by Timothy Robson
Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra celebrated the Valentine’s Day weekend with four performances of “L’Amore: An Old Italian Valentine.” I heard the second concert on the evening of Valentine’s Day itself at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights. Apollo’s Fire conductor and harpsichordist Jeannette Sorrell greeted the audience with the adage, “Italian is the language of music, of the angels, and of love.” [Read more…]
by Timothy Robson
Despite the lurid title of last weekend’s Apollo’s Fire concerts — Three Duels and a Funeral — no blood was shed onstage at St. Paul’s Church in Cleveland Heights on Friday evening, March 8. The entertaining program concocted by director Jeannette Sorrell was a set of concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach and Antonio Vivaldi, plus a humorous solo cantata by Georg Philipp Telemann eulogizing a talented, but murdered, canary. Each of the works had its own imaginative character. [Read more…]
by David Kulma
Is it possible to take the standard song and dance forms of your time and turn them into virtuosic devotional meditations on the life of Christ? The composer and master violinist Heinrich Biber answered this question in the affirmative back in the 1670s with a set of 16 violin works — 15 sonatas with continuo and a solo passacaglia — meant to take the musicians through the Mysteries of the Rosary. And not only are these works demanding in scope, they require complex scordatura — retuning the violin’s strings to new notes for each sonata and giving each work its own color and resonance.
by Daniel Hathaway
Tell your friends you’re headed to a Biber concert and their thoughts will immediately turn to a certain Canadian pop star. There’s another Biber, of course, probably famous only in early music circles, and Apollo’s Fire will treat its audiences to a good chunk of one of his violin masterworks this weekend.
Violinists Carrie Krause, Johanna Novom, Adriane Post, and Karina Schmitz will take turns playing nine of the fifteen virtuosic pieces that make up Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s “Rosary” Sonatas — musical meditations on the five Joyful Mysteries, the five Sorrowful Mysteries, and the five Glorious Mysteries of the life of Christ. Probably written in the 1670s, but unknown to modern ears until first published in 1905, the devotional work is preserved in a beautiful manuscript held in the Bavarian State Library.
The sonatas are pictorial and expressive, but a special feature of the collection is Biber’s requirement that the violin strings be re-tuned for most of the pieces after the first sonata. This practice is called scordatura. “What I love about it is that it changes the resonance of the instrument so much,” Karina Schmitz said in a telephone conversation. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Stevens
ACRONYM — Anachronistic Cooperative, Realizing Obscure Nuanced Yesteryear’s Masterpieces — does not play the kind of music that marketers can brand as “relaxing.” Just as classical musicians have questioned the selling of their art as soporific and soothing, these twelve string and keyboard players reject sleepiness, self-seriousness, and the confines of the canon. On The Battle, the Bethel & the Ball, they pursue their stated mission of giving life to unknown, “wild instrumental music of the 17th century.” [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
Venice can be pretty wet in November, but the music of Apollo’s Fire this weekend took us there and back with shoes dry and hearts warmed. With music director Jeannette Sorrell as tour guide, “Love in Venice: A Multicultural Fiesta” took us not only to palazzi on the Grand Canal, but also ushered us safely through the crowded streets and tiny squares where Jews and Arabs traded and mixed — not always comfortably — with the ruling Christians. I attended the Sunday, November 20 performance at Rocky River Presbyterian Church. [Read more…]
by Christine Jay
One of the most remarkable elements of mankind is its ability to endure. History is filled with stories of people struggling, failing, succeeding, and surviving, but few have endured the centuries of exile and forced displacement experienced by the Jews. Performing an inspired program devised by artistic director Jeannette Sorrell, soprano Nell Snaidas, baritone Jeffrey Strauss, and cellist René Schiffer, Apollo’s Fire gave a sensational concert on February 5 at St. Paul’s Church in Cleveland Heights. [Read more…]