ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad
Ad

Four Apollo’s Fire violinists take on Biber’s Mystery Sonatas

by

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…]

CD Review — Apollo’s Fire: Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain

by

by Hannah Schoepe

December evokes fantasies of snug fires, family festivities, and winter wonderlands. Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra Apollo’s Fire provides a fitting soundtrack to these daydreams, in their new album Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain. The tracks portray sounds of Christmas from the Irish hillsides to the Appalachian Mountains. Light a candle, and put your dancing shoes on, because this album traverses songs of community, faith, and history, as well as barn dances and Scottish reels.

[Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: Handel’s Messiah at First Baptist, Shaker Hts. (Dec. 1)

by

by David Kulma

Performances of Handel’s Messiah are as sure a sign that Christmas time has arrived as lights decorating homes and mailboxes stuffed with holiday sale advertising. So it’s no surprise that the evening of Saturday, December 1 found this reviewer at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights for an absorbing rendition of Handel’s classic oratorio from Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire alongside Apollo’s Singers. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “O Jerusalem” at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Heights (Nov. 12)

by

by David Kulma

Over the course of two weekends from November 10 to 18, Apollo’s Fire celebrated the multicultural heritage of the Holy Land with “O Jerusalem!: Crossroads of Three Faiths.” This exploration of music of Jews, Christians, and Muslims was conceived and directed by artistic director Jeannette Sorrell as a sequel to their successful “Sephardic Journey” program first done in 2014. I attended the second concert on November 12 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “O Jerusalem” — a conversation with Sorab Wadia

by

by Daniel Hathaway

In his bio, Bombay-born Sorab Wadia writes of himself, “He relishes resisting the clutches of typecasting.” No kidding. His musical repertoire ranges from Medieval to pop and rock, with oratorio and opera along the way.

As a singing actor, he has appeared in Mira Nair’s new musical, Monsoon Wedding. As an actor, he’s played Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, been featured in a one-man play based on Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, and appeared on Law & Order, merely to skim the surface of his extensive brag sheet. His classical credentials include piano study at Peabody, where he earned the first of his two masters’ degrees.

Wadia, who will join Apollo’s Fire this weekend as a vocalist for its “O Jerusalem” shows, winds up his narrative noting that he’s now based back in Bombay, “but will jump on a plane for a gig at the drop of a hat.” I reached the hyper-versatile performer on his cell phone to ask how Jeannette Sorrell found him in order to drop that hat. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire in Mozart and Haydn at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Oct. 12)

by

by Timothy Robson

Jeannette Sorrell and her intrepid orchestra Apollo’s Fire performed Friday evening, October 12, in a somewhat unusual venue — for them — Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art, in somewhat unusual repertoire — again, for them — Mozart and Haydn. After listening for years to Apollo’s Fire in churches around Northeast Ohio, I had a bit of cognitive dissonance being in a real concert hall with relatively drier acoustics and seats rather than pews. Apollo’s Fire certainly performs in concert halls elsewhere in the United States and internationally, but it seemed on Friday that the group had not yet fully settled into the ambience of Gartner Auditorium. [Read more…]

A conversation with Jeannette Sorrell about Apollo’s Fire’s new season

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Apollo’s Fire will begin and end its 2018-2019 season with large orchestral works — starting with Mozart (and a bit of Haydn) this weekend, and culminating in J.S. Bach’s great B-minor Mass in April. In between, Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra will revisit Handel’s Messiah and present an updated version of Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain, as well as producing smaller concerts featuring Middle Eastern music, the “Mystery” violin sonatas of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, a program of double and quadruple concertos, and a new chamber series, Baroque Bistro, in collaboration with area restaurants.

Founder and artistic director Jeannette Sorrell said in a telephone conversation that the opening concerts at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Institute of Music on October 12 and 14 will give the Orchestra new opportunities with some familiar repertoire. “Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 and the Ballet Music from Idomeneo are pieces we’ve lived with for a number of years, but we’ve never had the chance to play them in a proper-sized concert hall or to film them for video, which is becoming more and more important for the ensemble. Our videos were the first introduction to Apollo’s Fire for many people.” [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire Countryside Concert: “Tarantella!” in Hunting Valley (June 8)

by

by Alice Koeninger

AF Tarantella_previewThe Baroque Music Barn and its three-sided seating make for an intimate setting, which was perfect for the Friday, June 8 concert by Apollo’s Fire titled “Tarantella!” Soprano Amanda Powell, plucked instrument musician and tenor Brian Kay, and artistic director Jeannette Sorrell invited the audience to join them on an energetic and emotional tour of “Rhythms of the Old Mediterranean.” This fantastical journey was dramatically narrated by Powell, and talks by Kay, Sorrell, and ensemble member Daphna Mor added to the experience.
 [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Tarantella!” —
fifteen minutes with Brian Kay

by

by Daniel Hathaway

KAY-BrianOudist, lutenist, and guitarist Brian Kay has teamed up with vocalist Amanda Powell and artistic director and keyboardist Jeannette Sorrell to curate Apollo’s Fire’s Countryside Concerts show, “Tarantella! Rhythms of the Old Mediterranean.” The program will receive five performances in Hunting Valley, Avon Lake, Chardon, and Bath from June 8-12.

“Last year’s ‘Mediterranean Roots’ was so successful that Jeannette, Amanda, and I discussed how to rearrange it with a few additions of musicians and repertory to make it fresh,” Kay said in a telephone conversation. He added that it’s much easier to collaborate now that he and his wife have moved to Cleveland from Baltimore. “Now I can bring my guitar to Amanda’s house, where she’ll sit at the piano and we’ll play everything from Stevie Wonder to The Beatles to Medieval and Appalachian music and come up with ideas. Now Jeannette can also come by and participate.” [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: opening night of L’Orfeo at CIM (April 13)

by

by David Kulma

EricaCarlosApollo’s Fire’s L’Orfeo is, in short, spell-binding. You should drop everything and go to their final local performance in Bay Village on Wednesday, April 18. If you’re not yet convinced, please keep reading. Two things stand out about this glorious semi-staged performance of Claudio Monteverdi’s “Favola di musica” in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music on April 13. First is the magnificent production and performance. Second is the special music crafted by Apollo’s Fire principal cello René Schiffer to restore the original 1607 Bacchanale ending. [Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us