ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad
Ad

Caleb Hudson pushes his limits in upcoming Apollo’s Fire concerts

by

by Stephanie Manning

For trumpet player Caleb Hudson, practicing J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 can feel like training for the Olympics.

“You kind of have to clear your schedule in terms of your repertoire,” Hudson said in a recent interview. “Not only does it take a lot of time to develop that endurance, but it’s just such a specialized piece that requires so much energy — it’s so nerve wracking.”

But Hudson loves the challenge, and Brandenburg No. 2 has become one of his signature pieces. The trumpeter has performed it with orchestras around the country and during the decade he spent as a member of the Canadian Brass. And he’s once again putting his Olympic training plan in action, as he gears up to perform the work with Apollo’s Fire on October 18, 19, 20, and 22. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: festive, virtuosic Bach (Apr. 26)

by

by Peter Feher

Apollo’s Fire resurrected its take on J.S. Bach’s Easter Oratorio over the weekend, returning to this choral masterpiece that the ensemble last presented almost two decades ago.

Performances of the Easter Oratorio don’t exactly abound every year, and the reason is less than straightforward. Staging the work is something of a production, approaching the monumental scale of similar Bach compositions — the Passions, the B-Minor Mass, the Christmas Oratorio — but nowhere near as imposing. This contrast has meant that a great piece of music has sometimes been treated as not quite great enough.

Which is a shame because the Easter Oratorio is one of Bach’s most consistently uplifting scores. [Read more…]

Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen to make Apollo’s Fire debut in two of J.S. Bach’s Easter works

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Countertenors lead interesting and varied professional lives that are reflected in the wide range of roles they sing.

Take the example of Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, who will make his Apollo’s Fire debut this weekend in a pair of Johann Sebastian Bach’s rarely performed Easter works.

Cohen, who graduated from Princeton in 2015, will come to Cleveland immediately after returning to his alma mater to sing the role of the Angel in Edward Elgar’s mystical Roman Catholic oratorio The Dream of Gerontius. 

And with Apollo’s Fire, the countertenor, who grew up in a Jewish household, sang in synagogue, and studied cantorial music, will sing the allegorical role of Fear (Furcht) in Bach’s Cantata 66, then take on the persona of Mary Magdalene in the composer’s Easter Oratorio —  two Pietist Lutheran works.

“My two alter egos,” Cohen quipped in a recent telephone interview. [Read more…]

DIARY: Thursday, April 25, 2024

by

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Beginning tonight at 7:30 pm at Federated Church in Chagrin Falls, Apollo’s Fire — under the direction of Jeannette Sorrell —  reaches back a mere 300 years to celebrate Easter with the closest Johann Sebastian Bach came to penning opera: the Easter Oratorio and an Easter Cantata with soloists Andréa Walker, soprano, Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, countertenor, Haitham Haidar, tenor, and Edward Vogel, baritone, taking on dramatic roles. Festive baroque trumpets add to the celebration. Performances continue on Friday (7:30 at St. Raphael, Bay Village), Saturday (8 pm at St. Paul’s, Akron), and Sunday (5 pm at Church of the Gesu, University Hts.) Tickets available online.

For more performances, visit our Concert Listings.

[Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire “Hispania, a Voyage from Spain to the Americas” (Mar. 21)

by

by Kevin McLaughlin

Apollo’s Fire makes the enjoyment of old music easy. Less interested in the virtues of museum preservation, this band delights in having practices and creations of the past party with the present.

Their most recent show, “Hispania, a Voyage from Spain to the Americas,” is ostensibly an excursion by sea through sixteenth-century Spain and Latin America in ballades, dances, and instrumental fancies. But where another period ensemble might have rowed their boat with deliberate and reverential strokes, Jeannette Sorrell and her joyous troupe made this trip a theatrical thrill ride. I attended the performance at St. Rocco Parish on March 21.

[Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “¡Hispania! A Voyage from Spain to the Americas” — a conversation with Sophia Burgos

by

by Mike Telin

This week Apollo’s Fire will present “¡Hispania! A Voyage from Spain to the Americas.” Designed by Jeannette Sorrell, this new production features the music of Spanish composers Diego Ortiz, Gaspar Sanz, and Santiago de Murcia, blending virtuosity with lively dance rhythms. The ensemble of strings, plucked instruments, and percussion includes musicians from Mexico and Costa Rica, with flamenco guitarist Jeremías García and Puerto Rican soprano Sophia Burgos featured as soloists.

