ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad

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

by

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)

by

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)

by

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

by

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…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us