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Meints and friends to play all 15 of Purcell’s fantasias for viol consort 

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by Daniel Hathaway

Oberlin Conservatory viola da gamba and cello professor Catharina Meints has invited former and current students to join her in performing Henry Purcell’s 15 fantasias for consorts of three to seven viols on Friday, September 13 at 7:30 pm in Oberlin’s Kulas Recital Hall.

The seven gambists will play instruments from the collection assembled by Meints and her late husband James Caldwell, most of them having been made during Purcell’s own lifetime (he died in 1695).

People who take up the viola da gamba, that Renaissance and Baroque instrument that comes in different sizes, looks like a cello, has frets like a guitar, and which inspired the film Tous les Matins du Monde, quickly fall in love with the instrument and its repertoire.

“It’s relatively easy to play, there’s a massive amount of accessible but intellectually interesting music that’s been written for it, and most of that is consort music to be played with friends,” Meints said in a conversation in her Oberin studio. “ [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…]

Oberlin’s Michael Lynn to demonstrate ten historical flutes in May 20 program

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by Daniel Hathaway

Lynn with flutes“I always tell my students that performing on different instruments during the same recital is a bad idea,” Oberlin Baroque flute professor Michael Lynn said in a recent lunch interview. Casting aside his own advice, Lynn will host “A Passion for Innovation: A Lecture/Concert on Ten Rare Flutes, 1770-1900” on May 20 at 11:00 am in Kulas Recital Hall at the Oberlin Conservatory. With the assistance of several Oberlin colleagues, he’ll demonstrate just a few of the sixty flutes in his personal collection using period repertoire specially matched to the instruments.

The idea came to him when he acquired a crystal flute made by Claude Laurent in Paris in 1821. Among the most expensive flutes on the market at that time, these instruments were priced well out of the reach of mere musicians and were frequently given as gifts by the wealthy (among their owners were James Madison and Napoleon Bonaparte). Some 120 of these flutes still exist.

[Read more…]

Bach at Oberlin BPI: the B-minor Mass in Warner Concert Hall (July 1)

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by Nicholas Jones

BPI-Mass-Concert-1Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B Minor is, to say the least, a daunting work. It’s full of challenging vocal and instrumental parts that seem to venture into every key in the theory book. It’s composed of one complicated counterpoint after another. And like any sung mass, its musical integrity can seem at odds with the liturgical functions of the texts. And it’s long (over two hours). In its recent embodiment at Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute (BPI), all of these challenges seemed to disappear. [Read more…]

Catharina Meints discusses the Baroque Performance Institute’s 44th season

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by Jeremy Reynolds

At the end of theMeints-&-Caldwell 17th century, disparity between the French and Italian baroque styles had reached its peak, and intrigue abounded in the Parisian music world. One daring composer, François Couperin (1668 – 1733), hid a secret passion from his family and his country — an unrequited love for the music of Arcangelo Corelli (1653 – 1713).

Although the French court kept a stifling hold over the musical scene, banning anything other than the French style from public performance, Couperin rebelled against this dictate. He composed — in secret — a collection of trio sonatas (1695) imitating the style of Corelli. He told the court that he had been sent these sonatas from a cousin, Couperoni, an Italianization of his own name. And under this furtive pseudonym, he introduced a hybridization of the two national styles, winning great acclaim for his “discovery” of his cousin’s work.

This antagonistic period is the focus for the 44th season of the annual Baroque Performance Institute (BPI) at the Oberlin Conservatory, which runs from Sunday, June 21 through Saturday, July 4. [Read more…]

Review: Oberlin String Quartet & Intensive — A Viennese Evening (January 10)

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by Daniel Hautzinger

Kulas-Oberlin“Viennese” is often a byword for “light.” It conjures images of bourgeois gentlemen nibbling cream-filled pastries while being entertained by effortless waltzes like “The Beautiful Blue Danube.” The second concert in Oberlin Conservatory’s String Quartet Intensive and Festival, “A Viennese Evening” on Jan. 10 in Kulas Recital Hall, was thus a charming and pleasant affair.

The program began with an oddity, Ferdinand Rebay’s Quartet in d minor for guitar and string trio. Rebay (1880-1953) spent most of his life in Vienna and died in obscurity after being blacklisted by the Nazis, as violist and organizer of the Festival Michael Strauss explained during intermission. Rebay is so unknown that Friday night was the U.S. premiere of the work. Strauss was joined by three other Oberlin faculty members for the piece: violinist David Bowlin, cellist Darrett Adkins, and guitarist Stephen Aron, who suggested the performance.

Guitar is rare in chamber music. Rebay, perhaps understanding its lack of projection, mostly uses the guitar in the d minor quartet to flesh out the harmony or to add rhythmic excitement. [Read more…]

Review: Apollo’s Fire: “Tangos and Fandangos” at Fairmount Church (November 15)

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by Timothy Robson

Schiffer-&-BrinkmannOne of the best things about Apollo’s Fire’s programs is that director Jeannette Sorrell and her musicians plan programs that are entertaining. They are scholarly, but not pedantic; instructive, but not condescending; and the expert musicians give every appearance of enjoying the act of performance, with awareness of their fellow musicians.

Such was the case again on Friday night, November 15, at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights, for the first of four performances of “Tangos and Fandangos,” an exploration of the Mediterranean musical styles from 18th century Spain that crossed the Atlantic and evolved into those sexy South American dances, the fandango and the tango. The full house responded enthusiastically to this unfamiliar music by Santiago de Murcia, Luigi Boccherini, Carl Friedrich Abel, and Apollo’s Fire regular René Schiffer (writing under the nom de plume René Duchiffre).

Baroque guitarists Simon Martyn-Ellis and William Simms opened the concert with 18th century Spanish composer and guitarist Santiago de Murcia’s Fandango (c.1730). The performers entered from opposite sides of the stage, bowed to each other and commenced a musical “duel,” trading phrases in increasing virtuosic variations above the descending bass line that is the hallmark of the fandango. The tension increased until the music dramatically stopped without warning. [Read more…]

Review: Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute — From the Valley of the Danube (June 28)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Oberlin-BPI-Orchestra“We could have chosen all Transylvanian music,” quipped artistic director Kenneth Slowik during the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute faculty concert in Warner Concert Hall last Friday evening, “but we decided to go for quality: Austria.” This year’s BPI theme focused on music by composers who lived and worked in lands touched by the Danube River, with special attention to the exotic string music of Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. In addition to his Battalia, student and faculty ensembles regaled a large and appreciative audience with music by Georg Muffat, Emperor Leopold I, Johann Joseph Fux and the young Joseph Haydn.

Though most of the repertory on Friday evening fell into the “not often played nor heard” category, Biber’s battle piece had the distinction of appearing on two area concert programs last week (it was also on the menu for ChamberFest Cleveland at Mixon Hall on Wednesday evening). This short and entertaining Baroque tone poem from 1673 depicts a motley and dissolute group of soldiers who get drunk and sing different songs at the same time, go into battle then lament their fallen fellows. An ensemble of three violins, four violas, two cellos, theorbo and harpsichord led by principal violinist Julie Andrijeski created cacophony worthy of Charles Ives and plausible battle sounds with dramatic snap pizzicatos. [Read more…]

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