Performances are on Wednesday, March 20 at 7:30 pm at St. Bernard Catholic Church in Akron, Thursday the 21st at 7:30 at St. Rocco Parish, and Friday the 22nd at 7:30 and Saturday the 23rd at 8:00 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. A pre-concert conversation with guitarist Jeremías García begins one hour before each performance. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

CD Review: violinist Alan Choo with Apollo’s Fire in Biber’s Mystery Sonatas

by

by Daniel Hathaway

At its most recent concerts this month, Apollo’s Fire unveiled its newest recording on the Avie label. Mystery Sonatas by the early Baroque Bohemian composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber feature concertmaster and assistant artistic director Alan Choo.

One of the most significant rediscoveries from the fascinating period when flights of fancy — dubbed the stylus fantasticus — dominated early Baroque music, Biber’s Rozenkranz-Sonaten lay hidden in the Bavarian State Library in Munich until they came to light in 1905.

That unique and beautiful manuscript from the 1670s contains fifteen solo violin sonatas and a concluding Passacaglia (below) by the prolific Biber, himself a virtuoso violinist. Identified only by a copperplate engraving illustrating its subject, each piece is a meditation on one of the sacred mysteries in the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: Alan Choo and colleagues to take on more of Biber’s Rosary Sonatas

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Apollo’s Fire has recently been fascinated by 17th-century Bohemian composer 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 in Munich.

Four Apollo’s Fire violinists presented eight of the sonatas on programs in January 2019. And Alan Choo soloed in a pair of them on a set of programs in January 2023 as part of a multi-season project to record all fifteen sonatas plus the Passacaglia that concludes the meditations. The resulting CD, Biber’s Sacred Mysteries, has just been released, and will be available for purchase at Apollo’s Fire’s four concerts this week, when Choo will be featured in seven of the sonatas. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire — “Wassail! an Irish Appalachian Christmas” at CMA (Dec. 17)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Apollo’s Fire’s 2023 Christmas Show, “Wassail! an Irish Appalachian Christmas,” was a reworking of its earlier crossover shows, “Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain” and “Sugarloaf Mountain: an Appalachian Gathering” — attractive programs of folk music wrapped around the narrative of immigrants from the British Isles who brought their tunes with them to the New World. I saw the most recent version in its final performance in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday, December 17.

The narrative, delivered by Derdriu Ring (also credited with theatrical direction) opens in an Irish village on Christmas Eve of 1849 during the Great Famine, then fast forwards to immigrants’ new homes in Appalachia on Christmas Day of the following year. A Wassailing segment captures the tradition of boozy, door-to-door caroling, followed by Winter by the Hearth, a celebration of coziness in the face of winter, then a segue into a telling of the Christmas story and preparations for the sea journey to America. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Wassail! An Irish-Appalachian Christmas” — Tina Bergmann talks about the hammered dulcimer

by

by Mike Telin

Imagine that it’s Christmas night in Ireland, 1849. Families and friends gather for an evening of singing, storytelling, and due to the Potato Famine, tearful farewells. 

This setting serves as the inspiration for Apollo’s Fire’s “Wassail! An Irish-Appalachian Christmas.” Written and designed by artistic director Jeannette Sorrell, this theatrical concert follows the journey of the Irish immigrants who crossed the Atlantic to America through carols, reels, and stories.  

Led by Sorrell, the program features Irish singer Fiona Gillespie, vocalist Sam Kreindenweis, Kathie Stewart on wooden flutes, fiddlers Susanna Perry Gilmore, Emi Tanabe, and Caitlin Hedge, Tina Bergmann on hammered dulcimer, and Anna O’Connell on vocals and Celtic harp. Performances begin on Wednesday, December 6 at 7:30 at Bath Church UCC and run through December 17. Irish actress Derdriu Ring joins the company December 14-17. See our Concert Listings for times and locations. Tickets are available online.  

Bergmann, who is a regular on Apollo’s Fire crossover programs, first met Sorrell nearly 30 years ago while the conductor was looking for a hammered dulcimer player for an early American program. “She went to the Kent State Folk Festival, which is sort of my home festival, and came to one of the workshops where a good handful of hammered dulcimer players were presenting,” Bergmann recalled during a telephone conversation. “She approached me afterward and I invited her to my apartment. She had me play for her, and that’s how it started. I think it was in 1994, so it’s been an incredible journey.”

[Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us