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Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute: Week One, Day Six (Saturday, June 24)

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by Daniel Hathaway

BPIBarOrch0624Though we were kept very busy this week, by Friday people were relaxing into their routines and there was time and opportunity to get to know one another a little better.

As coachings went on, I had some nice conversations with my fellow ensemble members, who brought a bit more experience to the Baroque Performance Institute than others, but reflected the expansive age range of participants (in our case from teens to 70s).

Luka Stefanović, the cellist, is 17, but already has an impressive track record on the modern cello (his father plays violin in the Baltimore Symphony). Florence Peacock, the soprano (from Chapel Hill, NC), has attended BPI for many years and has managed to overcome auditory problems with the help of high-tech hearing aids — she’s amazing. [Read more…]

Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute: Week One, Day Five (Friday, June 23)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Couperin-FrancoisIf people seemed a bit wooly-headed on Friday morning, the day began with Donner und Blitzen: nearly everybody sleeping near a window was rudely awakened about 5 in the morning by bright flashes of lightning and heavenly timpani.

Mark Edwards spent two hours in his harpsichord class reflecting on the finer points of ornamentation and touch, beginning with a Rondeau by François Couperin whose languorous first half suddenly turned lively. Edwards pointed out that Couperin was an awesome player whose notation of ornaments preserved all his niceties of touch and style. In a second work, Edwards advised a student to make a difference between a downward motion and the feeling of gripping the sound of the instrument toward you. [Read more…]

Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute: Week One, Day Four (Thursday, June 22)

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by Daniel Hathaway

LCouperin-Prelude-in-dRhythm is right up there with harmony as a pillar of Baroque music. So it’s curious that French composers like Louis Couperin, Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre and Jean-Henri D’Anglebert invented the concept of “unmeasured preludes” and notated them as shown here.

The calligraphy is beautiful on the page, but how do you rhythmicize those notes at the keyboard? Mitzi Meyerson devoted much of Thursday morning’s harpsichord master class to that topic, beginning as always with student performances. [Read more…]

Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute: Week One, Day Three (Wednesday, June 21)

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by Daniel Hathaway

D'anglebert-table-of-ornamentsLisa Crawford spent Wednesday’s harpsichord master class drilling down into French keyboard practice and technique. I was the first to play, and the piece was Jean-Henri D’Anglebert’s arrangement of Lully’s Ouverture to Proserpine. Here, Crawford concentrated on notes that needed emphasis or de-emphasis though articulation, an effect that could partly be accomplished by fingering.

Broadening the topic to editions of works, she said that the beautiful, digitally engraved score I and most of the class had downloaded from IMSLP — everyone’s favorite online source for free music — presented problems. [Read more…]

Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute: Week One, Day Two (Tuesday, June 20)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Meyerson-HuddleAt BPI, as elsewhere in the musical universe, master classes are the principal conduit for transferring wisdom from teachers to students. Rather than just dryly lecturing on abstract topics, distinguished musicians use performances of selected works as the springboard for discussions of matters both wide and narrow.

Harpsichord master classes on Monday with Lisa Goode Crawford, Mark Edwards, and Mitzi Meyerson offered a long list of takeaways, but also introduced BPI’s 22 harpsichordists to the unique personalities of their mentors [Read more…]

Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute: Week One, Day One (Monday, June 19)

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by Daniel Hathaway

AnnaHoffmanIntroductionOn Sunday evening, Anna Hoffmann, the indefatigable and unflappable manager of summer programs, welcomed 120-some participants to the 2017 Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute at an organizational meeting in Kulas Recital Hall.

During a roll call, faculty members sorted out details particular to their students. ‘Need to borrow a baroque bassoon? We can loan you one.’ (‘Or at least part of a bassoon,’ quipped another teacher.) And BPI director Kenneth Slowik urged students, who range in age from high school to octogenarians, to make the most of the experience by venturing out of their comfort zone to try other instruments or disciplines — an opportunity you wouldn’t be offered at most other summer music camps. [Read more…]

ClevelandClassical.com to cover Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute from the inside

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by Daniel Hathaway

Oberlin BPI Viol ClassOn Sunday, your editor is going off to summer camp for two weeks.

In a recent conversation with Oberlin Conservatory baroque flute professor Michael Lynn, Mike Telin and I mused about covering the annual Baroque Performance Institute from a new perspective in this, its 46th season. Thus the idea was hatched of imbedding someone in the Institute to report on the experience from the perspective of a student. Lynn noted that this summer’s activities would especially favor the harpsichord, so guess who was put forward as the logical choice.

By the end of the day, members of the BPI faculty had enthusiastically signed off on the idea, so on June 18, I will join 123 other participants whose birth dates span a remarkable range from 1927 to 2003 for “Traveling Through the Baroque 1650-1750.”   [Read more…]

CD Review
Les Délices: Age of Indulgence

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by Daniel Hathaway

Les-Delices-Indulgence-CDWhen an ensemble’s programs are as carefully curated as those of Cleveland’s Les Délices, it makes perfect sense to preserve them nearly intact in the form of a recording. Age of Indulgence is a case in point. Presented twice in November of 2015, the program delivered everything the ensemble is known for: expert, accessible performances of French Baroque repertoire using a small number of players in inventive combinations, always chosen to make an artistic point without pretense or pedantry, and performed without intermission in the course of an hour and a quarter. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra: West Side Story (the movie) at Severance Hall (June 4)

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by Daniel Hathaway

WSSAfter the deaths of Riff and Bernardo during the rumble in West Side Story, Ice tells the simmering Jets to “keep cool, boy.” Associate conductor Brett Mitchell minded that advice early on Sunday afternoon at Severance Hall when his video monitor gave up the ghost right after intermission. Calmly watching two technicians grapple with that show-stopping problem, he quipped to the audience, “We could just tell you how it ends.” After some tugging on wires, the monitor came to life and the 1961 film version of the show went on to its inevitable, tragic climax amid the symphonic splendor of live music from The Cleveland Orchestra. [Read more…]

Good Company: “I Dream a World” at Lakewood Presbyterian (May 21)

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by Daniel Hathaway

good-companyGood Company: A Vocal Ensemble gave an immensely varied concert at Lakewood Presbyterian Church on Sunday afternoon, May 21 under its new conductor, Michael Carney, who replaces the avocational chorus’s founder, the late Karen Weaver. The entertaining program followed an unusual format: Amethyst Strings played a prelude (a movement from J.S. Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto), an intermission piece (Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah), and a postlude (a movement from Mozart’s Divertimento No. 1). [Read more…]

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