting on a piano bench. But she is a
giant as a performer, with sharp technical skills and an absolutely
fearless attitude, attacking pieces head-on and plumbing them for
expressive depth. Her version of Schnittke’s A Paganini was
strikingly mature in both sound and style, with virtuoso control in
the closing fadeout. The tone of her highest notes was so pure, they
could have been produced by a theremin.
“This
is one of the most neurotic things you’ve ever heard” Castillo
said by way of introducing Janáček’s
String Quartet No. 1.
That’s one way to describe it. Another would be as one of the most
groundbreaking chamber works of the 20th century, written in the
composer’s unique and highly influential musical language.
Cleveland’s Omer Quartet gave an impressive reading of the piece
last month to conclude the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s
2012-13 season, then took it to South Bend, where they won the Grand
Prize in the Fischoff Competition.
Again,
the virtues of a standing ensemble over an ad hoc assemblage came to
the fore. The players – violinists David McCarroll and Ying Fu,
violist Dimitri Murrath and cellist Gabriel Cabezas – were smart
and skilled, and handled the work’s technical challenges with
aplomb. But the fine edges, shifting tempos and emotional integrity
of the piece came up short. To be fair, this is a difficult work for
even experienced quartets to realize properly, and the organizers
deserve credit for putting it on the program.
The
concert concluded with a Handel Passacaglia arranged for
strings by Johan Halverson. Lee and Murrath hit it at a fast clip and
never let up, showing blazing technique and developing some
interesting tones and contrasts in the work’s short duration. It’s
an unusual choice for a concert closer, but the performance brought
the audience to their feet, eliciting cheeky whistling and yelling
along with enthusiastic applause.
Great
music in a stimulating setting will do that.
For
more on the Transformer Station:
http://www.transformerstation.org/
For
more on Yura Lee:
http://chamberfestcleveland.com/portfolio/yura-lee/
Photo by Gary Adams
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