This article originally appeared on thelandcle.org on September 30, 2024 by Zachary Lewis.
The Cleveland Orchestra isn’t the only organization in Northeast Ohio that’s been making great music for decades.
Just a few miles east of Severance Music Center, a much smaller but no less determined organization has also been serenading citizens for a long, long time, and attracting committed followers.
That group? The Cleveland Chamber Music Society (CCMS).
Once an occasional performance presented by a small band of friends, the series has grown into a pillar of classical music in Cleveland. Indeed, the season now starting marks the group’s 75th anniversary, making it one of the region’s longest enduring musical organizations.
“It’s really special to see this group, which brings in major artists, many of them from overseas, enjoy this kind of longevity,” said pianist and composer Eric Charnofsky, a member of the group’s board of directors.
“We’ve been around long enough that we’ve outlived our founders. It is really quite remarkable to consider. The consistency of this organization is something worth celebrating,” Charnofsky added
What is chamber music?
Chamber music, for those outside the world of classical music, is music for small groups of instruments. It’s the counterpart to large-scale genres like orchestral music and opera, encompassing everything from solo pieces to works for four, six, or eight musicians – or more.
The music written for these combinations is incredibly, almost mind-bogglingly great. For example: You may be familiar with the symphonies of Beethoven, but if you haven’t heard his string quartets, you are, without exaggeration, missing out on some of the finest music ever written.
The same is true of great composer after great composer, from one era to the next. If symphonies and operas represent a composer’s public face, their chamber music is often what they wrote for themselves, or for a more limited audience. Where they experimented or gave voice to true feelings.
“You have to have a certain clarity of mind to write this kind of music,” explained Steve Somach, a member of the CCMS program committee and himself an amateur cellist and chamber musician.
“It really is the best of both worlds. You get the richness of an ensemble but with individual voices that are more intimate and expressive. Being able to experience that is the most gratifying thing in music. When it’s just a few individuals, I feel so much more invested in the music they’re playing,” Somach said.
The 75th Season
All of this will be clear to anyone who attends a CCMS concert in the 2024-25 season. Rich, eclectic, and uncommonly expansive, the 75th season surveys the art form about as well as any one lineup possibly can. String music has been the Society’s bread and butter, but this year’s list also includes music for voice, piano and woodwinds.
The first offering is Chanticleer, a 12-part male chorus that ranks as one of the most successful and discerning ensembles of its kind. After that comes a parade of top-notch talent including pianist Michelle Cann, Imani Winds, Cuarteto Casals, flutist Emmanuel Pahud, pianist Alessio Bax, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (an ensemble, not a series).
For many, though, the highlight will be the season finale: a performance by the renowned Jerusalem String Quartet of all 15 string quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich, over five days at the Cleveland Museum of Art. It’s an epic undertaking, an exhaustive, penetrating journey certain to leave listeners shattered.
“It was absolutely inspiring,” concluded Somach after hearing a portion of the cycle recently in New York City. “They brought the house down. This should be an incredible artistic event. It’s a case of the whole being so much greater than the sum of the individual parts.”
The same might be said of CCMS itself, that the organization at 75 means far more than any one concert or season it presents.
The role of CCMS
Between other presenters and schools like the Cleveland Institute of Music, Baldwin Wallace University and Oberlin College, Northeast Ohio does not lack for chamber music. Still, in the local ecosystem of classical music, CCMS plays a vital role, regularly hosting some of the biggest names in the field, artists that may stand outside the mission or budgets of other presenters in the region.
CCMS is fortunate in the latter regard. The well-heeled professionals who founded the Society in 1949 upped its chances of survival with an ample endowment, one that has allowed the group to present world-class talent and bolstered it through thick and thin. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it was the endowment that supported a digital series called “Safe with Sound.”
“That has given us the security to continue to the present day,” Somach said. “It’s been looked after very carefully and provides a considerable percentage of our operating expenses.”
CCMS also has endured as something of a standard-bearer, an organization less interested in the here-and-now than in the eternal.
In many ways, this has paid off. Where other presenters and ensembles highlight early or contemporary music, CCMS has largely held the torch for the classical canon, nurturing a large, devout fan base with a focus on the string chamber works of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries.
“We make every effort to bring in the absolute best groups,” Somach said. “Having the trust of our audience is really critical. Anyone who attends our concerts can feel confident that it will be excellent and inspiring.”
The challenge has been reaching the unconverted, of gaining new listeners in a world of shrinking attention spans and exploding entertainment options.
On this front, the society sees room for growth. Even as the group has gone to great lengths to make concerts affordable, a renewed emphasis on outreach to schools and other public facilities would also be beneficial, Somach said. Charnofsky, meanwhile, said the society must make engaging diverse artists and programming a wider range of music top priorities.
“There’s been some effort on this, and it needs to continue,” Charnofsky said. “It’s our objective to see what music we may have missed and who’s performing it. We just need to make sure we’re always meeting the same level of quality.”
Neither party is worried, of course. Their faith in the power of chamber music is secure, their confidence in their group’s endurance unwavering.
These senses are not irrational. People have been fretting over classical music, bemoaning its largely older audiences, for more than a century. If the Cleveland Chamber Music Society were going anywhere, it would have gone there already, long before its 75th anniversary, before one of the boldest seasons in the group’s history.
“It’s really great that we’ve had staying power, especially with chamber music, which can have a limited audience,” Somach said. “Many organizations haven’t had the longevity we’ve had, and we still see no end in sight.”
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CLEVELAND CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY’S 2024-25 SEASON
All concerts begin at 7:30 p.m. Unless otherwise noted, most concerts take place at the Cultural Arts Center of Disciples Church, 3663 Mayfield Rd., Cleveland Heights. Tickets and information at clevelandchambermusic.org.
Sept. 24
Chanticleer
Oct. 15
Imani Winds with pianist Michelle Cann
Nov. 12
Cuarteto Casals
Jan. 21
Flutist Emmanuel Pahud with pianist Alessio Bax
Feb. 11
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
April 21-30 (five concerts)
Cleveland Museum of Art
The Jerusalem Quartet performs the complete Shostakovich String Quartets